Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

Hello!

Just wanted to post an update before I am going home tomorrow early in the morning. I will be in the Netherlands till Tuesday!! I am looking forward to it, happy to take the ferry again and I am sure it will be nice to be home for a while. I will also meet Celia and Gert-Jan on Saturday to go to the beach in Scheveningen, should be fun!

Last week flew by, I’ve been quite busy. I went to see Ice Age 2 in the cinema with Nazir (from Afghanistan), really loved the movie!! Now I have to see the first one 🙂

On Fridaynight I went to Nicoles place. She cut my hair!! I haven’t been to a hairdresser for like 16 months so it was about time.. even though I didn’t really want to. I think it’s too short, but it will grow back so I’ll just be patient 😉 When she was done, she asked me to cut her hair as well.. scary, I had never done that! But Nicoles hair is thin and straight so quite easy. Here are some photos:

Before!

And after 🙂

That’s how much I lost…

I was threatening to cut off a LOT hehe

Having fun 🙂

See the difference, and the length that we cut off was about the same!!

Nicole as a redhead 🙂

More photos can be found here

In the mean time, Niko (her housemate) had prepared a typical Finish meal, which was really good!!

On Saturday I didn’t do much, but I did take this photo on campus:

Spring time!!

On Sunday I met with Nicole, Veronika and Patama. We visited Origins. This is a museum about the history of Norwich and Norfolk. It’s really nice! All interactive, lots of computer games to play and things to do, like learning the Norfolk dialect and listening to legends from around here. It was amazing to find out how big the Dutch influence has been here, actually there are lots of Dutch words in the Norfolk dialect. At some point 1/3 of Norwich was Dutch!! They called the Dutch immigrants Strangers… nice to know 😉 Here are some photos taken there:

Playing a computer game 🙂

READ THIS!!!

Serious students!

Oceanographer at work 😉

We spent a couple of hours there, then went to the unlimited Pizza Hut buffet for lunch.

Nicole = crazy

Veronika came for dinner at night, but we were both still so full that we just ate dessert and we watched the movie The Story of the Weeping Camel Very nice!!

On Sunday, I also went to visit a house with Patama. Last week we decided to look for a house together, also for Celia. We visited one house last Thursday, it was really nice and we could have had it, but the landlord wanted full rent for July and August and Celia and Patama won’t be able to move until September. The house we looked at on Sunday is also from July, but he lets us have it for half rent for July and August. Perfect! It is a great house, really beautiful. It has 3 huge rooms, and one small one, a big open kitchen, (pink!) living room, and best of all: a conservatory!! It’s really close to university (less than 5 minutes by bike, I am going to be lazy 🙂 )

So we decided to take it!! Yesterday we found a fourth housemate for the small room, her name is Jenni and she will move in July as well. The house also has a garden and even a glass house so we want to plant vegetables. I’m really looking forward to moving to this house!!

Here are some photos:

The kitchen, it even has a dishwasher!

The lovely pink living room 🙂

The best place, the conservatory… we plan to put lots of pillows there and make it a reading room

My new house!

And the street 🙂

Other than that, the campus is deserted now since the undergrads are on their Easter break. For a MONTH, students here are so lazy 😉

Yesterday we played monopoly at Karla’s and Veronika’s place, it was good fun!

Veronika, Paola, Irina and me

And one with Karla in it 🙂

Ok that’s all! Today is not a very productive day at work but never mind. I’ll try to do a bit more work and then I am going home to pack my bag, get some sleep since I have to wake up early tomorrow.

Happy Easter to everyone!!! (Easter = lots of chocolate :)) )

Hanneke

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