Busy doing nothing.

Today seemed like a long day.

I spent most of the day out of the house, so that is likely why it felt so long. I ran errands around town - nothing too interesting but the sun came out and it was quite pleasant, around 9 degrees I think. It hasn't been that nice the whole time I was here. As such I decided to stay out longer than intended, to take in the warm sun and as much vitamin D as possible.

Upon getting home I stopped by the room of one of the girls I went to Belgium with to see if she maybe wanted to take a day or two trip somewhere in South Holland because we both have a ton of days off this weekend. Don't know where exactly we'll head but likely Friday or Saturday we'll go towards Rotterdam and tour around the area a bit. I guess the best place to see windmills is just a little outside of Rotterdam so it should be good. We wanted to go somewhere because we have so much free time right now that having 5 days with nothing to do here seems excessive.

We headed back into town to get some info from the tourist office but they were pretty useless, instead we bought a Lonely Planet Holland book. Should be good.

I came back to make dinner before I had to go to class at 7pm.

Class was ok. Well actually it was pretty disappointing. So it is called "Dutch Lecture Series" and we have a different lecturer come in each week to talk about an aspect of Dutch culture, then there is a final exam. I am actually really looking forward to a couple of the lectures, but this weeks was photography, which you would think could be really interesting but the lecturer just talked about different photographers but never really got into any detail. He kind of breezed over a lot of them and there wasn't really anything note-worthy. It was a lot of pictures and him saying "It is not easy to make a picture look this good." I suppose the reading material is where the exam questions will come from? Because I don't think I have any study-able material. The other thing I learned is that there is an 80% mandatory attendance level - so there is attendance (wha?) and there is one 100% final at the end of the lectures with 4 questions from each 2 hour class. Kind of wild.

The good news is here in Holland they have something called 'resit' exams. It works like this, you go to your final exam and take it, get an awful grade, you can do another test two weeks later. Or say you get there and realize you don't know the answers, you just hand it back and take the resit 2 weeks later. This seems so silly. I plan to do no resits.

Tomorrow I have my second and last class of the week. My Friday class doesn't start until March. Its a hard life I lead.

Groningen Centraal

Central Station here in Groningen

Part of the extensive bike parking lot at the train station.

I've yet to find a car parking lot there.

The colour is kind of awful, but this is the second large square in Groningen or where the fish market is. The building at the end is a grocery store, which is in front of that large church. Yup, they even get their groceries at more beautiful places.

The Harmony Building.

I have a class here.

The glass/blue part is a great study cafe area. I fully intend to utilize it.

The Academy Building.

I also have class here. Crazy beautiful right?

On my way into the city centre I have to go over a bridge or two to get over the canals. This is the view from the bridge I cross to get into the core of the city centre.