oh hey blog, i didn't see you there!

golly its been a while. real sorry. sometimes i get caught up in the fact that i have a life and don't just stay home all day wallowing in my own sorrow anymore, and thus am kinda tired when i do get online.
instead of blogging during my long hours spent on the webbernet, i have been spending my time much, much more effectively.

by looking up recipes for baked goods, obviously.
when i got home today, i had the insatiable urge to bake. understandable, since this week i have probably spent a compiled 20 hours recipe hunting. seriously, it's gotten to the point where i daydream about cookies. i have a problem.
i told you about my cupcakes, i did not tell you about my cinnabonrock cookies, but i think i will skip those and go right to the cookies i whipped up today, which i have effectionately named "dusty peanut butter koffiekoekjes".
since we have sort of an odd assortment of ingridients on hand, i had to start out with a normal cookie recipe including just self-rising flour [because we have every kind of flour except just flour. who would need that?], golden syrup [is this something that most people keep handy in a stock-piled fashion like my family does? i didn't even know it existed], and sugar. then i added peanut butter and chocolate chips, because hey! the more the merrier.
the first batch i baked for several minutes too long cos i was like THEY DONT LOOK DONE. but they so were. so that batch was slightly, err, shall we say charred? my parents think the burned batch came out "lekker" though, they only taste a little bit smoky in my opinion. pleasently barbequed, even.
but i learned from my mistake and the second batch came out wonderfully. or, as wonderfully as "gee i guess ill just put this stuff together and bake it im sure it will work out" cookies can.
anyway, my thriving life as a master baker aside, i've had a pretty rockin interim between this blog post and the last one.
last saturday was my metal treffen met jelle! it had to be good, it was called a "treffen".
anyway, we took the bus to the club where the show was, and it was BUTT-ASS FREEZING out. we waited outside a little bit whilst my fingers and toes verged on shattering, but then we finally went in.
the atmosphere started out a bit slow, but once everybody got a few drinks in them [and it got past 7 pm], all was aglow with long haired middle-aged men in baggy pants and black t-shirts from other metal shows. whiiich, is apparently the dress code for metal shows that i just didn't hear about in time. either way, it was glorious.
we spent the night dancing, drinking, and generally chillin out. we saw a pagan metal band. also, a man with a 2 foot long braided beard. this, my friends, was a night for the record books.

because we're real winners.

by the end, i felt quite lovely. also INCREDIBLY hungry, so i had to run out to the snack bar and buy a delicious hamburger covered with weird customary dutch topping to snarf down before i fainted. another one of those "delicious because i am about to die" moments. also a "delicious because heated up" moment. and no, i didn't look pathetic at all bundled up, shivering, rosy-cheekenly drunk and slightly googly-eyed, stuffing a giant hamburger into my face. i swear.
we took the bus back to winterswijk with one of the bands who played, who decided that they wanted to be our BFF, probably because they were very shmammered and i am a beacon of light to those under the influence. do you want to know about his son yip? because i can tell you alllll about him. :D
once we got to winterswijk we went to this super gezellig bar and met up with artur and luke till 4 c:

~*BAR BROZ 4 LYFE*~

then we went back to jelle's house and i got to creep and sleep in his sisters room. anyone who has experienced it knows how odd it is to sleep in someone's bed when they are not there. it just feels so wrong.
so that was my brilliant weekend.

otherwise my week has been fairly average. got my "pony" trimmed [entirely in terribly dutch, i might add], devoured some books, and looked frantically for halloween costumes.
as a sidenote, i miss halloween. i would like to sincerely fuck everyone who is going to go out on halloween and bring back a giant pillowcase with enough twix bars, tootsie rolls, skittles, and reese's cups to last until december.

fun fact! 99% of this candy does not exist in nederland.

