5 months and some change later:
Monthly Archives: September 2012
Amsterdam (Or: View from the canal)
Here are some more pictures from the canal boat ride we took back in the summer of 2010 (“we” being Roger, Marco, Marco’s Mom and I).
Random family above.
Cuteness (Or: Furry visitors peeking back)
My mother sent me a photo of three of the newest visitors to grace my parents’ backyard.
The kittens have since moved on, probably to the protected wildgrass behind my parents’ house.
Sundays (Or: Start of another week)
Here we are at Sunday night once more. Saturday was a visit to the New York Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo, though that is a post for another day. Today was more football (NFL) — just the way I like it.
Of course, to get to that point I had to some errands and chores around the house, but at least I have perfected the art of going to the laundromat, waiting for the stuff to be put into the dryer, and then walking further on to the grocery store to do some quick shopping. I made it back with 8 minutes to spare! I only forgot the bread (boo) but a quick trip to the deli fixed that.
I will say that the progress with learning the Dutch language is not going as fast as I would have hoped at the 3 month mark, but at least I am currently enjoying it. I am somewhere buried deep in the word order section of dutchgrammar.com.
Here’s a sample of what I stare at almost nightly:
Image from dutchgrammar.com (click image to be taken to page where things are explained)
Of course, at this point I have finished all three of these sections and am not dealing with things outside of this format, like making sentences negative using niet.
Here was one of the more interesting blog posts that I read recently:
(Not Just Another) Weekend by Unquiet Time
– On Taptoe, a band festival; on cranes poised on river barges tipping over; and on being offered a job as a Delft tour guide.
Chicago (Or: Water tower place)
Continuing the December theme of my last post, one of the places that Roger, Marco and I visited this previous December was Water Tower Place in Chicago. It is an upscale shopping area with eight floors (although each floor is pretty small).
We fell in love with the entrance to the mall:
The three “glass” objects you see on each level are actually formed by cascading water. You can see the pool of water above each of the levels.
Changes (Or: 3 months of work left)
Today is September 14.
My last day of work is December 14. That’s the last day of finals. It just hit me that there is only three months to go.
Now that I am in the final semester, each class seems like the last. For example, today was a Nursing Research 101 class in the morning. For them, I went to their classroom and spoke about how to use the databases for articles and the catalog for books. In the afternoon I had a genetics class where the professor brought her class to the library. She wanted me to talk about the distinction between primary and secondary sources within the sciences and how to look at only a journal article abstract and figure out which is which.
Closeup of a tree on campus, Spring 2012
At this point, when I introduce myself I’ve taken to jokingly explaining to the students that if they need help they need to come find me this semester before I move. Today after hearing where I was moving half of the class clapped, a few said “awesome/cool” and one said “Congratulations!” There’s just something about Europe that people tend to like.
Election day (Or: Strategic voting at its finest)
From Marco…
Wednesday we got to go vote for a new parliament/house of representatives and cabinet. A few months ago the coalition that formed our cabinet fell apart, forcing new elections.
First of all, let me explain how it works here. There are 150 spots in the parliament (or as we call it “tweede kamer” – second chamber) We go vote for one of the many parties that are vying for these seats or chairs as we often refer to them. There were 21 parties this time around iirc, but only 10 of them got a seat.
Translation: Polling place entrance. (Lit: Entrance Polling Place)
To be able to form the cabinet (the group of ministers/secretaries and prime-minister) you usually need to have at least 75 of the seats. It’s nearly impossible for one party to get this.
So they form coalitions. Which is not always easy, several parties have to try and come together, try to form a coherent plan etcetera. Last time around that took ’em six months or something. And well.. yeah the coalition fell apart after two years.
So we voted again yesterday. Interesting to me was that one party, the SP (socialist party) was doing great in the polls up until about three weeks ago. Since then they’ve gone from the predicted 30+ seats to 15, which is the same they had in 2010. It seemed that while their plans were alright, the party leader just wasn’t able to bring it across.
Compare that to the PvdA (partij van de arbeid, labor party) who did the complete opposite. They were around 15-20 seats a few weeks ago and soared to 38 in the end. Though I do think that they ended up with a lot of ‘strategic votes’.. Just like the SP they are (slightly) left wing.
From the get go it was obvious that the VVD (liberal party so slightly to the right) was going to be one of the two largest parties this time. So in the end, when the SP was in the ropes and the PvdA was a few seats behind the VVD..it makes sense to vote for the PvdA to make sure at least one of the left parties is close to them in size.
Anyways, they’ll start with the talks to form a coalition now.
We’ll see how that goes. It’s not always a foregone conclusion that the biggest parties end up working together.
Anyways II, yes when I went to vote I did think “Last time I vote without Niki here. I wonder if she’s allowed to vote here at some point”
I’m not 100% sure actually. I sort of assume that you’re allowed to vote here after spending X number of years in the country. But again, I’m not sure. I guess we’ll have to look it up at some point. 😉
Categories: Culture
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In a dash (Or: Crossing New York City)
Recently I found myself in the city in the morning, though I had to go to work afterwards. I never knew I could power walk from 3rd Avenue to 8th Avenue so quickly to get to the Port Authority bus terminal, but I did. Somehow.
Along the way, I snapped this picture. Very quickly.
I just thought the design of the front of the building was interesting. And every New York City picture needs an image of a cab. Even if their design is changing yet again.
London (Or: Camden Lock Market)
Continuing the London theme, another place I visited in my short 36 hours was the Camden Lock. It is an open air market that was first started in 1975.
It is only closed one day a year – Christmas Day.
Seeing the open air market just makes me want another hot, freshly baked stroopwafel. Yum.
Life in the Hague 