Long time no see!!

Kind of skipped summer, haven't I? I know it's been ages since I've last updated you all on my life, but trust me, you haven't missed much at all!! Sometimes not a lot happens, and sometimes that's quite alright too :) But I'll run you through a really short summary of the past few months to get you all up to speed again on my life!

So, once I finished my last thesis at the end of July I was kind of happy not doing much at all for a while and just enjoy a bit of summer :) Summer therefore went by quiet and relaxed! Unfortunately my summer holidays were quite short this year, as less than 3 weeks later I was back at uni trying to get everything organised and marked on time for my master's application. It wasn't so bad to be back so soon though when I got the news my thesis was awarded with 8/10, which also meant I was graduating 'cum laude' for my bachelor's degree!! To get cum laude it meant I had to get 8/10 for both my theses, as well as an 8/10 grade point average for all my subjects together. So that news was very exciting of course :)

Then I had uni-intro for my master's degree one day and on 4 September I had my graduation ceremony, which was a really nice arvo. My parents and sister were there, as well as one of my housemates (the rest couldn't make it coz they were either working, overseas or at home with a broken back...) and the examination board had made a speech for everyone personally, so that was pretty cool :) Straight after my graduation I went away for a weekend at the beach with my family. We had the perfect beach weather that weekend!! A lovely weekend was had, and it was a great way to officially end my holidays too!

The Monday after that little weekend away I was already starting my master's degree!! Not really ready to get back into the whole studying thing just yet, but hey, it had to be done... I'm still not sure if I'm quite in the mood for full-on studying yet, haha, but at least I'm finding my new degree interesting! In case you don't remember anymore, I'm now doing a master's degree on multiculturalism, so it's about the politics of it and the effects of for instance migration, globalisation and multiculturality on societies and the people living in it. It's quite a broad degree actually, which is just the way I like it :)

The new uni-year also brought with it seeing quite a few people again who I hadn't seen in months. Having had a lot of friends leaving for overseas adventures over the first half of the year, the second half meant a lot of them were coming back again. It's always so nice to see people again when you haven't seen them in ages :) Just a nice little snapshot would be last week, when on Monday we (my housemates and I) picked up my other housemate Loes from the airport after her 5 month round-the-world trip. Her reunion with her boyfriend was like from one of those corny romantic movies (complete with running scene) and got a lot of 'oohs' and 'aahs' from the crowd present :)

Then on Tuesday, even though I was kind of sick in the morning, I caught up with my good friend Coen to finally settle our bet which we had set 4 months earlier when we had seen each other last before all his travels. He claimed he could ride from his house to this place in the city (which is a busy route of about 1 km long and has 2 traffic lights along the way) within 2 minutes on his bike! I of course claimed he couldn't do it. Unfortunately I lost by about 5 seconds, to both our surprise!! Small consolation was that it was very funny to see him still more or less out of breath when we were getting things for dinner at the supermarket 10-15 minutes later :)

Thursday I had breakfast/coffee with my lovely Roselyn, who had been studying in Sweden for a semester and I then somehow failed to see for over 2 months after still. So we obviously still had a lot to catch up on :) In the afternoon I went to see my sister, who had just heard she was getting fired from her job the previous day. So she could use some company...

Friday night I caught up with my high school friends Jelmer and Rick, in one of the few pubs in Holland where smoking is still allowed. It's so weird to come back from going out with your clothes smelling of cigarette smoke when you're completely not used to it anymore. It was a very nice night though :)

So yeah, that's kind of what my life looks like right now! Back to studying after a short summer break and catching up with friends in between :) It's good fun :)

Anyway, I'll try to keep you guys updated a little more regularly again from now on... I guess I just didn't feel like writing it all down until now, and then the longer I waited, the harder it got. I'm very proud of you if you made it all the way to the end!! Extra kudos if you did :) And I hope you all feel a little bit more up to speed with my life again. I would love to hear all of your latest stories too, so let me know how you're all going! I hope you're all well and happy and healthy and enjoying the things you're doing :) My love to all of you.
xx Carine