Monthly Archives: August 2006

Well, this is it.  It’s 6:51 in the morning and my dad should be here any minute to take us to the airport.  The past few days have been filled with last items on the to-do list, last goodbyes, last meals, and (just a few mins ago) my last shower.  I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not dying, and will be back in the same house in 10 months.  It could be that I only got 3 hours of sleep last night that makes me feel that way.

We had an amazing going away party, and the pics are rolling in.  I’ll post them when I get some time on the other side of the world.  Now I have to go drink some coffee and give my housemates a hug… one last time.

Well, we’re really getting close now. With less than a week to go, the UvA finally got back to me about my courses. Looks like I’m taking Populism and Nationalism, Seminar on Conflict Negotiation, and 19th Century European Art. Should be a lot of fun.

Best part is, all of my classes are on Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday, so if I should have a lot of downtime the rest of the week. Also makes for easy trip-scheduling if we want to leave the city/country for a few days.

Cat stuff is all taken care of, so Amedeus is all ready for his first (and very long) plane ride. Looks like it will be 20 hours in a box for our little friend

Packing is proving to be very interesting. We’re moving out of our bedroom, so we’re using this oppurtunity to get rid of stuff. Quite a bit is going to the salvation army, and the rest is going to get stored over at my dad’s house while we’re gone. I really want to get everything down to 1 suitcase and a carry on (for each of us) so that we can have a *whole* bag empty for the return trip.

Here’s a really handy tip: when sending books overseas, use the USPS “air bag” option. It cost me around $11.00 to mail nearly 15 lbs of books to amsterdam. Your box (full of only books) must weigh at least 11 lbs, and will take 4-6 weeks to get to your destination. What a deal. I only hope that the Netherlands post office has similar rates for the return trip!

Going away party is this saturday, so we’re trying to take care of as much as possible before then. My hope is to take care of all the errands an big stuff (including most of the packing) by Monday so we can just relax and enjoy our last day here. Here’s to wishful thinking!

“Hey babe, it’s me. I’ve got very bad news about Amsterdam, so call me when you get out of class.”

Not exactly a phrase I want to be hearing as we move into our last month stateside. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what was on my voicemail yesterday morning.

Apparantly a relatively popular DJ (our landlord’s brother) has been living in our apartment for quite some time. He’s so popular, that the police seized the place after they responded to too many noise complaints. It seems our landlord was subletting (she’s been renting the place for the past 10+ years), and the actual landlord didn’t approve of all the goa-psy-trance music.

Regardless, it’s pretty stressful to find out you don’t have an apartment 30 days before you move. Our landlord/friend was devastated that she lost her place, but nevertheless made it clear that she’d do everything she could to find us a new one. We tried to remain calm and started calling around to see what the next step is.

Turns out, she knew the lady who rented us a studio near the city center, and the place is available. Alyssa talked to her this morning, and it looks like that’s going to be our new home. It’s a whole lot smaller than what we were expecting, but at least we’ve been there before and know that it’s nice. It’s also going to be a bit easier for us to get to school and work.

Here’s the pictures I took when i was there last (it’s all one big room)

Dutch stairs are basically ladders.

So anyway, it seems that things are squared away. We do have to get DSL set up once we arrive (could take up to a month) but we still get to take the cat. I’m just happy that the situation was resolved so quickly.