I started writing this on Sunday (now two Sundays ago), but a series of internet-related set backs and academic distractions, ie. homework, delayed my efforts to finish writing before today. Please read this post with Sunday in mind.

This past week was arguably the least eventful of any so far. My classes remain appealing, and despite their engaging nature, as academics often do, they are becoming routine and uninteresting for outsiders to hear about.

Yesterday was national monument day in the Netherlands, and as such, was the perfect opportunity to finally make our way to Fort Rijnawen. After a leisurely morning we grabbed our cameras and biked out to the countryside towards the fort. Before we left, my roommate and I both shed our jackets because of a shared assumption that the relatively nice weather would hold. Though I would like to be a good storyteller here and reintroduce the shed-jacket component of my tale later: ironically showcasing how our ill-informed decision left us drenched while walking around an old Dutch military installation, in fact it was the right decision and having been stuck with the striking eighty percent humidity in a jacket would have been much worse.

Our tour group was comprised of post-middle age people and a small number of children. Our guide was an eccentric old Dutchman wearing a period-appropriate jacket and hat, who graciously spoke to us in English each time following his narrative in Dutch. Though I frankly feel that the best part of the tour was the guide, the area itself was worth traveling to, and the view to the other side of the canal, to a place where we had stood longing to cross to the other side, was gratifying to say the least. The fort was still in good shape, unsurprising given that it was dated only to 1869, an early age for many European monuments. Despite its young age and the realization that this fort had never actually been used for combat, it still managed to have an interesting and at times sordid past. One example of such ignoble behavior at the fort was the use of its facilities for the execution of the Nazi’s prisoners during World War Two.

Throughout the underground portion of the tour (every building was built into a hillside or had one artificially constructed on top of it), I had fun hiding in pitch-black rooms, making spooky noises to scare the kids. Before I seem like a pariah because of my dark actions (literally and figuratively) the kids on the tour were old enough to actually enjoy the spookiness rather than be scared by it.

Towards the end of the tour we were given a choice of continuing on to the castle or leaving a little bit early. We decided to stay. Our decision was rewarded with the tour of the installation's "Castle", a massive military structure. Hopefully I'll have time to elaborate on this experience at a later date. 

To save time while still expressing some of what I've done over the past two weeks

After the tour we went and played frisbee. It was fun, but by the time we started the sun was making its final descent along with the temperature. Also, since it was the first warm day after a rainy week, the ground was still a bit wet. All in all it was fun, but not of the same level of play as the week before. 

Friday and Saturday of that week comprised Bartenders weekend. This event was a time for Europeans to finally learn how Americans drink by ingesting excessive amounts of alcohol. 

On Saturday evening was a fantastic storm. It started off as dry lightning, which I though was novel, giving not only having rarely seen it in the US, but also because of its magnitude. I walked up the spiral fire escape staircase of our patio to get above the building and see the extent of the lightning. It was an amazing sight: three different sources illuminating the sky, one above the stadium to the south, one above the city to the west, and one above us. Because I was standing on a metal surface high above the ground, I decided for safety reasons to descend from my perch. Though in good literary fashion, I would like to tell you that as soon as I departed, lightning arched to the staircase and cause a brilliant spark, in fact I probably would have been safe to stay up on top of it and continue watching the storm. Fortunately my weariness was proven to be not entirely unfounded when the sky opened up and a rain poured down to us more ferociously than any of frequent and voracious torrents had before. The native Dutch and foreigners alike were astonished by the storm, and many ran out side to experience it first hand. Following a break from bartender's weekend, many participants went outside to have a smoke and relax. A courageous pair from the group decided that it would be a good idea to move the remnants of a very large tree, previously standing next to the dining that had fallen over in the fierce wind, inside of the building next door. Campus security quickly put an end to their escapades and closed down the bar. 

The following day I spent hours in the library reading texts about the philosophy and innovations of the 2nd century Alexandrian scholar, Ptolemy, for a presentation I was scheduled to give that thursday. Aside from the actual execution of that presentation, I cannot think of anything of consequence that occurred that week. 

Saturday I returned to the library with friends to read Tacitus' Germania, but unfortunately the only english translation was an old volume that had to be requested. Instead, I made origami and watched Top Gear in the library while my friends worked. The following day I went back to the library to actually study. Much to my chagrin, my request still had not been processed. This sad fact gave me an excuse to make more pragmatic reading choices and finish up books I was actually assigned. The evening after my Sunday library visit I finally accomplished something I'd been looking forward to for months. I biked with a friend downtown to the Pathe Rembrant bioscoop and sat down for a showing of this summer's masterpiece blockbuster, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Despite, in true cinematic fashion, digitally editing the hell out of San Francisco to include the Golden Gate Bridge in every wide-angle shot, the movie was fantastic and will hopefully be the start to a new franchise. 

Yesterday, after the end of my History of Humanities and Liberal Arts class, I went with my Art History class to the Catharijneconvent, the top museum for Christianity in the Netherlands. I saw some catholic and protestant stuff, it was cool, and I definitely didn't almost fall asleep listening to the never-ending monotonous tone of the guide. In all seriousness, it was a very well put together museum containing truly amazing artifacts. 

Following the end of our tour and a brief sojourn to buy a sandwich, I briefly returned to my unit before biking to Olympos for a marathon volleyball session. Though I say marathon partly seriously, given that it was the placement round in which we had six consecutive games, in all actuality, there were many breaks in the five-hour period and the games ended after a time limit was reached rather than by score. We played poorly at some times and well at others and at the end of the day had gone 4-2. It should have been 5-1. 

Good morning and good night. 

