Groningen Lately

You can start to feel it in the air, it is starting to, very slowly, get warmer. It isn't often you can tell, but at around Noon when the sun comes out you can tell it is warmer than a few weeks ago. It still gets cold at night and in the mornings, the humidity just keeps those temperatures down way low. But there is some sort of end in sight.

Coming back from Italy and having to write a paper for Thursday then go to class was a little saddening. Reality kind of smacked me in the face, "you're here to do school too, you know!" Too bad. Hopefully classes don't get too crazy. I mean, most of them seem pretty easy. I had my first Friday class, International Communication, which looks like it will be awfully dull. So far I don't really like any of my classes. Well that isn't true, the other two were looking a little better lately but not really anything to get excited about.

Classes here come in two different credit levels, and you have to take a certain amount of credits a semester here as opposed to home where it is a certain amount of courses. So there are 5 credit courses and 10. 5s are obviously easier. My Wednesday and Thursday classes are 5s and my Friday class is a 10.

On Friday, in class, we were put into groups that we'll be working with all semester. We have 3 group research papers that are all 3000 words each. Yikes. Group papers are the worst of all group assignments, and I say that as someone who generally has affectionate feelings towards group work. And 3 of them. That is almost excessive. And it doesn't really look like we'll have class that much though so it is almost a self directed group project class. Hopefully it should be good.

When we were put in groups the first thing the prof wanted us to talk about was whether or not good grades were important to us. Here you are graded on a 10 point scale where a 6 is passing and supposedly a 10 is impossible to get, as in they refuse to hand it out on principle that as an undergrad you cannot achieve perfection. What bunk. Anyways, here in the Netherlands, the culture does not concern itself with good grades as much as other places like Spain or Germany where good grades are V.Important. I guess here parent are more worried about if their children are happy and have friends than if they are doing well in school. Their school system is quite different than our as well. It is funny to see these differences. Most of the Dutch students say as long as they get a 6 they are happy. I obviously want 8s, I hear that is the highest reasonable grade to aim for because 9s and 10s never happen. Lames.

During my class the prof then told us that she was going to make pdf versions of both of the text books for the class; I'd already bought them but I thought to myself, sweet I can return them and get those 70€ back. Sadly when I went to the bookstore today they won't actually give you your money back, they only give you store credit. Ya, that is great if you are a long time student there. And the school bookstore is inside a Chapters like bookstore so I asked if I could use it to buy regular books but no such luck, it is only for the academic books. And it isn't even like they have a large selection of books to pick from. Maybe I'll have to buy a lot of paper and highlighters? Maybe someone will buy the card off of me, but it doesn't seem likely. :( Stupid.

Last night the Spanish in my wing had a Sangria party. You had to pay 3€ and you could drink as much sangria as you liked, well until it ran out. It was quite good but the common room was so packed you couldn't even move. I stayed until the party died down then went to bed.

To update, I think I've more or less figured out my pictures mess, but it isn't totally cleaned up yet. Hopefully soon. I think I've got them all on my external hard drive that I finally installed on my computer.

This morning I went to IKEA for 1€ breakfast with a couple girls and it was so lovely to just hang out for an hour or two over coffee chatting. Makes me miss my lovely friends at home.

Well, that was my rather disjointed update. I'm hoping to get around to a few placed in the Netherlands in the next month. I tried to sign up for an ESN excursion to Maastricht (in south Holland) for a weekend but it had sold out before I got to the office. There is also a ski trip for a week heading to the French Alps that would be amazing, but the time and cost are too much for me I think, especially considering I have no ski clothes. I'm thinking next weekend I might head south to tour a few cities in the Netherlands, but we'll see what happens. I get antsy sitting around my room too long. Besides, the world is literally at my front door.. kinda.