 i'll just be here chillin' with my drop and disgusting pastel colored marshmallow bits. sobbing. oh, what i would give, even for the shitty candy that nobody likes~ seriously, send me all your malted milk balls and good 'n plenty.
though, to fill the void in my heart where good ol' butt-o-ween will be, me and my dutch friends and jacque are throwing a halloween party. so that will be fun. for that purpose, and since being without a costume on halloween would be super balls, i've been browsing around for a costume recently.
let me tell you about halloween costumes here. there are costume shops everywhere. i'm assuming for carnival in the spring, but really i don't even know how that would explain the exorbitant amount of them.
and they aren't just like iparty or something. we're talking basically warehouses full of every costume you could ever want. in every color you could ever want. you want to be a hot pink native american? a-okay! a bright orange flight attendant? GOT YOUR BACK.
i was tempted to be an eskimo for the two reasons that A. if i'm going to dress up as something blatantly racist, it might as well be here. and B. holland will probably freeze over by october 31st.
or possibly i could be a zombie! or a sailor! or a nurse! or a bunny!
my world was full of hopeful possibility.
but, of course, there is a catch. the smallest size adult costume they make is a 34. which is too big for me. even worse, usually the smallest size they actually carry is a 36 or a 38. which REALLY is too big for me.
so i spend my time browsing through the children's section like a giant creep, because that is where the costumes that fit me reside. and not like the "junior's" section, i mean the "i am 5 and my mother is dressing me up as a princess" costumes. also, not even the biggest ones. the second biggest.
obviously, i didn't find anything because all the children's costumes make me look like a womanbaby, which is not exactly the look i'm going for. i found a really great hot pink nurse costume for 3-5 year olds though, which i am considering purchasing and demolishing so that it fits me appropriately. because hey, its fairly cheap and comes with a stethoscope. score!
though less than great for costume shopping, i have found one uplifting plus about being abnormally small here, as i'm sure some other non-netherlanders have. i was shopping with my school friends yesterday in h&m and we saw this awesome boy's children's sweater with a skull face on it. they were all like "mehh i want it! but it probably won't fit". i, being an optimist, was more like "DAMN SKIPPY IT'S GONNA FIT," and preceded to take the biggest size to the fitting room. since i'm a 7 year old boy, it fit like a dream and i bought it. :D and it was way cheaper than it woulda been for an adult-sized garment.
so you know, all is not depression in my own personal world of midgetry. and honestly, i'm not even that small. there's plenty of justin bieberlings who are shorter than me.

that's everything i can think of now. maybe i'll whip out a part 2 tomorrow, i dunno. i'm kinda sleepy.
oh! vacation is happening noww C: tomorrow i head off to berlijn for a few days, then jacque comes to stay with me and we party and hang out. then on next tuesday i think hangin with jelle. it will be good!
tot ziensss

ik ben erg blij

hallooo c: í've had a lovely weekend, a weekend to restore my faith in being batshit insane enough to come here. unfortunately for you, that means less snark, which, i know, makes the horror and tragedy that is my life incredibly incredibly entertaining. so i'm sorry you're missing out on that. but don't fret, even when my week is good i always have something ridiculous to report. because, come on. i live in a dorp.

every cloud has a WHAT THE FUCK IS MY LIFE lining.

so, last week left me in a rather dejected state. i was feeling a bit lonely and social pariah-y, and all i really wanted to do was curl up into a ball forever. on friday, i had to bake cupcakes for the potluck that was today. i figured, "oh hey, ill just make something non-committal like cupcakes. that will be super easy, and baking will lift me out of this rut!". however, i was blithely unaware that netherlanders dont believe in things like "canola oil" and "buttermilk" and "large bags of powdered sugar".

the biggest contained of powdered sugar they make.

so my options were quite limited. i thought maybe if i just closed my eyes and put a bunch of delicious things in a bowl together and baked them it would all come out okay.
i returned fromseveral hours of perusing the store with white cupcake mix, bananas, chocolate pieces, cream cheese, butter, and 4 shaker tubes of powdered sugar. it was time to get down to business.
after the initial shopping hell portion of my cakemaking journey [it took me like an hour to find the sugar aisle because i was thinking "baking supplies" when i should have been thinking "koffie"] the rest went fairly steadily. i realised that i pretty much had full freedom with the recipe, because hey, how wrong could it possibly go? i put some bananas n chocochips up in the batter, whipped up my cream cheese frosting, and i was so in business. i accidentally made way more than intended though, and wound up with like 30 cupcakes. delicious delicious cupcakes. a story of success! though, i spent the interim between making them and bringing them to the potluck hoping to dear god that they would stay yummy.
anyway, so friday ended on a good note. on saturday, i trekked to winterswijk to visit jelle. i managed to take the train thee without fault, and had a lovely warm day chillin out in jelle's dorp. i had to leave at like 5.30 to be back for floris' birthday party, though. which i did, but then missed my changeover train and had to wait an extra half an hour at the platform anyway. and im not talkin' like "oh shoot, the train i wanted to take just pulled away!", im talkin' "NAW i dont think thats my train, i'm just gonna wait here like a doof and OHWAITSHIT THAT ACTUALLY WAS MY TRAIN. AWESOME".
turns out, the next train to hengelo DIDNT stop in borne like the first one did, so i also had to catch another train back to borne from hengelo. i watched my little town speed by the train window with sinking desolation. it made me tired and confused, and by the time i was back in borne i really just wanted to go to sleep. BUT! instead i went home, made sure i didnt look completely like a zombie, popped some cupcakes in a tupperware for a present for floris and fietsed to the party.

