Category Archives: Study Abroad

Around the 14th of July I received an additional packet, this one sent directly to my house, from the UvA.  Thankfully, this packet included a course listing where I could check off my desired courses (first and second choices).  This was a major breath of fresh air for me, as I’m a planner who likes to lay things out ahead of time.  Not knowing how registration works, or what classes I’ll be taking when I arrive, or what days/times I’ll be in class, drives me totally insane.

The UvA came through, however, and I’m very much relieved.  It’s not exactly “online registration” (where I get to see “open” courses and I’m either in them or they’re full), but it’s good enough for me.  Drs. Hemming (my programme manager at UvA) has informed me that it’s likely we’ll receive our course schedules sometime after July 28.

As an interesting sidenote (I had to look this up) the title “Drs.” is a title in the Netherlands which is given to he who should become a doctor.  How cool is that?

Anyhow, my friends are probably wondering why I’m posting all this preperation/registration junk, and the simple answer is: to help future study abroad students.  The Bilateral programs (and especially the Dutch one) are pretty ambiguous and it would have been nice to read someone’s blog and have had a general idea of what was going to happen.

In other news I’m selling my car, getting shots for (and microchipping) our cat, and cleaning out all my stuff to make selecting what I’m going to take a bit easier.  I’m also trying (trying) to stay focused on my last summer class.

Well, on thursday I hopped down to the Study Abroad office to pick up my acceptance packet from the UvA. It’s very exciting to know that I’m officially in the program and everything is ready to go. I’m waiting to hear from my academic advisor over there, who will theoretically assist me with course selection and information.

Part of this whole process involved browsing through the course catalog on UvA’s website, selecting a few, and then asking my department chair to approve some of the courses I’ve selected. It’s all fine and dandy, but I’d sure like to know what days/times the courses are, and what I have to do if I want to change them. I was hoping for more information on course registration to be included in the acceptance packet, but I guess I’ll just take care of it all when I get to Amsterdam.

At the study abroad office there’s this chant which they make you perform, and it includes the phrase “I’m capable of dealing with ambiguity.” Turns out maybe I’m not.

What I am capable of doing, however, is procrastinating. Instead of doing the readings for my summer IPE class, I’ve been listening to Pimsleur language tapes and playing around with Rosetta Stone software. Both IPE and Dutch are important things to be doing with my time, but somehow I doubt that Joseph Stiglitz will help me find food in Holland’s supermarkets.

Man, this IPE class is killing me. So far I’ve read a textbook, two other books, taken a mid-term, and written a paper, all in two weeks. And to think, I have another month-long summer class after this one. Bleh.

I’m finding it difficult to focus on … well on anything with the move coming up. It’s much more fun to shop for a european power adapter for my laptop, or think about how much I’m going to be missing mexican food. Little things like that creep in when I’m supposed to be studying.

I gave notice at my job the other day. My CEO was very supportive of the move and made it clear that they would be waiting when I came back. So far everyone has been really supportive and I’ll be sending a ton of thank you cards … from Europe, of course!

I also turned in my post-acceptance (SFSU) forms and grabbed an ISIC card (lyss did too). At this point I’m just waiting on my official acceptance packet from the UvA, which should tell me how to register for classes and all that.
The anticipation is mounting!

This week some very exciting events have gone down, and as you can tell my blog is reflecting them.

On Wednesday, the Office of International Programs at my school held a ceremony for all the study-abroad selectees, of which I am one. Also, earlier today, lyss and I visited our new landlord and signed a lease for an apartment in Amsterdam in the Watergraafsmeer district.

We are go for launch.

It still hasn’t quite hit me yet, but that could be because we have yet to buy the plane tickets…

Also After 7 months of using Serendipity (s9y) to power my blog I have decided to switch to WordPress. S9y was the Humvee of blog software, with all sorts of possible configurations, add-ons, and extras. WordPress is quite a bit leaner, faster, and prettier while still having a nice ammount of available plugins. Now that I’m going to be blogging a lot more, I also appriciate that both posting and viewing posts in multiple browsers works a whole lot better.

The downside is that I had to semi-manually migrate over all of my old posts, and the extras didn’t follow. The comments (all 9 of them) and some other metadata just couldn’t make the switch, but c’est la vie.

Right now I need to put off all that future stuff and focus on passing my courses, so you may not hear anything from me for a week or two. Tot ziens!

Ok, so some fun stuff happened.

• got a new MacBook Pro (it rocks)
• got a new roomate.
• got a new tv (thanks roomate)
• upgraded his tivo to a million hours.
• going to visit Tom and Alex for spring break.
• took mid-terms.
• got accepted to SFSU’s study abroad program at the Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Whoa. That last one is pretty heavy. So here’s the deal, even though I’m a transfer student with no SFSU GPA to speak of, and even though I’ve taken very few core classes for my major, somehow the study abroad department approved my application to go to the Netherlands. The hard part is over. I’m trying to finalize the details right now, but the whole sha-bang relies on two things: -Alyssa getting a gig with the AIDS foundation. -Housing. Right now, as I type this, her g-ma (in the picture) is on her way to Amsterdam and will be talking to the person-in-charge of both of those things. Alyssa graduates this semester, and there’s no way I’m asking her to put her career on hold while I study in a foreign land. A job with the AIDS foundation will not only look good on her resume but also allow us to get some traveling done while in Europe. The housing front is tricky. It seems like we have several connections, which is nice, but moving to a new place can be tough enough without it being several thousand miles away. We can’t look at it, our dates are vague, we’re on a budget, and we need it to be furnished. Also I’ll die without DSL which can take two months to install. Wee. Anyhow I’ll keep you posted. (Also, no word yet on the random knee-injury, a surgeon is going to take a look at it in two weeks). Update! Alyssa got a job with the AIDS foundation, so now the only thing we’re waiting on is housing. I told myself I wouldn’t get excited untill it was a 100% sure deal, but that’s proving to be tricky right now…