Crossing the street is like playing Frogger Live

First update from Das Nederland! I didn't have regular internet access for the first week because we were staying in hostels and/or were kept busy to keep from being on facebook all day. Now I am living with Dia, my Buddhist host mom who is currently chanting in the living room, so I will have internet fo free all the time! I guess I will start at the beginning....

Chels and I woke up at 5am to get to LAX by 7:30 since my flight was leaving at 10. There was hardly any traffic so we got there really fast, but it took me forever to get to the gate because United didn't want to let me on the plane. Why? It looked like I was violating the Schengen Agreement so I showed them my letter from SIT, they made a copy in case The Netherlands decided "to send me back" and then let me check in. My bag was 51lbs. Fail. My flight to Chicago was pretty short, and I spent most of it doing my pre-departure reading. At O'Hare I met up with Ari and Katie at the gate and we talked about our concerns/excitement etc. On the plane a nice Dutch girl, whom I later learned was actually from Belgium, sat next to me and we talked about my program and made chitchat. I finished my pre-departure homework around 5am Amsterdam time and tried to sleep but there was some turbulence that kept waking me up. About an hour before landing we flew over England and I got soooo excited and it actually hit me that I was going to in Europe. The real thing, not just the map version. We had to circle around the airport because there was snow on the runway. AHH!! Real live snow. Everywhere. Katie, Ari and I made it through customs, had our passports stamped, retrieved our huge bags and went to the meeting spot, a red and white checkered statue thingy, to wait until 2. Devra was already there and we all instantly recognized one another from facebook and just general queerness that would indicate participation on this program.

Eventually everyone was at the spot except for Melissa, whose plane was delayed, and we were all very anxious to get out of the airport because we had been there for hours. Our academic director, Kevin showed up and we followed him like duckings outside and got onto a red charter bus from the 1960's called the Artiemobiel. We drove through the green and snowy countryside to Egmond, a touristy beach town that was deserted since it was February. The 9 hour time difference started to hit me on the bus but I tried to stay awake. I don't really remember much from the first day since I was kinda delirious from the jet lag, but I know that I went to bed around 7pm. So it turns out that there is not a lot to do in Egmond except hang out in hallway hammocks and ride teeter totters so thats all we did. We went on a bike ride through the dunes and to the North Sea, which was amazing since it was a gorgeous sunny day. Kevin said he would give a euro and ISP immunity to anyone who would skinny dip and of course Devra took him up on it. I liked being able to witness one of Devra's crazy stories that they will tell in the future. After the beach we rode into town and browsed around the tourist shops that were trying to get rid of all their winter stuff before the Germans come. We also had our first Dutch lesson with Eduard and learned "Ben jij lesbisch? No, ik ben homo." Which means "Are you a lesbian? No, I'm a gay man." Dutch is just as funny as I thought it would be, especially the sound of ui which sounds like auuuwww.

We left Egmond on the Artiemobiel again and took the tourist route back to the city stopping at a windmill, a cheese and shoe factory and an old fishing village. They are restoring the windmills for historical purposes since all the water pumping is done automatically now and we got to climb to the top of this windmill from the 1600's. I ate way too much cheese and had some crazy severe gas later, oops. And wooden shoes are more comfortable than you would think! When we got to the city, the bus pulled onto the sidewalk on a bridge over Vondelpark and dumped us and our luggage and we had to drag everything through the mud to the hostel. This hostel was way more hip looking whereas the one in Egmond was like a semi-classy beach resort thing. We went to the SIT office that night for a talk about safe sex and afterwards went to an Irish pub near the hostel and I got my first rosé beer, which was sooo tastey because it was sweet and did not taste like beer, or bier. We ended up not paying our bill because our waitress disappeared and we didn't know that you had to ask instead of them bringing it to you, Whoopsy! I don't think we can show our faces in that pub again, oh well. The next day we had a talk about homesickness and found out who our host people were going to be. I got placed with Dia, whom Chelsea had told me about and said we would be a good match and apparently so did SIT. Our second night out we tried to go to a gay club, but it didn't open till midnight so we ended up in a bar called Woody's (which was surprisingly not queer but it turned into a guerrilla queer bar, ha) where they played salsa and traditional Dutch music. The next day we went on a scavenger hunt throughout the city to find various different things and to figure where we would be having Dutch class. We didn't really get lost, but got to know Prinsengracht (the outermost canal ring) really well. This city is incredibly small because I only know a handful of people in it and we ran into each other a lot even though we all had different places to go.

Last night there was a host family reception at SIT and everyone met their host people. I gave Dia and hug and we chatted for a bit about the Motley. Dia and I left right away and I took the tram home and then we went grocery shopping for dinner and had stir fry with peanut sauce. It was super yummy. Dia is vegetarian so I will be having some great veggie meals this semester! I met her two cats, Mickey who is SO FLUFFY and the other one is skinny and I can't pronounce its name. Mickey snores and likes to sleep in the middle of my bed. I'm supposed to explore my neighborhood today but instead have spent the morning doing this crazy post. It's super cold and foggy outside. Booo.

Actual classes start this week and at the end of the month I am off to Croatia! Pictures coming eventually...