oh cupcakes, you go above and beyond your duty.

the party was super fun, and i met a looot of people c: at midnight we all biked to hengelo to hang out there. hengelo was fun, having pink hair means i can make new friends on a dime :D
i went out for delicious 3 am food with some new single serving friends after most of my original party had gone home. it was wonderful, i forget what it was called but it was just a giant plastic cup filled with potatoes, shaved meat and sauce. which is exactly what i want to stuff in my face at 3 in the morning. after that, i biked home, ate a bowl of cereal and slept like the dead.
today, another exciting winterswijk adventure! all the exchange students from our region met up essentially
to freak out and complain about our lives. it was quite nice, to be able to talk about everything, but i didnt really have much to complain about. i was more embarrassed, while other people were complaining i was like "yeah so my family is really too good to me, because im pretty sure another family would have kicked me out by now..."
after that, jelle the fancy AFS volunteer took us out on a tour of winterswijk while our families freaked out and complained about us. it was a really nice day, so we just kinda putzed around for a few hours and then went back for the potluck. whiiiich, i am happy to report nobody was poisioned by my experimental cupcakes, and actually they were quite popular :D score one for angela's baking skillz! its okay though, i owe all my success to frosting, because they dont eat frosting here. making my cupcakes automatically ten times better than all of the other cupcakes they've ever eaten, by default. also to the makro, from which i bought possibly the only measuring cup in the netherlands. seriously, how does anybody bake with a scale. ohmygod. they dont even use teaspoons and tablespoons D:
after we got back, i decided i HAD TO EXPLORE and nothing was going to stop me. i got home, changed into my SUPERVET jogging pants and set off on my bike towards adventure.
i decided i needed to know where the road past the train tracks went, so i just followed it in a straight line forever. turns out, it curves, goes past the pannenkoekhuis, and goes in a giant circle back into borne. i kept following roads as straight as i could throughout borne, and so now i sort of have an idea where stuff is. it was really fun, actually.
PLUS, GAIZ GAIZ i taught myself to bike without my hands. so uh, yknow, just chillinnnn. i will never use that skill, though, because it can only end in misery and broken teeth. BUT ITS A GOOD SKILL TO HAVE, yknow, just sitting dormant in case you are biking really really really need the use of both hands. like what i have to fend off a bear but also cannot stop because i'm in a really big hurry? exactly.
the only truly bad thing that happened this weekend is that my pinky ring with the moon stone was really loose lately and slipped down the shower drain this morning. i cried, real bad. i don't know why i love my pinky rings like children, but they always stayed on and i felt like they were part of me. SERIOUSLY, I HAVE RING TAN ON MY PINKIES. so that was pretty depressing, cos i really liked that ring. it looked like the sky. on the plus side, now i get to find a new pinky ring, because shopping for pinky rings is a favorite passtime of mine that i have been deprived of for the last year.
anyway, basically this weekend i just started feeling like i actually understand my life a little bit and have some friends. it will get better, and it already is. and honestly, i really do like it here. it's quirky and ridiculous and full of bread and bikes and "leuk" and its my home now :3
just one week left to live through and then metal festival! SO SOUPEDDD. and gym tomorrow :D lets see what borderline deadly game they want us to play this week. honestly, i feel like they probably just have meetings where they review the various gym equipment they have and figure out how to induce the most potential injury with it.
TOT ZIENS C:

dat klopt wel.

