7 months and still loving it.

Hello hello hello! OK. First exciting thing on the menu, 7 MONTH ANNIVERSARY (yesterday, who gives) JEEEEEZ. Ok now we can move on. Boy have I had a busy past couple of weeks. The most exciting thing being that my mom and Jason came to visit! They arrived on a Friday night and stayed at my house until Wednesday. Let me tell you it was so incredibly good to see them. Though strangely enough I was nervous and even a little anxious to see them before they arrived. The thought that I would be seeing them for the first time in six months was really strange, and even stranger that they were going to be here in the Netherlands. It feels to me like I have two separate lives, the one in America, and the one here! But the second I saw them on the train platform I realized I was being silly and all those thoughts vanished instantly. It was a little weird at first seeing my host parents and my real parents in the same room talking to each other… But I’m just so glad they came, it was such a great week!
I think it’s safe to say we managed to fit about everything we possibly could into our tight four and a half day schedule. We went to Amsterdam, Den Haag, Scheveningen, Gouda, Delft, Utrecht, and of course I showed them around Alphen a little bit as well. We went to many museums (Mauritshuis, Prinsenhof, Van Gogh, Escher, and Madurodam!), shopped like crazy, ate good food, and spent a lot of time just exploring and taking photos. A couple nights before they left, my mom and Jason took my host parents and I out to dinner for a ‘happy birthday/thanks for having us’ (my birthday was the day after they left) combo celebration. We went to a Greek restaurant in town where my best friend Nienke works! Unfortunately she wasn’t working that night, but we still had a great time. I was actually really sad to see them go, but luckily I had too many things going on to let my mind dwell on it and it went away.

The next day was my seventeenth birthday! I woke up that morning (7.30am to be precise..!) to hear Peter and José bearing gifts and singing “Lang zal zij leven, lang zal zij leven, LANG ZAL ZIJ LEVEN IN DE GLORIA. In de gloria! In de gloooorrriiiiiaaaaaaaaa! Hieperdepiep HOERA!” This, to those of you who don’t know, is the Dutch happy birthday song. If you literally translate it is says something like Long shall she live in the Gloria….hip hip hooray! Haha. Very very sweet. Part of my birthday present was that I was allowed to skip school that day… so I went back to sleep! Honestly I spent most of the day doing homework because I had skipped the whole week and had a lot of things due the next day.. but later I spent the afternoon with a friend of mine, and the next day I had friends and family over for coffee and cake!
That weekend I went to Eindhoven with Crystal and we stayed the night at Patrick’s house. We spent most of the time just hanging out, watching movies and making tacos, American style. A low-key weekend for the most part but just what I needed!
This past week at school was long and pretty dull. My best friend, Nienke, was sick until Friday so I was just kind of wandering around between different groups of people… The only exciting thing was that on Friday I did a group presentation ENTIRELY IN DUTCH! I was reeeeally ridiculously nervous, but it actually went pretty smoothly and we got an 8.7 out of 10 (In contrast to the American grading system… this is like getting an A) which was the highest score in our class!


For the past month and a half or so I've been doing an art internship with a couple girls form my art class at school! The internship is with a local artist named Edith Snoek ! for most of our classes we focused on portraits with paint and charcoal. At the end of our internship, two of our best works (each) were put into a local gallery and Wednesday was the exhibition opening!! These are the two I chose to put in the gallery!
Saturday I went to the center with Nienke and we went shopping and got a cup of tea. Then Crystal came to my house Saturday afternoon and that night we went out with our friend Felix and had a 'gezellig' time! Ahhhh love them.
Anyways, now I’m finally home from a boring day at school, and this concludes my past two week summary!
Until next time, tot straks!
x