Exciting times

Well well, so I promised to fill you all in on my latest happenings a bit more in my next blog, so here it is! And it's been some eventful and exciting times... 2010 has definitely started with some good times! New Year's Eve for instance was a really nice night. I went to a house party with my housemate Maaike and some of her friends and we brought in the new year surrounded by fun, laughter and some quite drunk people :) I lost my voice somewhere in the celebrations, which rarely ever happens, but I couldn't really talk for two days, so it was also a quiet entry into 2010 for me, haha. Oh well, what can you do!

Uni started back up pretty soon in the new year, and as I had some lovely visitors coming over at the end of last month (of which more later), it was quite busy times. Luckily it was not very tempting to go outside of the house anyway, as it was absolutely freezing! Like I said last time I think, we've had snow on and off since just before Christmas, and early January was no different. Didn't feel too good for a day or two either, but that gave a me an excuse to have a Summer Heights High marathon, haha. You have to make staying in bed all day a little entertaining for yourself :)

This month I also hatched a plan with my high school friends Jelmer and Rick to do a month's road trip through America in August/September. Our travel plans went through many different versions (initially it was even Indonesia to visit our friend Yves there for something completely different, haha), but tonight we booked our return ticket to LA! Our current plan is doing the triangle LA - Las Vegas - San Francisco - LA in an RV, but judging from the many shapes and sizes of our previous plans that's still open for change. Very exciting though :)

Remember in my last blog I said I was going to have a good night's sleep to prepare for meeting up with three lovely Aussie girls? Well, other excitement this month was the visit of Kim, Caitlin and Ashlee, three friends from my high school days in Australia. I went to Amsterdam early one Friday morning to meet them at the train station and then we spent the day together in my nation's capital. It was so good seeing them again! It's always special seeing friends you don't get to see that much :) But anyway, after a nice brunch with the four of us, Caitlin decided to stay at the hostel and rest for a bit (travelling can be tiring) while Kim, Ash and I did this free walking tour through cold but sunny Amsterdam. We were guided by our Australian tour guide Joe, who (embarrassingly enough for me) knew a lot more about Holland and its history than I ever remembered from history classes in school, haha. The tour took just over three hours past some of the landmark/historical places in Amsterdam like the Red Light District, the National Monument, Anne Frank House and all that stuff and it was really good! And it's funny seeing a part of your own country through tourist's eyes :) Kim and Ashlee were laughing at things I found quite normal (like the sound of the Dutch language and having quite a few public toilets on the streets). After the tour we went back to the girls' hostel to wake up Caitlin and to rest our tired feet for a while. A lovely dinner at this Argentinean restaurant was had with the four of us, and then I went back to Utrecht while the girls stayed in Amsterdam two more nights to explore the city a bit more. I unfortunately still had to study for my very last uni exam ever, which I had on the Monday, so I couldn't join the girls the whole time they were in Amsterdam.

On Sunday afternoon the girls came to Utrecht though to spend a few nights at my place as well. That was so lovely! I had a couple of awesome days with them here :) Just to be able to show them where I live, meet some of my housemates... so cool :) Sunday was a lovely lazy day, as it was cold and snowy outside and all of us were just feeling lazy, so watching movies seemed like the best thing to do, haha. And we made a beautiful shepherd's pie... Monday morning I had my very last uni exam ever (which I found out today I passed!!) and in the afternoon we went to this town called Delft. My lovely friend Jelmer had offered to show us around, which was cool, coz two different bits of high school friends got to meet each other :) Anyway, so we walked around Delft for a bit before going to this restaurant for drinks, a typical Dutch dinner of 'boerenkool met gehaktbal & jus' (kale & mashed potatoes with meatball and gravy) and quite a few card games. Good times :) On the Tuesday we walked around in the city centre of Utrecht and we climbed the Dom tower of Utrecht in the afternoon as well. It was a bloody freezing day though, especially up on the tower where there was no shelter from the cold wind. Very cool though, I had never been up there either, so it was a first for me as well :) The view was beautiful and worth going up the 465 steps to get there :)

That Tuesday was, of course, also Australia Day! So when we went past this little shop where they sold TimTams and Vegemite for ridiculous prices, but we obviously had to get that :) And Caitlin had decided to make pavlova for the occasion as well, and I still had my Australia flag to decorate our living room with so we had our own little Australia Day celebration at my place before going out for a more proper celebration in the city centre. I had invited my dear friend Coen to join us for Australia Day drinks as well, so it was cool that he got to meet the girls and the girls got to meet him. It was a really good night, we laughed so much over really random things :)

And then unfortunately on Wednesday the girls were moving on to their next destination! I went along with them to the airport to say a final goodbye for probably a pretty long time before I see them again, which was kind of sad. The house felt strangely quiet and empty when I got home again! But I had made some great random new memories with those lovely lovely girls :) Loved it!

Since then it's mainly been uni again, as this week is the last week of term and I have two more assignments to hand in on Friday. One is a research proposal for my master thesis, which I'm hoping to do on women in the military. I have to get access to the military though to be able to do interviews with female soldiers... The other assignment is a research paper on the integration of Muslim immigrants in Holland. And planning the trip to America has been a lovely distraction :)

Anyway, enough for today! I hope you feel a bit more up to speed with my happenings and all have had a good start to 2010 as well :) Would love to hear all about it, so leave a comment or send me an e-mail... I'd love to know what's been keeping all of you busy too! Hope you're all well :) Take care!
Love Carine
xx