this week, it feels as if the earth has been smiling at me. :) okay, probably laughing at me. but who am i to be picky about the details.
a few days ago, i put my bike down on its side and it threw a tantrum because i guess it doesnt like it when i dont use the kickstand. so it was a little bit broken again. the morning after, though it was fixed, i didnt want to take any chances and decided to walk to school. plus, i was ready for school an hour and a half early and i thought "what fun! the exercise! the fresh air!" i was prepaired to gracefully trapse 5 km to school in hengelo, and in my mind, it would be lovely.
i neglected to realize that after biking something, walking it feels like running down an endless hallway. by the time i was on the snelweg out of borne, i was a sad little puppy.
i was selfconsciously making my way along the road when peter, one of the boys i'd met with floris, cycled up next to me and offered me a ride. i told myself i should regret not finishing what i'd started, but let's be honest i was BESIDE MYSELF with glee. guiltily, i got on the bikerack and was carried to school.
fast forward to after school at 12:45, my ghusto and unwavering determination restored, i set off home. i figured this way would be nice cos i could go at my own pace. then, peter cycled up and asked me if i wanted a ride home. AND WHO WAS I TO DECLINE SUCH A KIND OFFER?
it was pretty much the nicest favor ever lol.
then i went home and walked to the kruidvat and bought nail polish-y things and granola bars C:

in other news, i have discovered something monumental. it is called ONTBIJTKOEK, and it is delicious. its a typically dutch food, and its sorta like thick, sticky bread infused with a flavor that i can't quite put my finger on. debby let me try a bite of hers. on the way home, i swung by the c1000 and picked up a pack, because i decided that ontbijtkoek is really the only thing i need to eat. ever. besides granola.

that grotsky looking crust is the best part, don't judge.

and now, time for another riveting installment of: why i still haven't had a full week of school yet.
today, i was all prepared to have a normal tuesday. usually, i have 5 classes on tuesday. except, my dutch teacher in hospital so i dont have her class. what i usually do is talk to my geography teacher and he lets me do that class when i should have dutch, which means i get to go home an hour early.
anyway, i got to school and walked up alllll the stairs to the 3rd floor classroom where i have my first class, CKV. it was empty. this happens to me sometimes when they forget that i'm a martian and dont tell me whats going on, so i went up to my councilor to ask someone if the teacher was absent that day. i found out she was, and i was like "oh, no big deal. now i can go ask to do geography now and only have to sit through one vapid free period."
so i walked down all the stairs and checked the roster to see where my geography teacher was. room 203, kay, got it. back up again. and the room was empty with the lights off. secretly, i was elated.
i marched back up to the 3rd floor to ask if he was absent, too. which, of course, he was. since i had two free periods and the class i usually fill them with was also a free period, i went downstairs to check the rostor and see what else i could move around. "maybe i can even go home at 11:45!" i thought with delight.
of course not. the only other class i could move was music, and the first class my music teacher had was my class, which starts at 1:10.
my day went a little like this:
free hour, free hour, english, free hour, music, free hour.
thankfully, i only had to sit through the first and middle hour of nothingness. i read more of catch-22, which i only have like 50 pages left of, and thought dreamily about sandwiches.
TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW IM SLEEPY NOW. im serious i will continue it so you had better check back!

lekkerlekker

i just went to check my webcomics, but i accidentally typed "quinoa" into the address bar. obviously i have something else on the brain right now haha. seriously, if i thought they had quinoa here i would be eating it by the bucket full, since i have like ten quinoa recipes stocked up in my favorites for when some magically appears.

of course when i had pounds of this stuff at my disposal i didn't want it at all. BUT NOW

