I work too hard, and play too hard. That's about it in a nutshell.
Once again, I'm horrible at maintaining this thing. But this time it's because I've been so ridiculously busy here!! At least academically, I'm hitting my stride. I'm still super duper crazy busy, but I've figured out a schedule. Monday I have no classes (although my boss doesn't know that, shhhh) so Friday, Saturday, Sunday (when I'm not working and not going out at night :P ) I read my books like crazy. Monday is completely depressing, with me essentially waking up and not tearing my eyes from my books for 12 hours straight. And I somehow manage to finish it all by Tuesday/Wednesday. I'm not saying it's easy, because I'm starting to remember what sleep-deprived Kiki looks like (trust me, it ain't pretty) but I've always been pretty good at keeping my cool under pressure.
On Wednesdays I have soccer/football/voetbal/futbol practice .... goddamit can't we just pick one word!? I get laughed at whenever I say any of those words, it's never right! And Sundays we have our games, although I have yet to go to one because I ALWAYS work!! Update: I went to my first game last weekend! And we won 3-1. And then we had another game this past Sunday.... let's not talk about the score. I'm usually the goalkeeper but we had a lot of people with injuries so they put them in the goal and me on the field. But hey, at least I did manage to score the only goal of the game!
My social life. Holy crap. Well, I'm certainly having a good time here. I'm very lucky that I have a very good group of friends here, with a couple of other really good friends interspersed throughout the whole program. Wednesday night is International night at Einstein's, a bar around here, which is always fun because you're guaranteed to know at least 30% of the bar the moment you walk in. And then weekends vary, but let's just say we work hard, we play hard, and I like to blow off some steam.
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| On 3 Oktober |
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| Halloween @ Einstein's... I went as a beaten soccer player, with my Cadiz jersey of course |
In other news: my parents came to visit!! They came the day after Oktober 3 (why, oh why did I not realize that before?? They saw Leiden at its worst). But thank God the pain was short-lived. My parents arrived in the morning, I literally left early from class and biked straight home, said hello to my father, grabbed my mother, and caught the train to Antwerp with her.
Her 50th (she's gonna kill me for saying that on here, but it's ok because she doesn't look 50 at all) birthday was in July, and I missed it because I moved to Leiden in June. I felt so bad, because 50th really is a big birthday, that on the day of her birthday I told her her present was a trip for just the two of us somewhere when she came and visited. So Antwerp, Belgium it was! And some of you may not know this about me, but I have a strange travel guide hobby. I absolutely love planning trips for people. So I went to town, and I found the most beautiful little hotel that only has 3 rooms. The theme was fairy tales, and the decoration was just incredible.
I mean, the shower had a glass wall, and behind it were gnomes and a mural of snow white and the scary old lady. Of course I found the back door into the shower and played around. (We just came from the spa, that's why I was wearing a bikini).
Above the sunken tub was a painted moon... I mean it was amazing.
Because I planned our 2 days there out to a T... my poor mother had absolutely no input and no idea what was going on. But I think she liked the surprise because we literally dropped our bags off at the hotel and I took her to.... a spa! But not just any spa (I sound like an infomercial) but this beautiful one in the suburbs of Antwerp where you literally rent out the whole facility for yourselves for two hours. So we had free reign of the two-level spa: swimming pool, hot tub, sauna, hammam, infra-red lights (no idea what they did but it felt good) and a bar with drinks. So awesome.
And it was so nice to catch up with my mom, a lot to talk about after not seeing her for 4 months.
The next part of her special weekend was dinner at a place I found called Bourla!
Delicious Belgian food... mmmm
When we got back I literally had one day with both of my parents in Leiden, and then they went off to Italy for my dad's work. They were gone that whole week while I killed myself trying to get reading done in time in anticipation that I wanted to spend a lot of time with them when they got here.
Welp, it didn't help! I was so glad to see them again, but being with them meant I went to class in the morning, then straight to meet them, then spend the whole day with them, have dinner with them, get home and not start my work until 10:30. I am not joking when I say I didn't get more than 4 hours of sleep a single night that week. But it was worth it. I missed them so much, and I'm glad they got to see how happy I am here in Leiden.
It was also very interesting for my father, because he pretty much hasn't been back to Leiden since he studied here 40 years ago. He couldn't get over how much it changed! He said it used to be full of weird knitting stores and everything was old and falling over, and just a town that time forgot. Well, he came back to a bustling student city that's full of bars and restaurants and people.
But now they're gone :( and it's back to reality. So working, starting to write my HUGE final papers due in December, and playing soccer. Oh, and tomorrow I go to Budapest with my friend Bea! I'll have to write about it when I get back... hopefully not in January.
Tot ziens!
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