Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

Hello!!

Here are some photos from last month when we celebrated Francis birthday at Nicoles place:

Francis and me making fun of each other 😉

Tanja & Karla

good food! and candlelight 🙂

Nicole, me and Francis

Last Tuesday night we decided kind of last minute to go to a concert in the Norwich Arts Centre. The support act was Kat Flint, see (&listen;!!) her website. I really loved it, some amazing (almost sciency) lyrics, would love to have her cd when it comes out!

Kat Flint

These photos are taken in the break…

Our new clothes! And a rarity, me in a skirt!!

There’s a story about me & the skirt… I bought it last weekend, absolutely fell in love with it and HAD to have it. Now Nicole decided that this concert was the perfect opportunity to wear it. Yes. Great. Ingredients: my bike, recently greased chain, a VERY wide skirt, very windy weather. Yeah that didn’t really go well… almost ruined the skirt and decided to walk there & back again to save my beautiful skirt from further abuse.

Colin & Nicole

The main act was Cara Dillon and her band. Very nice as well, she has a great voice and I loved how the band played many different instruments. I had a great time at the concert!

Cara Dillon and the band

After the concert I stayed around, gave my email address to Kat Flint so that I’ll know when her cd comes out, and I bought Cara Dillon’s cd. A man came to me and told me: Thanks for you performence tonight, that was lovely! Euhh thanks, I didn’t do anything?? I took me a while to realize that he was probably mistaking me for Kat Flint, just because we both have red hair… I can only wish I had her voice as well!!

On Thursday I went to March of the Penguins with Johannes, it was showing on campus. Great movie, really loved it. Not surprising since it’s about Antarctica… but it’s fascinating, beautiful, funny, cute, even romantic!! Go see it if you haven’t already 🙂

On Friday I watched the Magdalene Sisters (a movie) with Nicole. It’s about an Irish asylum for girls who commited “sins” (even just getting attention from boys is considered a sin!). They work in a laundry and are treated very bad. Worst of all, it’s based on a true story and the last of those asylums closed in 1996. Quite depressive movie, but very good.

Saturday I finally got some sleep, went to Waitrose and translated the Motifive website to English. At night Nicole made a great dinner, Sandra and Angel came as well and we had a very nice evening.

Sunday it was time to get out of Norwich!! I was going to the coast with Johannes, the original plan was to go to Sheringham and take the coastal hopper (bus) to one of the towns more to the west, but Johannes had a flat tire so we missed the train. We took the train to Lowestoft instead, the same one Paola and Nicole were taking!!

Nicole and Paola in the train

They got out one stop before Lowestoft to go for a walk there. We got out at Lowestoft and wanted to go to the beach. But somehow we didn’t see some of the signs and we went in the wrong direction, ending up in an industrial area with lots of car dealers, the city dump, a huge wind mill and lots of concrete.

The lovely beach walk!!

With inviting signs…

We did find the most eastern point of Brittain there, a circle with on the outside the distances to several cities, to Amsterdam it was only 133 miles!

We decided that there must be some nicer beaches on the other side, so we walked back and then we saw all the signs for the sand beach, and we even found the tourist information. Much better!!

We bought some chips and ate them in the rain… But we got treated to an amazing double rainbow, the first one of many that day!

Panorama image of the rainbow

It quickly cleared up and all that was left was this very pretty cloud

We walked along the beach for about an hour, it was nice!! It was good weather most of the time, with a shower every now and then, but they quickly passed.

Me almost falling in the sea 😉

Johannes thinks he is not tall enough 🙂

Another beautiful rainbow!

Johannes & the rainbow

After an hour we turned around and walked back to Lowestoft. There was quite a lot of wind and we tried to take photos of the sand blowing over the beach, which never turns out as nice as you want to.

Blowing sand

I loved the clouds!!

More blowing sand and the little houses next to the beach

Another cloud and rainbow

We bought ice cream in a little stall on the beack walk, and when we sat down to eat them, we saw Paola and Nicole again! I was waving and yelling, but apparently they are deaf and blind 😉 we had to walk over for them to notice us.

Ice cream!!

Nicole kept taking photos of me and my ice cream, you can see more of them here

Nicole, Paola & Johannes

Paola telling some funny story 😉

We walked back to the train station with them and we were just on time for the train back to Norwich. Johannes got another flat tire on the way back, he wasn’t very lucky 🙁 I made dinner and Veronika and a friend of hers came over. We had dinner and watched Planet Earth again 🙂

Yesterday Veronika invited me for dinner, it was all German (speaking) people, they spoke German almost all night and I was able to understand everything (well almost). Now I am really motivated to start speaking again, it’s such a shame how much I lost that cause I was quite good at high school!

Ok that’s it for now, I better get back to work 😉

Have a good day!!

Hanneke

Hello!