today was pretty good for a monday, and based on my life here, pretty good for a day at all.
first period i had gym, which promised a whole new world of wonderment and pain, as it does every week. last week was alternative volleyball, the week before was super gymnastic rings, what else could this week contain?
flips with the spring board and dodgeball, obviously. double the excitement!
not like it was immidiately apparent. what usually happens in gym class is i show up and the room is full of large scary gym equipment with indeterminable function. i.e. spring boards, vaulting horses, and i'm pretty sure i've seen a harness hanging from the ceiling. then the gym lady talks a lot in dutch and makes lots of athletic hand gestures, using words like "important" and "two times". then i assume the worst and go to the back of the line of kids and watch intently to see what the other students do. we usually wind up doing something that amounts to a mishmash of elementary school gym class scooter/beanbag games and actual, dangerous sports.
it doesn't help that i barely feel like participating before i even know what we are doing, because my sweats fit me like harem pants and i have little to no athletic ability, but i put on a brave face. anyway, for the first half of class we took turns running up to the spring board, vaulting into the air, and doing a large mid-air somersault. it was actually kinda fun, besides being terrifying. the other half of class we played super dodgeball, which wasn't so bad either.
so far, gym class here is not only 1000x more interesting than in america, it's also generally just more bearable. probably because i only have it once a week, you be the judge.
also today, i had my presentation about providence for dutch class. it made me nervous and i basically just was like "um providence is full of losers who you would probably make fun of. but its okay, they would make fun of your faggy shoes too."
except not really. i actually tried to give legitimate facts and things, it went well.
after that, i had geography, which has the two boys in it that í've been trying to determine are either twins or the same person. in case you couldn't tell, i have deduced that they are twins. so that was definitely a highlight of my day. another highlight of my day, listening to AMERICA, FUCK YEAH on my ipod on class? it came on shuffle and it made me feel instantly guilty and shameful, in only the most wonderful of ways.

because we invented wax lips and the alamo.

when i left this morning it was a bitter sort of freezing, but when i got out of school today it was really lovely and warm. i biked home without my jacket on, brimming with glee.
then i stopped and bought snap peas and blueberries, because i decided i needed a gluten free vegan pick me up for the afternoon. they were really good blueberries, too. which i'm glad they were, since they set me back three euro. i probably should think it's a crime to be charged that much for blueberries and i probably would, had i not wanted them more than life itself at the time.
and now i'm here, on my computer, typing to you.
FUN FACT ABOUT MY HOUSE: the ratio of artistic cat sculptures in my living room to artistic rooster sculptures in my living room is 17 : 11. and i'm counting the three pictures of roosters on the wall. i don't feel like i have to say anything else except MY LIVING ROOM HAS SEVENTEEN CAT SCULPTURES IN IT. fairly large cat sculptures, too. i think there might even be a few that have seeped into my room. slowly the cat sculptures are multiplying and conquering.


we are waiting for you.

 but seriously, most of them either aren't creepy or don't have eyes that appear to be clearly looking at anything in particular, so i don't really mind them. i've become a little bit fond of the abundence of cats :3
anyway, i think that's pretty much all i have to say at the moment. i'm gonna go enjoy the freak accident that is today's nice weather <3

welke weg naar het station?

well, it's a sunday which means that skyradio is playing all day in my household. it's a beautiful time, when all the horrifying love ballads of the eighties and nineties that i thought i'd escaped having to participate in come back to fill my ears with sweet sweet crooning!
HAVE A NICE DAYYYY~, SKYRADIO HONDERD EEN FM~~
i personally have entered an era of gypsy punk goodness, so i've been binging on gogol bordello. also, i'm ashamed to say i listened to some devendra banhart. because. well. i don't even know, he's a very silly manchild.

no really, you're just the most ridiculous ever. it's okay, devendra.

anyway, yesterday i went to amsterdam with AFS, which was truly amazing. i took pictures, which i will implant into this just as soon as i figure out how. jacque and i took the train there together, and i we almost got completely lost. we weren't sure quite where to switch trains, and we got on and off twice before we finally decided that the train we were on probably wasn't the right one and we should wait. luckily almost immidiately after that jelle appeared out of nowhere and ushered us over to a big group of other AFS kids. crisis averted.
once we got to amsterdam, we split up into little tour groups to walk through the city. we walked through the red light district, which was quite a bit more distressing than we had anticipated. it was quite early in the day so most of the windows were empty, but there were two or three with girls [and transvestites] in them. it wasn't sad, exactly, it just made me feel like choking a little bit.
we continued on through the city, which is actually mostly populated with netherlands gift shops, coffeeshops, and chinese food restaurants. i think amsterdam is like 90% tourists, 10% everyone else. the people in shops speak english as a first instinct.
after wandering through some more busy campy streets, we stopped for lunch. jacque and i went to this pastry/sandwich shoppe and bought matching chicken sandwiches with cheese, mustard, been sprouts?, and probably some other stuff. they were ridiculously delicious. probably because we were freakishly hungry. the thing we've found is that you can hate pretty much everything that is on a sandwich and when you eat it warmed up, it will be all kinds of godly delicious.

