Category Archives: Journal

We’re settling in at our new place, the sink is slowly dissapating, and we’re getting more used to living in amsterdam. We’re figuring out the grocery stores and cafes, and are re-figuring out how to get about town.

This was made easier by my rental of a bicycle, which I succeeded in obtaining at the drawing. There were about 300 people there for 100 or less bikes, and I was the sixth or seventh person called. Go me. Here’s a picture I took of the bikes being set up for the drawing in front of my (very pretty) student services building.

A bike is the way to get around this city. It’s pretty clear that this is the case when you get here and almost get hit by them, but the realization is even more dramatic when you’re riding them around town. I’m convinced that traffic laws don’t apply to you when you’re on a bike, although the city does put these cute things up in busy areas.

Right now we only have one bike, although Henry has been gracious enough to let Alyssa steal his bike a few times. We went for a ride in Vondelpark, a big central park in the city. It was amazing. Most days we only have one bike, and so at some point we tried the typical cloggy method of getting multiple people onto one bike (one person sits sideways on the rear-luggage rack). It proved to be both difficult and frightening. We have not attempted it again.

Mostly, my bike just facilitates me getting to school and back, which is a pretty decent walk if you’re on foot. School is going well, although there are more Americans in two of my classes than there are in my classes at SFSU. One of my classes is even taught by an American…

My “Dutch” class, Populism and Nationalism, is both taught by a Dutch professor and comprised nearly entirely off Dutch students. During the initial chatter before the first class I was genuinely worried that the class might not be in English. Thankfully it was, but that does not mean that it is by any means “easy”. It looks like we’re going to be reading the equivilent of half a book a week, as well as several reviews, presentations, and a 6000 word essay. That’s a good 25 pages, double-spaced. The class discussions, on the other hand, are very engaging and interesting, and much more informative than they are back in the states, or in my other classes.

Tomorrow is my visit to the Foreign Police, so I’m gathering up all of my documentation for that today. The idea is for them to give me a residence permit (and by “give” i mean force me to pay €433 for it) so that I can get a bank account and whatnot. That’s probably a whole other ordeal.

I’m still without internet at the house, which explains the length of this post. I purchased a usb-wireless-gadget on ebay which may allow me to break into my neighbors wireless network, and thus avoid paying completely rediculous DSL fees to the resident monopoly, KPN, which forces me to sign a one year contract. Until that thing arrives, if the seller ever manages to ship it, I’m stuck with going to the library.

I’ll close with a fun picture of something I saw while getting my morning crossaint and coffee.

Well, we’re getting there.  I’m not sure where there is, but we’ve got to be getting closer to it. Yesterday we moved into our apartment, way on the other side of town.  It was supposed to be cleaned for us, but it wasn’t.  So today we need to find a store with cleaning supplies and go to town.  In addition, the place smells like cigarette smoke, which it didn’t smell like 2 years ago.  It’s taking it’s toll on Alyssa, who woke up with a sore throat this morning (she’s convinced they’re related).  Regardless, it isn’t quite feeling (or smelling) like home, no matter how much incense we burn.

We did, however, get the cat over to the new place.  That helps a bit.  After spending a few days with a Spanish family, he now meows in espanol.  We also found an AMAZING pancake house.  To quote my fellow-sfsu-study-abroader Susan “you can get anything on a pancake here.” I got bacon, mushrooms, and Dutch cheese.  I plan on getting strawberries and cinnamon ice cream sometimes soon.  Damn tasty. My classes started this week, and I’ve only been to one of them so far.  I find it amusing that I flew all the way out here to have a class taught by an American.  This class (conflict and negotiation) seems fun, but I’m a little concerned about the “group paper” at the end.  That alone should be a good exercise in conflict and negotiation.  Maybe that’s the point…

The plan for today is to see if I can rent a bike for the semester (there’s a raffle) and then go to my student orientation.  Then I need to go back to the apartment and get cleaning.

Well everything went very smoothly. When we got to the airport (where I was expecting them to say “your bags are too heavy” or “you can’t take this on the plane”) we had zero problems. We got through TSA with no probelms, and united didn’t even weigh our bags. Also, they didn’t charge us for our cat’s plane ticket, which is great!

When we arrived there were also no problems. We had to wait around for ami, who hadn’t messed his box up at all. There was *no* customs check for our bags or him, just a Dutch stamp on our passport. Henry (alyssa’s boss) had called a cab for us, and we had a nice ride to his place.

Upon arriving, Alyssa immidiately fell down the stairs and got banged up a bit (she’s ok, though). She went to bed and I ran around trying to figure out what was going on with my classes. Not to be outdone by Alyssa’s fall, I took a dive on a borrowed bike, and now I’m a bit sore. I also found out that they start on Monday, which is a day before my orientation. Joy!
So today we’re just settling in. We both woke up at about 9 am so hopefully we’ll adjust quickly to the time here. I need to go back to school and take care of some more administration crap, but I should be good to go for monday’s classes.

Stay tuned, more updates to come!

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.