Settling in?

Last night I had a genuine res experience. I was woken up not once, nor twice, but approximately 5 times throughout the evening when groups of students came home from the bars yelling. Perhaps I should explain. I am sure this doesn't happen to all people who live in this building, but my room conveniently faces the front entrance and is right by the bike shed. My room is also right beside the kitchen so whenever anyone goes in to hang out or make things I hear it. It was a frustrating sleep and as such I didn't actually sleep much.

Today was slow going, I got up, showered, tried to figure out where my classes are going to be, ate some breakfast then had a long nap. Res is really quiet during the day. I forced myself out of bed around 2:30pm so I would venture out to get some groceries - at the least. I had also put off leaving the house today because it looked so miserable out.

By the time I left it was closer to 3:30pm, I walked in the direction of the only grocery store I knew about but decided to keep on walking to the Groningen Museum - which is touted as one of the best museums in the Netherlands. I will admit, it was pretty good. It mixed old and new, contemporary with very classical, and did it in a beautiful building. It was fun because they would juxtapose different art styles one beside the other, for example a painting that came out of 1766 would be hung beside an Andy Warhol or other interesting "modern art." I liked it, but I was still quite tired so I kind of drug around the place.

I left the museum shortly before 5 and headed back to the grocery store in the hopes it would still be open, it was. Shopping for groceries in another country is always different. They might have different ways of arranging things, no brands are familiar, you might have to pre-weigh your produce, who knows! And you most certainly won't know what you are doing because the signs won't give you any hints. But it went over quite well.

At this point it was misting, which is the first amount of precipitation I have seen here in the Netherlands. It sounds like it will be like this, or raining all the time. I can't really complain as it did not seem nearly as cold as I thought it would. I made it home, made dinner, etc.

After dinner I decided it was time to venture out of my room and attempt to make a few friends. This proved to be a good idea - of course. I actually met a girl from the UofC who is just finishing up and leaving tomorrow, or tonight.. regardless it was nice to have someone's mind to pick on a few things. I sometimes feel like I've been thrown here and not really told what to do and expected to know everything. Ok, I feel like that all the time. It is kind of frustrating, but I'm hoping that our orientation on Thursday will make a number of things much clearer. She gave me some advice on banking and where to get a bike. This will be good. Tomorrow I need to both buy a bike and pay my rent.

It is kind of strange here right now because many of last semester's students are still here and just leaving so it is hard to tell who is coming and who is going. I met a nice Australian girl who was around when I was talking to the UofC student - I have to admit, I was excited to meet someone whose name I could pronounce. ha.

We also had an intro meeting with the student mentors in our building. It was mostly useless and didn't really tell me anything I didn't know - but as a general consensus I'm going to say that the, ok, at least, my student mentor doesn't do a whole lot. Well maybe that isn't fair, I think she was very busy today but I guess compared to what I saw in Calgary it is much more lax around here.

I'm still not sold on this place, I kind of feel like it is too big and it makes it kind of hard to meet people because everyone is spread out so much around the building and so many people stick around other people who speak their native tongue. I am hoping it gets better - and I'm sure it will, it is only day 2 - but I have considered trying to get into a smaller house where there will be about 60 people as opposed to 300+. We'll see what happens. For the time being I am hoping to sleep through the night and to wake up to a Flames win (the game plays my time 2am).

Hopefully the weather clears so I can check out more of the city on a new snazzy bike tomorrow. And by new and snazzy I mean second hand and operational.