what's in this one? pickles, mushrooms and death? SOUNDS DELISH pop that baby in the microwave.

after lunch we took some group pictures and then went on a boat ride through the canals. it was so pretty to see all the cute little buildings. they are all surprisingly structurally unsound, like... a good portion of them looked like the were going to fall over at any moment. it takes a while to notice, but then you're like "waaait... i'm pretty sure windows aren't supposed to do a downward slant. just a hunch."
also, HOUSEBOATS. i love them. they are everywhere. they all have these big windows and sometimes they have little docks attatched to them with a picket fence and lawn chairs. ITS SO CUTE >w<
there was one made out of concrete bricks, too, which was cool. it looked like they'd just taken a house and plopped it on top of a boat.
we decided that we were super jealous of all the people just chilling near the edges of the canals or on their house boats, because those people obviously had it so made.
anyway, after the boat ride we dicked around some more, looked at some more buildings and stuff, you know. we saw a group of street breakdancers, which was legitimately hilarious. then at four, the tour was over and we could go explore and be merry by ourselves. WHICH we did. :D
first, we [all the americans and a german girl named laura] went out for pancakes. i got an applesauce almond and whipped cream pannenkoek, and also i split a tosti with ariel. it was heavenly delicious.
when we were all finished, we left in search of shopping and places to hang out. we were just crossing the street when jenny and i spotted a bagel store right next to where we had been. obviously, we made a mad dash for it, completely ignoring the rules of socially acceptable-ness and also traffic. because um BAGELS. they dont eat bagels here. it *might* have been the most wonderful bagel i've ever eaten.

first bagel in approx half a year, i almost exploded with glee.

after we felt sufficiently bagel'd, we went back to this big square with a bunch of cozy little bars and picked one of them to hang out in. unfortunately, they were kinda lame so we left pretty quickly. i was on a quest for a bar that served grolsch, so we walked around a bit looking for a place. we found one, but it was called "PIRATES". the sign was red with neon sign balloons on it. which has nothing to do with pirates. also, the blinds were drawn. we decided that this was probably not a wise venue choice. after passing a few more sketchy looking bars [apparently only sketchy bars sell grolsch in amsterdam?], we gave up and went to a large loud building called the sports club because they had really good drink deals.
the sports club was actually a really fun place, it was very loud and they were playing really good dance music, so we were all sorta bustin' a move in our chairs lol. i'm sure we looked completely normal. since jenny is 18, she ordered a strawberry margerita which she let us try. it kind of made me never want to drink beer again. upon returning to my heineken i was like URR WHY DOESNT THIS TASTE LIKE A FRUIT SLUSHY I AM DISSAPOINTED :C

this, or bread flavored soda water? it's your choice, don't let me influence you.

but cocktails are are ridiculously expensive, and also we are not allowed to drink them. and y'know, i've grown affectionately fond of beer. its an acquired taste.
after we finished up at the sports club, we decided we wanted ice cream. because who doesnt want ice cream? :D earlier in the day we had anticipated this happening and mentally landmarked the location of amsterdam's ben &jerry's. this was a very good decision on our part, because i'm fairly sure a cookie dough ice cream cone has never tasted so good.. nom nom. after that we were pretty much done so jacque and i left to go catch our train.
to my surprise, we actually managed to navigate home without getting lost or dying. go us! though, we did enlist the help of two brootal hipster twenty-somethings coming from a concert to help us take the right train when we had to switch. we talked to them for a while about bitterballen and drop and they were nice.
in case i haven't told you what drop is yet, it is something that only dutch people like. it's a black chew-y candy that they sell everywhere and everybody loves it. i tried to love it, i really did. they first time i had one, i entered the situation with an open mind. probably because nobody informed me that they are pretty much salty licorice flavored. floris told me to try not to smell them before you eat them, which should have probably tipped me off. our single-serving train hipsters admitted that it's something that you pretty much had to grow up eating to understand it.

yum, i've always wished they would make a candy that tastes like soy sauce.

then we got off the train at borne and walked back to my house. then we ate some bowls of cereal and tea and went to sleep. good night c:
all in all, it was an awesome wonderful happy trip full of goodness and wonderment :D we're gonna go back another time, most definitely.
anyway, next week is a potuck in winterswijk so i need to figure out a traditionally american recipe to bring. :P peanut butter and jelly, anyone?
until next time!