The First Week and Weekend

This past week was my first one to be full of classes since our Dutch Language and Culture class ended in mid-August. I started off the semester with Political Science: State of the Art, a class about comparative politics taught by an engaging Turkish woman. Though I was initially apprehensive about it, having never taken a political science class in college, I warmed up to the idea of it after a discussion about dissatisfaction with political systems in our home countries. I won't elaborate too much on this, but the simple question spiraled into a revealing discussion about disappointment with the Dutch coalition system, an influx of conservative Russian Jewish people into Israel after the fall of the Soviet Union-and how they primarily vote along ethnic lines, and more political and cultural distinctions previously unknown to me (and I would assume, to most people). Another enticing part of the class was that, despite its size, I was the only Student from the U.S. in it (a rare occurrence and something especially great given the multicultural orientation of the class. 


After my first class ended, I walked over to my second, and only other, class of the day, art history. The class had slightly fewer students in it than its predecessor had, which was remarkable given the incredibly small size of classes to begin with. As a brief aside, classes here are capped at twenty-eight with absolutely no wiggle-room, the whole school, around seven hundred people, is smaller than some of the large introduction-level courses at UCSB. Meanwhile back at the ranch, my art history class, taught by a Serbian woman with more raw feminine enthusiasm than I have ever seen anyone muster before (I would explain this further, but frankly I have no idea how to articulate a proper description of this teacher) turned out to be a perfect choice for me to take. The class focuses on a wide array of art styles and periods whilst weaving in a historical narrative along the way. The teacher is writing her dissertation on Dutch 17th century masterworks, one of my favorite types of painting, and plans to share her specific knowledge of this later in the course. Finally, there are even components of the class where instead of reading a text, hearing a lecture, or watching a slideshow, we actually get to practice painting ourselves and also will travel to the museums in which the works of art we study are housed. 


Though art history class ended sooner than I would have liked, a surprise given the grueling hour-and-forty-five minute length, I was happy that my first day of college in the Netherlands was over and that I could once again relax. 


The following day I had only one class, the History of Liberal Arts and Sciences. As my only history class this semester I was very excited to take it and do something I excel at. When I got to class and my teacher, an older Dutch gentleman began to speak I was greeted with the gut-wrenching remark that every student enthusiastic about a class dreads hearing, "I was just assigned to teach this class last week after the original teacher fell ill, and haven't had time to really prepare." Not only was this statement itself demoralizing, but the tempo of and timbre of his calculated style of speech was close to coma inducing. He then began to say that as a philosophy teacher rather than a history teacher, this class would be more about the context and development of educational concepts rather than the specific history behind them... Needless to say I died a little inside after hearing this. Finally, the teacher twisted the knife protruding from my chest when he revealed his nature as a Luddite and asked us to handwrite everything. Frankly I'm fine with handwriting and my script is so legible that it often gets described as girly or mechanical, but in an academic setting, the digital storage of notes and the subsequent ability to search specific words or dates at the click of a button is something completely impossible with an analogue medium. 


The only other event of consequence on Tuesday was the information meeting about volleyball try-outs the next day. 


The following day I had the last of my first class meetings, World Religions. A Dutch man who was raised in Indonesia taught the class. Because of his writings about Indonesian religious tradition, he was blacklisted by president Suharto and couldn't return to Indonesia until the military dictatorship ended in 1998. In contrast to my alleged history class, World Religions has a major history component, and seems like it will be both fun and enlightening. 


Hours after class ended I went to volleyball try-outs. Unfortunately for me and the other involved, the try-outs were timed to perfectly eclipse dinner so towards the end I was starving. This was made even worse when I decided to stay past the end of practice to continue playing and when I got back and played basketball for another hour. Despite the fun I had, not eating before or after a lot of athletics, with the added bonus of compounded days of moderate sleep deprivation left me in a pretty rough state. 


The rest of the week was more of the same: class, relax, eat, and sleep. Thankfully I only have one class to round off the week on Fridays, but this results in three classes on Thursday, which isn't my idea of fun. 


Though the week was quite blasé, Friday afternoon and the whole of Saturday were both filled with the best weather I've seen throughout my time here. The sky was a brilliant blue with negligible spots of white dotting the periphery. The best part was that not only was the weather beautiful to look at, but it delivered some actual heat to those waiting below. Though Friday's class meant that I couldn't fully capitalize on all of the sun that was offered, I more than made up for it on Saturday by getting up early and going with a couple of friends to read and play Frisbee at the nearby Wilhelmina park. When we arrived to the park, we were one of only a handful of groups taking early advantage of the dewy meadow in the middle of the park. This wasn't the case for long. Throughout the two hours we tossed the Frisbee, two hours during which I became completely drenched it sweat (I know this may not seem like the most pertinent comment, but I have so rarely sweat in this country that you'll have to believe me that it is), people crept further and further into the field until it was more than three quarters full. Unfortunately for us, during the quick break we took to rest up and dry off from the intense Frisbee-ing, three separate groups of voetbal (soccer) players filled the gap of the field we left open and effectively killed our game. Despite accepting this loss as a reason to take a break, within the hour we were back to business and borrowed a soccer ball to kick around ourselves. Thankfully for me, after a reasonable amount of time the group tired of the degenerate foot sport and returned to Frisbee, a sport that utilizes the opposable thumbs evolution worked so hard to provide us with.


Following another bout of tossing the disc we parted ways and I went back to my unit to finally get some reading done. Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for the Gods of procrastination, the sun was still out by the time I returned, and for hours after, so my valiant efforts of studiousness were less successful than I would like to admit.


Being college, this past week was also filled with social drama that people seem to do their best to provoke. The details are too many to delve into at this time, but the culmination was a lecture from twelve until two o’clock this morning about how it’s wrong for me to not drink. Let me just share how much of a blast that was for me to experience.


And on a final note, I would really appreciate if they celebrated Labor Day here too and I had a three-day weekend to spend traveling.