A whirlwind kinda life

I'm sitting at my computer trying to squeeze in a blog entry before I leave for Paris in, literally, 45 minutes. A lot has happened over the past few weeks, so much that I can't really remember it all to write it down. Here are some highlights ....

Jorn, the best student housing manager in the world, left Kornoeljestraat last weekend. Last Wednesday, we had a farewell party for him, starting with pie in our common room. Later, we hit the centrum, starting out in Pand48 before heading Shadrak. Shadrak (in the pics) is an underground dance bar that is located in the back alleys of the centrum. I took the pics with Wicax's camera that night on an impulse because I was really inspired by the seedy, European look of the bar from outside. Shadrak is usually a million degrees inside and crammed with kids in the earlier hours of the morning, and includes the only dancing pole in Groningen that I've seen so far.

I'm quite sad that Jorn is now on the south side of the centrum (in Blekerslaan). He is only a 15 minute bike ride away, but nevertheless, I miss our evenings of dinner and reality tv and mornings of bedhair and bread - things that only flatmates can share.

On the flipside, we have a new housing manager, Lucas, who we are welcoming with open arms. At the age of 20, he is like our new baby brother and we feel an obligation to take care of him! So far, I've managed to get Lucas to join me in continuing the Monday night ritual of reality tv (America's next top model - ack!), come out for a wonderful dinner at the pub this past Wednesday, and enjoy a drink at our flatbar when I was bartending.

Last Thursday, I picked up my "new" bike, on loan from Bore. It's a really sweet bike. It has back-pedal braking as well as a hand brake. The cutest part is that it also has two bells on the handlebar, both of them which don't work one bit. I promised to take good care of this bike so I've been very careful to buddy-lock at all times. A bike will not be stolen under my care ever again!

Last Friday, me and my new international gang (just can't stay away from them!) also went out to the centrum. The old international kids (Wicax, Bore and I) made sure to show the new kids (Myriam and Ricard) a good old fashioned Dutch evening. We took pics with Bore's camera phone but he has no way to download them so we've been trying for the past week to arrange that he send them to Wicax then he can download them (squish that hologramic angel, Ricard!). I may put them up on the site next week if we finally get the pics. That night we ended up in Enzo and found Jorn and the other student managers. We ended the evening at 6:00 am when we decided to eat some pizza. We took the leftovers home on our bikes like a worn-out pizza delivery team. Very funny site to see!

PS - I've been writing Myriam's name Mariam in previous posts. My oopsies. Pardon, ma chérie, pour cette faute!

Saturday evening, I cooked dinner for Sjoerd (salmon... yummm) and Sunday evening Maaike and I had fondue and watched Amélie together (Spoken in French, subtitled in Dutch). A real girls night then.

It was a hard week at work because I'm trying to finish up as many experiments as possible before leaving back to Canada. I worked really, really hard!

Wednesday evening, Lucas, Wicax, Myriam and I decided to eat in an actual restaurant (Bore joined us later), an unusual thing to do here. We went to Stadtlander's, a pub of a nationality we still haven't figured out yet and where they have giant decor, including ashtrays the size of buckets. We ate huge plates of meat and shared yummy side dishes. Very carnivorous. We later relaxed at the Three sisters before heading home early enough so that we could all get up for work the next morning.

Thursday evening I did another bartending shift at our flatbar with Sjoerd. Turnout was low, but my friends (Maaike and Lowrens from work, Myriam, Lucas and Ricard) came to show their support. Once again, I'm proud to say that at the end of the evening I had made tips, which I invested right back into the bar.

Friday evening Maaike and I bonded some more. We both worked late at the lab then decided to treat ourselves to a tapas restaurant. This was some of the best food I've ever tasted! After dinner, I actually drove Maaike home on the back of my bike! My very first bike passenger ever! And without incident! I am now officially one more notch Dutch :)

Finally, last night was a fantastic evening. Jorn had invited the Kornoeljestraat kids to Bekerslaan to cook dinner together and get to know eachother. Bekerslaan consists mainly of Italians right now, but I also met some great French, Turkish and Swiss kids. They have a giant common room and kitchen that the whole building shares, a really great environment! Now I see why Jorn abandoned us to go there ;) We went to the biggest supermarket in Groningen (the giant Jumbo in the pic) to buy the food. It was just like Canada there! Big and big. We kept having trouble finding eachother inside, though. So, we bought ingredients to make our own pizza creations. When we got back to the house to cook, no one could figure out how to use the gas ovens so we made 2 small pizzas at a time every 12 minutes. It turned out to be a great dinner idea, like having appetizers all night. We drank wine, ate good food and sang to Italian guitar music. There's a really funny song that you sing in rounds and put someone's name in each verse and make up Italian rhymes to describe them. Kinda like Bananarama...

Oops. I'm out of time. I'm off to Paris now. Wish me luck!