Andy in The Netherlands: Day 19 - 22

After what I'm sure has been quite the painful hiatus for all of you to manage, I'm finally getting around to blogging about my past weekend and Valentine's Day today. Let's do this. Pictures at the end and on Flickr shortly!

Day 19 - Intro Weekend

I departed on Friday with ISN-I for a trip to a small town in the Dutch countryside called Loon Op Zand, where we'd spend the weekend. The bus ride was shortish and uneventful - the main observation was how shit the Dutch highway system appears to be. It makes sense that a country that gets rail and bike transit so right would have a less than superb motorway system, and the Americans in our crew who are used to superhighways were all bothered by how congested and slow the Dutch highways were. We also passed some modern wind turbines, which, for such a progressive, green country are surprisingly few and far between. The Dutch countryside, while a bit monotonous, is very picturesque, with canals everywhere and each little village dotted with old churches and windmills.

When we arrived at our "camping" complex (a building with two rooms of bunk beds and a common room for eating/socializing) we split into four teams, organized by color, for the weekend-long "Ultimate Contest," which was basically silly team-building games that were fun enough but lost their luster as the weekend progressed. After a round of games and dinner, we had a "Wild West" party, which was basically everyone wearing jeans and plaid shirts. The party was a lot of fun - early highlights included dancing to Youth and Young Manhood/Aha Shake-era Kings of Leon with some Australians (Roj, I know you're reading this, despite your blogjokes) and laughing at the approx. 1 million beers the ISN-I crew had brought for the weekend. There were games, and dancing, and drinking - which was especially enjoyable because my bed was 20 feet away as opposed to 2 km. There was a bit of "USA! USA! USA!" revelry, and all in all a good, sweaty time was had.

Day 20 - CHEESE + Woods + PJ Party

I woke up in the fetal position with an assortment of goodies - somebody's glasses, purse, etc. - scattered about me in a bed that was not mine at the ungodly hour of 9 am. Terrific start. After breakfast we had a bit of downtime to recover before heading out to the cheese farm we were all so excited about. We quickly realized - on the half-hour TRACTOR ride out there - that we wouldn't actually be making cheese, but the tour was cool nonetheless. The cheese farmer we met has his own cows, and their milk is pumped directly into his cheese factory attached to his house. Making cheese is a surprisingly simple process, but this guy makes some cool varieties of cheese that we got to sample, which were all delicious. It seemed like the business was a family affair and that was it, which was cool - he had his young sons running around hamming it up for us, cats in tow. We also got to sample some fresh whipped cream, which was delicious. Overall I was very impressed with how everything he needed to operate his cheese farm was located on site, and it was cool to find out that he supplies 35% of his cheese products to the Albert Heijn grocery chain, which is the most high-end chain I've encountered here.

After the cheese farm, we returned to our base camp for more games (including tug of war in a bizarre indoor ancient novelty game center/sand pit) and then headed out into the woods in the rain to play a weird variation on capture the flag. The game was one of the dumber things we did, as it was dark and rainy and a bunch of people were just wandering around in a rather dense forest looking hopelessly for a tiny white flag, but at least at first it was calming to just walk through the woods alone. On the way to and from the woods we serenaded a girl who lived along the route whose birthday it was (the Dutch keep their curtains open all the time, it's part of the culture of equality that everyone have an open view, and we wandered past a birthday party - the sight of which caused some of the more outgoing members of our crew to approach and sing happy birthday), which was rather hilarious given our relative isolation.

We had a traditional Dutch meal of mashed potatoes, some other vegetables, ham bits, and sausage, which was filling but also kind of disgusting. Afterward we had a pajama party, which was another enjoyable night courtesy of the laughable quantity of alcohol available. I'm quite the dancer when I want to be - no, really - and I was bounding about the room having a gay old time most of the evening. Good times were had all around. The social side of life in the Netherlands at least initially appears to be a much bigger deal than the academic side, so it's good that I'm getting these social experience right off the bat and building a nice big network of friends and acquaintances - it's especially cool that I could count people from all over the world in that group.

Day 21 - Swimming? Swimming!

On our way home from Loon Op Zand we made a pit stop at an aquatic center, which was a bit strange but fun nonetheless. There was a pretty fun water slide, and our crew took over the outdoor heated pool with acrobatic pool shenanigans. One of the more interesting things came afterward, though, as we were all sitting around waiting to go. People were having discussions that trended towards political, and the Australians in the group unanimously expressed shock and horror with regard to American gun laws. It was really something. They were floored by our descriptions of gun prevalence and laws in the States, and could only offer up stabbings are a relatively common violence crime. They also declared the existence of pennies, "the stupidest fucking thing ever," which, yes, fair enough.

I slept most of the way home, though I was awake while we passed through Rotterdam, which I'd like to visit soon. I don't remember doing anything the rest of the day besides catching up on the last 48 hours without internet (Mubarak officially gone, Wings win, Michigan hockey sweeps OSU, Michigan basketball beats IU, SO MANY EMAILS AND FACEBOOK NOTIFICATIONS).

Reflecting on the weekend, it was a really great experience, and I'm happy I decided to do it. I got closer to the friends I already had and made new friends in the process. This adventure in Europe is supposed to be all about exploring and doing, and this past weekend was great. I'm over three weeks into this now and I'm feeling more and more comfortable each day.

Day 22 - Valentine's Day

Lazy Valentine's Day for this most-eligible bachelor. Picked up a letter confirming my official legal residence in the Netherlands, which is kind of cool and symbolic. Went grocery shopping not once but twice, which is just about the best feeling in the world. I've been keeping my meals really simple (like, painfully simple) and these bread balls filled with different Asian chicken varieties they have here are amazing. Beats the hell out of Hot Pockets.

Aside from that it has been a pretty lazy day. I'm working out the details of a trip to Paris for this upcoming Sunday-Wednesday, and zeroing in on when I'm going to visit Rachael in Copenhagen, which is exciting. Travel has proven to be a bit more expensive than I anticipated, but I also have never bought anything significant in my life and I figure the best way to spend some of my savings is traveling around Europe. I'll never get a chance to travel like this again, and I'm determined to get to as many places as I can.

Busy week ahead, I should be getting into "2 more hours on the internet before bed"-mode. I should blog again soon. Thanks for reading everyone! Love you all.