utrecht and the subsequent days!

gonna put pictures in tomorrow its late and im tired.
this week has really been a mixed bag. a mostly positive mixed bag :D sit back, get cozy, let's let the ridiculous narrative of my life begin.
so, on saturday the other americans and i went on a super adventure to utrecht C: we got there at like 10.30 and went to starbucks. cos yknow, thats what we do. then we tried to navigate our way out of the station, which went okay. but its like a station/mall/sprawling food court? so we got kinda confused by that. once we found our way out of the giant indoor maze of consumerism and shoes :D, we set off to find the centrum. whiiich proved difficult, since there was a market, meaning that the outside and the inside were pretty much identically maze-like, except outside it was raining.
we managed to navigate through the stalls and stalls of tacky wonderment, and we found the centrum. it is so beautiful. the sun started shining, the canals were sparkling, and everything was just so european and amazing. i need to go back.
first we went shopping at all the stores, like h&m and stuff, i bought a 20 euro ring from a vendor on the street. i know i SHOULD have haggled, but i really like the ring! its perfect, just the ring ive always dreamed of. so i was willing to foot that loss.
after that ariel showed us to this delicious italian place called mario's? it was totally authentic. and by "authentic" i mean run by turkish guys and i'm faaaairly sure that almost none of the food there was actually italian except pizza XD jacque and i were feeling especially starving and adventurous, so we both ordered these giant pizza shaped slices of what seemed to be calzone? it was full of cheese, egg, mushroom, and meat, and it *might* have been the most sinfully delicious thing i've ever eaten. and thats saying a lot. it was just so... wrong. SO DELICIOUSLY WRONG.
we were really full, so obviously the next thing we did was go to mcdonalds and order stroopwafel mcflurries. BECAUSE THATS THE LOGICAL NEXT STEP.

wellp! nutritionally, the day probably couldnt have gotten any worse anyway. why waste that?

in the line, some boys complimented my hair and then they were like "YOU COME FROM AMERICA? IS IT TRUE THAT EVERYONE IS SHORT AND FAT THERE?"
and i was like "UHH WELL AS A CASE EXAMPLE I CANT PERSONALLY DISPROVE THOSE STATEMENTS, BUT... :I"
:D i love making friends!
anyway, the mcflurries were also a little bit too delicious for words, but i don't think you'd understand if you've never eaten a stroopwafel.
after that we went to hema and bought candy, because hey, why not.
then ariel and jenny went home :< cos they werent feeling too good, for different reasons. the rest of us went and shopped some more until like 5, when we went on a quest to find a bar to spend the rest of the evening cozily indoors.
EASIER SAID THAN DONE, MY FRIENDS. we finally did locate one though, so we stayed there a bit. we had duvel out of swanky glasses and felt quite fancy. but we reeeally wanted bitterballen. but we had forgotton what they were called. so then we had to walk around more asking bars if they had those "little kroket things". at about the third bar, we FINALLY found them, and there was much rejoicing. because who doesnt love a nice scalding hot deep fried ball of gravy? i certainly do.

effective dutch advertising at its best.

then we stopped at the albert heijn [my favorite place in probably the whole netherlands] to buy sandwiches for the train home. thenn we took the train and talked to a nice old lady and went to amy's house and ate granola and went to sleep c: a good time was had by all.
so yeah, that was my first trip to utrecht c: i would like to go there again because it was so pretty and nice. but this weekend is amsterdam. :D SUPER PUMPED.

