My best friend and roomate from home, Miranda, who is currently studying in Ireland was supposed to visit last weekend, but the volcanic ash over the continent thwarted our plans. Then Dad was supposed to arrive yesterday morning, but again, the volcanic ash has other ideas. Hopefully Miranda will be able to come another time, and Dad has already re-booked for Friday. Fingers crossed on that.
Academics:
I did well on the midterm paper that I wrote about in my last post. I got a 7.5, which is some sort of B. I am told to be happy about this grade, so I am. I have done my presentations for each my classes, all of which I think went very well. For my cross-cultural-sexuality class my partner and I made a documentary in which we interviewed Dutch parents and teens about their experience with teen sexuality and parenting. Very interesting project- it was a bit intimidating at first to ask strangers about such a topic, but the Dutch were very willing to talk and shared a lot. I think that conducting the same experiment in the US would yield much different results. (Which was kind of out point.) When I'm home again I can show anyone interested the video. I won't post it though because many of our interviewees explicitly asked that the footage didn't end up on the internet.
I'm a little intimidated by the amount of paper writing that I have to do in the near future. For my cinema class I'm going to write about cult classics and how they oppose mainstream hollywood, especially regarding morality. Possibly focusing on Ed Wood? I think that for Sexuality I might write about transgenderism... not sure though. Still brainstorming about Prostitution.
Amsterdam Friends and Fun Times:
From left to right: Max (Portland, OR), Me, Lauren (Austin, TX), Sarah (somewhere in Vermont), Rose (San Fransisco, CA).
I meant to write a while ago about the fantastic night I had with my friend Kasey a few weekends ago. She and I decided that we hadn't seen enough of Amsterdam's nightlife- we usually just stick to the same couple places or end up staying in. So we decided that we would start at Haarlemmerstraat and see where the night would take us. We found some cool places, met some nice people, and ended up at a really awesome Jazz bar called Cafe Alto on Leidseplein. We saw a great band called San2 and his Soul Patrol. Here is a link to their music- they also have a myspace. http://www.san2.de/main.htm
A few friends here and I decided to give each other surprise Study-Abroad-Birthdays, since none of us will celebrate when we're actually here. My Study-Abroad-Birthday was a few days ago, and my friend Sarah tricked me into coming up to her room under the guise of dinner-making, but when I got there she and Kasey surprised me with a dinner they had already cooked, and plans of a night at a club we've been meaning to go to. So the three of us and another friend, Kathleen, went to Paradiso for 90s night. It was fun, but I think that clubs just aren't so much my scene. Very loud, usually bad music, dark, a zillion people... eh. Afterwards, Kasey and I were biking home when she spotted the singer from the San2 and his Soul Patrol. I think I forgot to mention that he's really cute and I was a little smitten with his vocal talent. So we stopped and I said hi and told him that we saw him the other night. Turns out that this bar was having some live music (not San2), so we decided to stay for a bit. It turned out to be pretty mediocre, and a really drunk Irishman was an annoying presence, so we left after not too long. But the nice was a lovely surprise from my great friends here. I'm sure going to miss them when I go home, but I sure miss people at home when I'm here. Is this win-win or lose-lose or both?
One more story for now: A few weeks ago I went to a Pub Quiz for international students with Kasey. She befriended a group of guys, so all of us were on a team together and WON! Out of 10 teams. Kind of a big deal... We won a large quantity of alcoholic beverages, which we consumed several nights later when we all reconvened with friends for a celebration of our victory. I met a ton of new people from many different countries: South Africa, Portugal, UK... there were probably a few others. Here's the winning team in all our glory: (The girl in blue next to me is Kasey from Pacifica, CA)
Well that was a pretty scattered and lengthy post, but I guess I had a lot to catch up on. I'm sending much love back to the US! (But not my plane, because I'm afraid the flight would be canceled)
