Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

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

Hi all!

It’s been more than three weeks so I thought it was about time for an update 🙂 An extra big one with lots of photos!

Let me see, what have I been up to? Nicole and me went for an “adventure travel” the weekend after my last update. We bought a day train ticket for this area, it’s cheap and it gives unlimited travel. Unfortunately we didn’t chose a good day for it. The weather wasn’t great, but most of all: there was work on the tracks on ALL trains to the coast plus some other ones. Basically we could only get on the train to Cambridge. And so we went to Ely! Ely is not very big, but it has a HUGE cathedral, quite amazing. So we walked to the cathedral, looked around, walked along the river and then we walked back to the train station.

Yes we are so mature 😉

The cathedral, too big to fit in one picture

The cathedral and a nice house

Nicole took those two pictures of the stained glass, I really like them!!

I really liked this statue, I was surprised to find something this modern in the cathedral

Me and euhm… some famous guy!! The tourist office was also his birth home and a museum

Along the river, on our way back to the train station

I found a Dutch house boat there! It was owned by English people, but still had a Dutch name and this sticker 🙂

We wanted to travel more, but we just missed a train and so we decided to get the train back to Norwich but get out at Wymondham (pronounced Windham, don’t ask me why!). This is a very cute place. We walked over the graveyard before visiting the center of the town. It has a nice market place with a very old tower. We stayed for an hour, then we took the train back to Norwich where we went for dinner at Zizzi 🙂

Drinking tea in the train

That weekend I have also bought some plants for my room. The most exciting one is a jasmin plant, my room smells so nice now!!

Nicole had her birthday on the 10th of February and she made us an amazing dinner!! We brought candles for on the cake, but she decided not to make one… so then we just put them in 2 big bananas to surprise her 🙂

We gave her the Cities and Knights set for Catan, I am spreading the addiction!!

Last week I tried to sign up for a trip to the Lakes with the Fell club, but even though I was there at 8:10 in the morning, I didn’t make it, they had too many people signing up.

The weekend of 18-19 February was fun! On Saturday the weather was really nice, sunny and even warm, it felt like Spring! I went for a walk with Colin, along the river, a beautiful area of Norwich that I had never been before. At night we had dinner with lots of people before going to the barn dance for international students. We also surprised Tanja, she had her birthday earlier but nobody knew about it and she didn’t have a good day… so we decided to make her a cake and have a surprise party!

The barn dance was GREAT, lots of fun. They taught us English/Scottish/Swedish dances, and it’s very social since you are constantly changing partners. A great way to meet a lot of people. They made us pancakes too 🙂 I had a great night!

On Sunday I went on a day walk with the Fell Club. Unfortunately the weather had changed to the usual weather: grey and cold. The walk wasn’t very scenic either, just lots of muddy fields. We saw a nice old church and a big industrial area with a tiny WWII memorial. The highlight of the trip was a terrain where we found huge plastic dinosaurs, apparently they were made by that factory. Really bizar! We hiked about 13 miles, stopped for lunch at a pub, and then hiked back to the train station in Salhouse (only 5 miles from Norwich). It was a nice day!

Last week was a busy one! I went dancing on Tuesday, to a Brazilian Party on Wednesday, and I went for dinner & a movie on Thursday night with people I met at the barn dance. We saw Munich, it’s a good movie but very violent and it’s almost 3 hours long. It was a bit too long, too bloody and too heavy for me! On Friday I started having a cold, so I went to bed really early. On Saturday I helped Colin who was working in Nicoles garden, that was fun! At night we went to Paolas birthday party 🙂

Then on Sunday I went to Cromer with Nem. We hiked on the beach from Cromer to Sheringham, it took us 2 hours. In Sheringham we ate chips and had a nice stop for some hot chocolate 🙂 it was quite cold and windy on the beach! On the way back we decided to walk on the cliffs, good choice because in the mean time the tide had become so high that it was almost impossible to walk on the beach. Going back only took us 1,5 hour. It was a really nice day and a good walk!

Nem the geologist explaining what the cliffs were made of

Nice layers!

The highest point in Norfolk, we were so proud of ourselves 🙂 The church that you see is in Cromer

Nice view

Nem

The coming week is going to be busy again… Tomorrow is Pancake Day, the day before Lent starts. I guess that’s an English tradition, it’s new for me. Colin is making pancakes for us 🙂 should be good!

On Thursday I am going to Lowestoft for a Sea Survival Training. I need to do that for the Antarctica research cruise. It’s theory in the morning and then the rest of the day in the swimming pool, where they will simulate waves/rain/darkness and you need to save yourself. It sounds like fun 🙂

And next week on Wednesday I am going down to BAS to have a supervisory meeting. I need to prepare a lot for that meeting, so until then I should work really hard!!

I’ll finish with some random photos I found…

This is quite a while ago.. Me, Nicole and Nem slightly drunk at the Norwich Beer Festival. I like this photo!

Me pretending to be a Christmas tree 🙂

The crazy hat that Nicole made for me! I don’t usually look so evil by the way 😉

Take care!

Hanneke