I’ve been quite busy lately, but I’ll try to give an update of what I’ve been up to.

I didn’t get the house that I visited a while ago, that was disappointing because it was really nice and in a perfect location. But I’m sure we’ll find something, it’s only March… And if not, there’s nothing wrong with the house I live in now.

Last week I did the Transitions course for PhD students for 4 days. I’ve learnt a lot of useful things there, but I’ve also been really bored and even annoyed. The woman who was teaching us presentation skills was chewing gum ALL the time, how am I supposed to take her seriously?? We had to do a presentation which they filmed and we had to look at it to see how we did. I thought it would be horrible, but it wasn’t too bad. I did fine, they said I talked a bit too fast. Hehe I know I have this problem in Dutch, I guess it’s a good sign for my English that I do it here as well. Oh and to show how mature we PhD students are… the first day we made drawings, played with Lego and did roleplays!!

On Thursday night we organized a dinner/monopoly night at Paola’s place. We gave her the Norwich edition of Monopoly for her birthday, so we had to try it out of course 🙂 It was fun! Here some photos of that night, click to enlarge.

Veronika, Johannes, Nicole & Veronica

Yeah I was there too 😉

Veronica next to the nice fireplace 🙂 (almost real!!)

Monopoly the Norwich Edition, including UEA 🙂

This would have been a really nice photo if Nicole didn’t put her finger in front of the flash… Veronica, me and Paola.

Other news… I bought tickets to come home for Easter, I will be in the Netherlands 13-18 April. I’m looking forward to being at home for a bit, hope the weather will be nice. I’d like to do some biking, get some photos of the flower fields that should be in bloom by then, fly my brothers kite on the beach… Paul is turning 21 on the 15th of April!

And some sad news… Many of my friends are not happy in their PhD here. Both Paola and Nicole have now decided to stop their PhD. Paola is trying to get another PhD position in Barcelona, and Nicole is going back to the USA. I am going to miss them so much!! Fortunately, Nicole will still be around for a while, at least until the Summer. Nem and me are trying to look at the bright side, we will have 2 nice destinations for our holidays 🙂

To finish, a bit of advertisement… My brother is in a project group for his school, and they invented a foldable lunch box. They are selling really well!! I have one (a blue one of course!), and I’ve already sold about 14 of them here. It’s such a great idea and they look very nice too. I use it at work every day, after lunch you can just fold it out so it doesn’t take much space in my bag. Here’s an example, in a color that they don’t sell but well.

Check out their website: Motifive The website is only in Dutch, but if you are interested in getting one, drop me a line.

That’s it, I’ve had people complaining that I write way too much so I try to keep it a bit shorter. I’ve been busy with work and with social things, lots of concerts, dinner, lunches, parties… Last week there was the International Party at the university, very good party! There were performances from different countries, like Mexican dancing, Japanese dancing, Spoken Word from the USA, Capoeira from Brazil, etc. It was really nice, I had lots of fun 🙂

This weekend I have a Dutch dinner 🙂 With Erik and Dorothee, 2 researchers here in ENV. They both studied in Wageningen hehe, though a long time before me 😉

I was also planning to get out of Norwich and take some nice photos, I haven’t done much photography lately, haven’t used my SLR camera for ages!! They say it will finally be a bit warmer this weekend, but they are also expecting rain 🙁

I’m still planning to do a Norwich by Night photoshoot some time. That way my tripod will get some excersise as well hehe.

Anyway, I was going to keep it short 😉 have a good weekend everyone!!

Hanneke

Hello!

Pancake Day was nice, I ate one with lemon and sugar, that’s the way the English like to eat their pancakes 🙂 And I ate many with chocolate, cause that’s the way I like them 🙂 That day it was snowing a lot! And I had a flat tire that I couldn’t repair because I was out of glue… So I had to get to Colins place by bus, which takes an hour. By bike it’s 15-20 minutes, I don’t understand how anyone can live without a bike here!

On Thursday Nicole and me took the 8 AM train from Norwich to Lowestoft for our Sea Survival Training. Such a great day!! We did theory until about 3 PM, all about how to survive cold water, what to do once you’re in the life boat, how to get rescued, even things like how to survive shark attacks… It was really interesting and I learnt a lot.

