Blogs from Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands, Europe - page 4

As promised, here's my take on Carnaval in Maastricht: The Carnaval festivities began on Saturday (February 13) & continued until Tuesday night (February 16). The entire time, there was craziness in the streets of Maastricht. Saturday started when the Prince of Carnaval arrived at the Central Station. From there, there was a parade to his monument on the Market (in front of my house). There was a lot of singing (& a ton of beer drinking). Marching bands were EVERYWHERE so it was ridiculous & not quite for a minute. Sunday was the official start of Carnaval. They fired 11 gunshots on the Vrijthof Square & raised the Mooswief. The Mooswief is symbolic of a traditional and typical woman selling vegetables on the market in Maastricht. Over time the Mooswief tradition has become deeply embedded, there’s ... read more

I woke up this morning super homesick with yet another headache. That's 3 days in a row. Needless to say, I decided it was time to go to the pharmacy & look for cold medication as a preventive measure. I mean, for about 9 years straight I've either had the flu or bronchitis or some other horrible cold during the 2nd week of February. It's like clockwork. The problem is, once I got there - I had no idea what to even look for. I had to text Cenay & ask for help because I felt like an idiot asking one of the workers there, haha. Cenay recommended "Otrivin" nose spray; ibuprofen for fevers; & "strepsils" for sore throats... I managed to find an equivalent of Vick's vap-o-rub so I definitely got that. I also loaded ... read more

Today I decided that I'd look through the course manuals that I received at Orientation to see how my courses are going to be structured. Essentially, I had gathered that I would meet twice a week per class - once as a "tutorial" session and once as a "lecture" session. Since I have 2 classes beginning on Monday, I figured I'd better get a jump start on the reading for this week. What I didn't realize was that as soon as I took a look at the syllabus I would immediately begin to hyperventilate! I have a "tutorial" in European Criminal Law on Monday at 11:00. The reading assignment for that class period alone is over 120 pages long. That, in & of itself, is considerably more than any other reading assignment I've ever been given ... read more

So today was the big day - law school orientation! Before leaving this morning, I absolutely dreaded having to go. I felt like a 5 year old about to set out for kindergarden all over again, but this time my parents weren't there to see me off. How depressing... good news is that EVERYONE there felt exactly the same way, so nobody put up any walls to making friends, & everyone was very nice & sociable. However, as always, it was easy to pick out the people that I probably WON'T make friends with (& how ironic is that the girl I'm speaking of was very clearly American.... She was so annoying, yuck!) Regardless, I hung around with 3 girls who are from Sweden & are super nice. Their English is amazing so there wasn't really ... read more

Today's main adventure is the fact that I hit up my first European gym tonight! Going into it, I figured, "A gym's a gym, right?" However, once I got there, I couldn't be more wrong! Three of us went to a gym across the river (about a 5 minute walk) in order to take advantage of a free-trial offer for new prospective members. Everyone that worked there was SO NICE; however, the paperwork we had to fill out was all in Dutch, so it's definitely a good thing that Cenay was there. Needless to say, we filled out the papers as a group. I guess it's standard procedure for new members to have a consultation with one of the gym's trainers before being allowed to use the facilities by themselves; however, the lady let us just ... read more