so now, i will tell you about my wonderful night last night. and by wonderful, i obviously mean terrifying and starcrossed.
i was with jelle in hengelo hanging out, and my phone was out of minutes. so it didnt actually work. usually, i make absolutely sure to notify my parents where i am. but this time it accidentally got away from me. which will never happen again. and you will find out why. so, i started home after telling my parents from his phone where i was. it had already started to get dark, so off i went. just a few blocks into my 20 minute bikeride home, i found that it was increasingly impossibly to pedal my bike. i promptly fell off on the side of the road. confused, i dusted myself off and tried again. and fell off again. now i was getting frustrated.
i tried this shaky, impossible "try to not fall off your broken bicycle in the dark while people look at you funny" thing for a few more blocks until it became painfully obvious that it just was not going to work.
defeated, i started trudging onward with my indignant and resistant bike. at that point, it was pretty completely dark. and i couldnt call my parents to tell them because my phone was out of minutes.
also, sidenote: walking with a bike makes the pedals hit you in the shins. it hurts real bad, especially when the bike doesnt want to move in the first place. when i had gotten about a third of the way home and could feel them bruises happenin' on my legs, i started crying. BECAUSE DONT LIE, YOU TOTES WOULD TOO.
so picture, if you will, a small pink haired girl forcing her bicycle down the street like a belligerant animal, audibly crying at nine o'clock at night. this is my life.
i figured i could walk my bike to the weird hengelo hotel with a tucan on it [an apropriate design choice, i find, because the netherlands has many tucans and other marks of tropical climate in it] and use their telephone.

welcome to holland, your very own tropical oasis!

i calculated that i would get there before passing out from exhaustion. so i did that, explained my situation to the concierge in fairly unbroken dutch, and called home for a ride. the end. the pathetic, tragic end.
NEEDLESS TO SAY, THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. it was pretty much the worst ever, and i am scared shitless of anything like that happening again. SO ILL PUT MINUTES ON MY PHONE, KEEP EVERYONE INFOMED, AND TRY NOT TO BREAK MY BIKE C: lesson learned.

aaaanyway, traumatic experiences aside, this week has been good so far c: i'll keep you all updated, tot zienss

lekkerrrr

today was the first friday that i have actually been present at school :D i was especially proud of myself. for the last two days we've had nice, non-apocalyptic weather. i could actually go outside past 3 o'clock without a coat on! i know!
anyway, of course today the shitstorm returned with lovely, gray overcast skies. luckily, i didnt have class first hour so i got to come in at 930, so it wasnt as cold as it could have been.
unluckily, my first period teacher was sick so i could have slept yet another hour D: FFFFFFF. i spent the hour well though, i finally procured some math textbooks. because i perused the entire stack of dutch textbook of indeterminable subject i have sitting in my locker, and none of them looked full of math. but now i finally have them, so we're all set. i can finally suffer through math class just like all the other kids.
i also went to the library to find a book to read. it gets a little boring sitting in class all day staring into space, so i figured i might as well pick up something to put in my brain XD
i got catch-22, its pretty good so far. i've made a note of several particularly appealing pages so that i can reference the lyrical genius later :P i'm on page 60 now. if your name is sam and you have an undying urge to talk to me about this book, i'll tell you when i'm finished and we can discuss it then XD
by the second break, i was so. so. ready to go home. suzan and i were in the middle of complaining about how we wanted to go home when all of the electricity in the school went out. several minutes later, they evacuated the entire school because of a fire. unrelated to the power-outage entirely. after a very cold 40 minutes outside, they decided to let us all go home. AND THUS I HAVE YET TO HAVE A WEEK OF SCHOOL WITH EVERY CLASS IN IT C:
sidenote: apparently all the power in hengelo went out. all the kids were like OH YEAH SOMETIMES ALL THE POWER IN HENGELO GOES OUT EVEN THE TRAFFIC LIGHTS HAHAHA


hahaha nbd, this kind of thing happens every once and a while.

 after the divine intervention allowing us all to leave, chantal and i biked to her house and hung out for a few hours c: we watched kickass and browsed her itunes, and it was fun :D yay playdates haha.
ALSO, TODAY IS AN IMPORTANT DAY IN HISTORY. tonight we went out for pannenkoeken. and they were SO DELICIOUS. i got a peanut pannenkoek, which included pindakaas, warm vlees, en ui. in otherwords, i ate a giant pizza sized pancake covered in peanut butter and ham for dinner. YES I KNOW. basically it was just sweet sweet guilty food porn, and i admit that such a devious creation probably should not even exist, it's just too wrong. but it was so good.
also popular, the bacon pancake. i plan to get this at some point.



just look at that perfection.

also i had some ijs met slagroom. technically, ice cream with whipped cream but COME ON THE DUTCH WORD IS SLAGROOM how can you not want to eat some of that? anyhow, going to sleep now because me n the americans are trekking to utrecht tomorrow c: let's hope i don't get lost and die!