Ik ben Alison

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Ik ben Alison. Ik kom uit America. Ik woon in Van Houtenlaan, in Groningen. Hoe heet jij?

Yay Dutch! So I'm SO Dutch now that not only can I introduce myself, I can ride a bike with a person or *get this* a case of beer on the back! And bottles, no less! I'm a rockstar! Twice now I've been the designated beer transporter to parties in "The Containers" (a international student living area where the buildings are like giant modules/mobile homes/shipping containers). It is very exciting, and only once did I almost run into a car!

Classes are going well. I'm really enjoying my ecocriticism class (yay, I already knew what "Deep Ecology" is! I'm ahead of the curve!) My Dutch lang class is interesting cause a lot of the "students" are acutually older people working for Shell or other companies and not acutally students at the University, its a nice mix. I'm the only American in the class, and ergo "the expert." Although, so far they've only needed to ask the American term for "fill-in-the-blank." But where would they be without me? ;-)

As for everything else, things have been pretty mellow this week. Two birthday parties, pub crawling, studying, wandering... Its all good :-). Um... what else? I still haven't been to the Ikea here, shame on me. But yesterday I did have my first falafel ever. Yeah, so its not Dutch food, but they do love their Kabobs and falafels. Kabobs in particular are the drunken food of choice, maybe because they're pretty much the only places open until 7am. The Dutch don't have a whole lot of "traditional" Dutch food like you'd find in Germany or pretty much any other European country, probably because they're so small, and have a lot of foriegners here (I've got plans to check out the good Surinam restuarants in town). Did you know Surinam used to be a Dutch colony and that Dutch is still spoken there? I didn't until I met Reynando, from Surinam. And it is bizarre to hear Dutch from a 6' 6" tall African man with a spanish-sounding name.

Well since its 4am, and my case of beer is gone ;-) (I didn't drink it all in one night, don't worry, mom and dad) its time to go to bed. Peace, all!

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