Eighteen no more...

Days come and go and winter's definitely moving in, things are changing... Most of you would have finished exams by now and therefore finished high school. I've finished term one of uni last week and also finished being 18 yesterday. You're probably catching up on all the missed opportunities of going out because you had to study for the exams... I don't really have to study all that hard, so I've been going out all the time anyway :)

First of all, on special request, a who's who in Dutchland. Just so the random names hopefully won't seem so random anymore. And I'll put some photos on here too, so you know who looks like what :) Now there's this group of friends from high school who I still see every once in a while. So if you see the names: Maarten, Jelmer, Yves (or Yves-Sean), Rick or Susan, then that's the people from high school :) Maarten and Susan go to uni in Utrecht too, so they'll probably be more regulars in my updates than the other three :) Now that I've started uni, I of course met some new people too. The uni-friends you'll probably read about the most are: Roselyn (or Roos), Quinten, Alex and Madelein. And with going to uni I moved out, so I got flatmates, who are: Loes, Karlijn, Li-Shi and Lydia. But I don't have any photos of them at the moment, so you'll just have to imagine them :) And last but not least, there's my parents and my older sister Renske and her boyfriend Paul. Now I know this is probably still very confusing, so I hope the photos will bring some kind of clarity to it all :) But I tried!! :)

Last update I already said I'd go to Groningen for the first weekend of November because it was one of my high school friends' 20th birthday. I also predicted there wouldn't be much sleep for me that weekend... At that point I still thought there would be at least some sleep... I was wrong :) But let's just start at the beginning, which was Saturday the 5th of November. I woke up at 7 in the morning thanks to a textmessage from some random person who thinks he'll be in the UN with me some day and goes by the name "Kyle R." :) After that, I couldn't get back to sleep anymore, so I got up and actually had to start working on this uni-assignment, but I couldn't get myself to do it just yet. So instead I decided I would start on this running program and I went for a run in the park near my house. I knew I was unfit, but I was absolutely dead after only 6 one-minute runs :) After I revived myself with a long hot shower and a long cool drink, I finally worked on my assignment until I had to go and catch the train to Groningen in the afternoon. Three hours later I was at my friend Yves' place, and most of my group of friends from high school were already there so the party was about to begin... First we all went out for dinner at this Italian restaurant, which was really nice :) Afterwards we went back to Yves' place again and just talked and watched a movie and stuff like that, before going into the city around midnight to go out. We went to this Irish pub first, which was heaps of fun and then we moved on to this club, where we stayed for the rest of the night. By the time we were back at Yves' place again it was already 4.30 am, but instead of going to bed like any other normal people would do, we decided to play a game. Eventually we did make our beds and I was so glad to finally lie down (it was already 6.30 by then...) And I was about to go to sleep, but then Maarten had an idea. I had to get up at 8.30 anyway to go back to Utrecht for the AFS returnee reunion and Maarten still had exams to study for, so he thought it would be a better idea to not go to sleep at all, but just catch a train back to Utrecht straight away. So after 15 minutes of lying in my bed I got up again, packed my bags, and off we went to the trainstation. Maarten and I caught the first train back and I was thinking how I was going to survive the day :) (Thanks Mel, the Milo really did help :))

The AFS-reunion I had that afternoon in Utrecht was really good :) It was just awesome to hear all the other experiences and also to catch up with Derk again. (Derk was another Dutchy on exchange in Melbourne last year) We had all these memories of the AFS-camps which were brought up again... It was really good :) When I got home again, I tried to finish my assignment, but I was almost falling asleep in front of my computer screen, so instead I decided it was really time to go to bed. It was only 8.30 pm on a Sunday night, but I don't even remember my head touching the pillow. I just fell asleep straight away :) Only to wake up 13 hours later, haha. I really needed to sleep :)

The Tuesday after, I had my last class of the term, so when that finished, my holidays could begin. Of course that had to be celebrated, so I went out for dinner with a couple of friends from uni. At the first restaurant they didn't have desserts on the menu, so we went to this other restaurant for that. It was so funny to see the face of the waiter of that other restaurant when we said we only wanted dessert :) After dessert, Quinten, Roos and I went to see the movie "Wallace & Gromit and the curse of the Were-rabbit" It was so funny :) Great movie :)

Thursday 10 November it was Alex's birthday, and Thursday is also the "student's going out night" so, what a surprise, we went out to celebrate his birthday :) We went to Tivoli, a really popular club in Utrecht. It was heaps of fun :) Had a great night :)

Then last Saturday I had to go to this information session in the morning about a course called University College which I might want to do instead of what I'm doing now. It's sort of a Liberal Arts & Sciences degree and it's definitely an option if I really do decide to change courses. In the afternoon I had to do my own information session for AFS, to convince new students to go on exchange with AFS. That was so awesome :) I could just talk about you guys and my whole experience heaps, because these people wanted to hear absolutely everything! Really good :) And then I went to my parents' place in Hengelo in the evening, where I still am now.

Sunday afternoon, my grandma and one of my aunties came by for my birthday, which was really coowl :)

And that brings us to yesterday, the 14th of November. My 19th birthday :) Nineteen sounds so old!! Eighteen still has some innocence in it somehow I think. But gone are my years of innocence ;) Anyway, I was alone for most of the day, because my parents had to go to work and my friends were everywhere around Holland, but not in Hengelo. And I hadn't invited anyone anyway, so I wasn't really expecting anyone either... But I made my own birthday cake in the afternoon (a really Dutch apple pie :)) and in the evening Renske and Paul dropped by for my birthday, so that was coowl :) Paul had been to Oz a couple of weeks ago, so he had brought back a pack of TimTams and a can of Milo for me :) Which was really good, coz the TimTams had run out months ago and the Milo I had brought back myself was almost all gone too... I think I'll have enough Milo to get me through the winter now though :) If I'll survive the winter anyway, because I also got a couple of driving lessons from my parents, so I'll be learning how to drive soon. You can all be glad to be on the other side of the world, because the roads in and around Utrecht just won't be safe anymore, haha :) I'm still thinking about having a party for my birthday some time soon, but so far I haven't planned anything yet. We'll see what happens... I had a really good birthday already though :)
-x- Love Carine

PS. I realised I don't have all of my photos here in Hengelo, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait until next week to see all the faces that go with the names. No clarity in the name-chaos just yet :) Sorry!!