So I thought I'd do a little update on my life. Let's see the month of December.... what did I do... ah yes, I was locked in my room like some dungeon troll writing endless essays. I sorely lacked human interaction, consumed a ridiculous amount of tea, and I'm pretty sure my pallor turned a strange color from the glare of the computer screen. So when my parents came to pick me up from the airport in DC for Christmas, they found a ghost-white, over-stressed, underweight, and overly-emotional basket case who burst into the tears they moment she saw them. Wow, rereading that sentence... kinda makes me seem like a highly unstable person. But as you can tell, I really needed a few days home with my family, to cargar las pilas.
Time went by too fast unfortunately. The first couple days I did absolutely nothing. It was delicious. Just hung out at home, fostered an unhealthy connection to my family's new dog, Pisco, and let myself be fed and fattened up by my mother's cooking.
I saw my beautiful, wonderful friends again, as well as all my family. But unfortunately, twelve days later the time came to say goodbye again. It's always difficult to say goodbye at the airport, when there is no return ticket purchased. No date set for the next meeting. Of course I will always see them, they are my family. But I am in a very transient stage of life right now where I couldn't tell you where I'll be living in six months. So the farewell was hard.
So because of some miscalculation (my fault, of course: helpful tip to all you out there, look at the time of arrival on your plane ticket, not the time of departure) I ended up working a shift at the cafe three hours after I landed. I was fine in the beginning, running on adrenaline and free cappuccinos. And then I crashed, and poured karnemelk (a nasty Dutch milk that tastes like they purposefully let it go bad and sour) into someone's latte and the person almost vomited.
Anyway.... excitingly, this semester I have no classes! For the masters program we have to take three required courses and a thesis, and you can arrange them however you want. I took all three of my courses last semester (which now that I think about it, probably explains why I didn't see a human soul for a month), so this semester is just my scriptie, or my thesis.
So this is what I'm super excited about. As you may know, my study is called "Migration and Global Interdependence". When I first approached Professor Lucassen to be my thesis advisor, the idea I had in mind was to do something on Return Migration (migrants who emigrate to another country for a significant amount of time and then for whatever reason return to their home country). This meant that my thesis would have been very theoretical, because many historians have already written on this and formulated theories based on the phenomena. Which would consequentially mean I would spend my life in an archive here in Holland. Then Prof. Lucassen asked my about my language skills. No, I don't speak German, my French is laughable, but I do speak Spanish. Handy in America, considered a bar trick in Europe. "Well hey", he said, "why don't you do something with Spaniards. And you speak Dutch. So do something with Spain and Holland. You can either study Spaniards in Holland, or Dutch in Spain. Do you have family in Spain, do you mind going there?"
Uh, gee, let me think, do I mind going there? Umm... NO. So where do the Dutch gather? Benidorm.. okay yes, but kind of constricting in terms of geographical space. Where else? Oh yes, the Costa del Sol region. So poor, poor me, I will be writing my thesis on Dutch nationals who choose to emigrate to the Costa del Sol region of Spain. Many migration historians have called it "affluence migration", as in migration motivated by want not need, but I think that's too limiting. I'm still trying to find a term that I think better describes it, but for now I kind of like "lifestyle migration".
Because there is surprisingly little literature written on the Dutch in Spain (there's some on British and Germans) I don't have much primary literature to go off of. So I will be having to conduct interviews myself. My advisor recommends that I compile between 20 to 25 interviews. That's a lot considering some interviews can last up to 3 hours long. Because the people I want to talk to reside in Spain, I will be going to Malaga (the biggest city in the Costa del Sol) for three weeks in February to conduct my interviews. Rough life haha... but I will be very busy.
But of course, I couldn't go to Andalucia without passing by my favorite city. So yes, I admit it, I'm going to Cadiz for 5 days at the end of my trip to stay with Pepa and Alba.
SO. Until then (just three weeks left!) I am working a lot more, about 3-4 days a week. I'm also still organizing the humanities career event for the university, and also working as a mentor for the new students arriving. So I get to pick them all up at the station, take them to sign their housing contracts, and get all the important essentials done, like cell phones, bank, etc.
So once again, don't know how, I end up realllly busy again. I don't how I do it, but every time...
But I've found some time for fun in between. We've had a couple of really big snowstorms recently. Well actually what happens is it snows. And then it never goes above freezing, so it snows again on top of that, and etc. until we just have a thick layer of slippery compressed snow. I got a sled from my boss for Christmas (random, I know), so I called my friends, found the only hill in Leiden (ok, it's not a hill, it's an old fort with a 75 degree incline), and had a day of fun in the snow followed hot chocolate and whipped cream.
I also had to take some time out for my birthday! I turned 23 on January 26... and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. Sometimes I feel really old (especially when I talk to the 20-year-old Erasmus students) and then suddenly I feel really young when I realize I'm the youngest person in my entire History masters program. But regardless, I had to celebrate it right! So I went out to dinner with some friends, including some of the new arrivals. After that, we went to my friend's residence hall that has an awesome common room for parties. Here's where I got a little bit in trouble. So Oscar, my friend, told the caretaker the party would be for 15 people and we would go at 11. Well, what actually happened: Oscar got a little sidetracked (read: drunk) at a dinner party and didn't come to the residence hall until 10:15 when the party was already in full swing. And 15 people didn't show up, it was more like 35. News travels fast. So all of the sudden I get called outside to talk to a pissed off Greek caretaker. Well I put on my best angel face, and he loosened up and eventually came in and took a shot with us hehe. Ahh the magic of it being your birthday. I swear it can get you out of everything. We then took off at around 12:30 for the Next, one of the only clubs in Leiden, and danced our faces off until the wee hours of the morning. Overall a wonderful birthday. I felt so loved, and lucky to have such wonderful friends.
Maybe it was my birthday, or maybe the fact that my masters program is only a year long and I kind of need to decide what the next step is, but I've been thinking a lot about the future. I talked to my parents when I went home for Christmas, and have been talking to some connections I have here, and it looks like something exciting is in the works!! I'm going to leave you guys hanging until I have more figured out... but it's definitely a change of pace from the Dutch lifestyle.
Until the next check-in!