Then it was time for more fun: the pool! We had to wear overalls and shoes and a life jacket. First we climbed down a rope, got in the lifeboat, swam, and climbed up a rope ladder. Hard work, especially while wearing a life jacket that gets in the way all the time. Then we had to jump from about 3-4 meters into the pool, while holding down your life jacket with one hand and closing off your nose and mouth with the other hand. Quite scary the first time! We learned how to turn the life boat around in case it’s upside down. And how to huddle in a group to stay warmer and so that you don’t lose people. The final exercise was the most exciting: they turned on the wave simulator, the rain machines and wind, and the lights were flickering while an alarm went off. We had to jump in, and work as a group to get everyone in the lifeboat and then close the roof. Quite a challenge when you try to swim (on your back) through the waves, trying to find the lifeboat while rain is pouring. But we did it! I have a huge bruise on my arm, I don’t really understand how I got that, but well. I really enjoyed the training! And I got my certificate, so I am ready to go to sea 🙂

My muscles were hurting for a couple of days, including the don’t-make-me-laugh-cause-it-hurts muscles 😉 On Saturday I went in town to visit the library and I went for tea with Veronika. At night Nem, Nicole and me had a girls night, we had dinner and then we watched Finding Nem(o) 🙂

On Sunday morning I had to wake up early cause I was meeting Johannes (from Austria, I met him at the barn dance) at 9:00 at the train station. We took the train to Cambridge for a day of sight-seeing. The weather was beautiful, quite cold but very sunny. We walked around and saw many of the colleges, this city is really amazing, never seen anything like it. It was beautiful at the river where people were punting. We went to Pizza Hut for lunch, where we had the unlimited pizza buffet and unlimited ice cream factory for dessert. We ate so much that I didn’t need dinner that day!! After lunch we walked around more and saw colleges like Jesus College, nice name ;). Johannes wanted to visit the American cemetery, which is outside of Cambridge. According to the map we looked at it was only 2 miles, but it was more like 4. It took an hour to get there! We passed BAS on the way as well. The cemetery was impressive, a lot like the one I saw last summer in Normandy at the D-Day beaches, though smaller.

Just when we were getting ready to walk all the way back (while the sun was setting), one of the overpriced tourist busses came by. I asked how much it was to get back to Cambridge, and the driver told us we could come for free!! That was really nice!! It was an open double decker so we sat on top and we decided to get out at the train station. It took a very long way to get there and we got all the commentary about the city centre, all for free 🙂

Here are the photos!

The entrance of King’s College

At King’s College

And me at King’s College 🙂

The river that runs behind the colleges

Hmm I don’t remember the name of this college, there are so many!

Johannes

Jesus College

A cute and very small college, with lots of flowers in the garden!

This is one of the big and famous ones, but I don’t remember which one!!

The American Cemetery in Madingley

I liked the shadows of the graves….

On our way back, taken from the bus

I came back home at 19:00, sooooooo tired of all the walking we did, I went to bed early.

On Tuesday Nicole and me made dinner at my place for Paola, Nem and Johannes. Well it was more Nicole making dinner and me cutting vegetables hehe. After dinner we played Trivial Pursuit the (slightly British biased) international edition. I won!!! It’s a miracle, I never win this game. I was just lucky winning wedges for questions like: who is the companion of Obelix? It was good fun 🙂

On Wednesday I went to Cambridge again, but this time not as a tourist. I went with Ian (my supervisor) and Emma (another PhD student). I had my second supervisory meeting at BAS (British Antarctic Survey), I have two supervisors there. I was a bit nervous because I didn’t make much progress since the last meeting (in November). This was mostly because of all the problems I had with the model, it kept crashing, quite frustrating. To my surprise, my supervisors there were impressed that I got some results at least, and they had some good ideas on what to do next. So I’m quite happy about the meeting!

Besides that meeting, I spent most of the day reading journals in the library, Ian had meetings all day. It was good because I got a lot of work done that way!

At night I went to the Norwich Buddhist Centre, where I had the first night of my Introduction to Meditation course… Some of you might be surprised that I am doing something like that 😉 Yeah I am surprising myself as well, but I thought I would give it a try. I am too stressed sometimes and my problems with hyperventilation (that I’ve had for a long time) are getting worse lately. Colin recommended doing meditation and I thought it was worth the try. I was a bit scared that it would be full of crazy hippies there, but the people were quite nice and it was a very relaxing evening (I almost fell asleep, oops).

Ok this is all for now… It’s quite a busy time again here. On Friday I am going to the World Cafe, they are ha
ving an international food festival so that should be good!! I am going to make poffertjes for that 🙂

On Saturday I am going to visit a house in this street… It’s a 2 bedroom apartment, it sounds really good. Célia is coming to Norwich next year so we are trying to find a place together. I’m not sure how it will work out, she might also move into my house. We’ll see! The owner of the house told me that there will be more than 20 student couples coming to see the house, so I don’t think I’ll have a good chance but I am going to try anyway. Would be so easy to just move to a house in the same street hehe.

On Saturday night I am going to a concert in the Norwich Arts Centre with Veronika. And next week I have Transitions for 4 days, Monday to Thursday. It’s a course for PhD students about how to plan your PhD, presentation skills, writing skills etc. Probably useful but 4 days is a bit too much I think. I’m afraid it’s going to be a bit boring!

Bye!!

Hanneke