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Published: March 7th 2009
Hi everyone!
Oke, so here it is, the way overdue first entry..
Don't act so surprised 😉
I'll try not to write a book, although enough has happened and there's so much I want to share with everyone..
The last weeks have been more than hectic, the day after I arrived I was programming the experiment (thank god for that E-prime course we've had, and Darsin for the support and tricks over email haha) from 9.00 till 20.00, and in the time that has passed we completely programmed our first experiment, ran 76 subjects (with Emma getting a pneumonia as wll, so I ended up running subjects on my own from 8 in the morning till 6.30 at night), cleaned the data and are almost done with the data analysis.. So for the B&Cers in the house (*woot woot*), you can imagine I didn't have time to breathe, let alone write my first novel to you guys 😉
With that covered, how has the rest of my life been so far.. Well, it's not exactly the sunny California I thought I would end up in, it seems the good old Dutch weather has followed me around the globe haha! It's getting better now, and hopefully the sun will keep shining from now on, because I didn't even bring that much warm clothes haha!
The house is great and the roommates are awesome! I'll post some pictures of the house and us with this post so you can see. There's Erika and Daniel, Erika is American and works with HP, Daniel is from Austria and does MRI-technical something research at Stanford Hospital, and Christian/Christie is American as well and she's a physical therapist. And off course we have Bashfull, Christies dog, who pretends to be a cat and sleeps all day in the sun haha! At uni I'm working with Emma, who's great as well, and made me feel right at home and showed my around that enormous campus the first days 😊
Although I'm doing everything by bike (yeah, biking 5km to and back from uni everyday haha!) I did needed to get a Californian drivers licence to be able to get on the car insurance of Erika's car.. So there we went.. off to the DMV for my written test.. And honestly guys.. I can recommend everyone to live here for a few months, get your drivers licence here and see if you can get it changes to a European one if you get back whaha! Oh my god, that there honestly are people out there that fail that test is unimaginable haha!
Example:
When you are driving and you have an open unit containing an alcoholic beverage where should you keep it.
A) Under the drivers seat
B) In the glove compartment
C) In the trunk
and more and more of those kind of questions.. And it's not like in Holland that you sit with a group of people taking an exam. You are handed a sheet of paper, are to find a spot to fill in the 36 questions (and you can take as long as you want, take hours if you please..), hand it back in and you are done..
I had one mistake, but since I'm Dutch and this is a situation that could never happen there I've forgiven myself.. Here it comes..
When you are parking uphill on a two sided street with no curb
A) Your front wheels are to be turned to the center of the road
B) Your front wheels are to be turned away from the road
C) Your front wheels remain straight
San Francisco parking rules, but since Holland is flat I'll live without having this one correct 😉
I'll post both anwers next blog haha!
Now I have to go practice starting Erika's car and knowing how to turn on the lights and wipers, and then I have my driving test haha!
So, enough about my driving (although I miss the Ka 😉).. There has been so much I've been meaning to type the last weeks, but most of the things I innitially thought were strange quirks are things I'm getitng used to haha! Even the constant hugging tends to get rather soothing when you give in to it haha! Although I do get more and more the feeling that the stories about antidepressants in the tapwater are true 😉 Never, and even when it rains, everything goes bad, etc etc, do people here stop smiling, singing, hugging and generally being really happy haha! Maybe it'll rub off some of that cynicism 😉
Going out here is also a world apart from life back home.. Everything here closes at two, so if you go out for drinks or dancing, you're home by 2.30.. So no more Catwalk adventures till early morning, or being the last man standing in the Witte Aap at 5am.. 😉 And wine is so much more expensive here.. You easily pay 7 dollars a glass.. (Arly, Steph, Carmen.. I need a chicksdate!! Come rescue me! 😉)
Weekends here have thus been pretty quiet, we've had some gamenights (Roy, Peter, Dennis, I finnaly get Catan now (A)), but with Eliel coming and St Patricks Day coming up I'm pretty sure there are some good nights coming :D
When Eliel arrives here (this Thursday already!!! :D) we immediately leave for Lake Tahoe the next day to go snowboarding!
(Steph & Oscar, komen jullie anders hier op wintersport? :D)
Lake Tahoe is a big lake with mountains around it where you can snowboard in two states,California and Nevada, in the same day!
After that it's St Patricks day which we will celebrate in SF, and then me and Eliel are planning a road trip going to LA, Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite National park and back :D (at least, that's the plan, now we wait for the execution haha!)
Oh, and I almost forgot, since I'm studying meditation, and Emma as well as Liselotte (my BA thesis supervisor, and my connection to Emma, many thanks again!!) are active members of the Art of Living foundation, I've attended their student seminar (YES+) and learned all the wisdom they have 😉 I got a scholarship to participate, but in my application for that scholarship I had (very American) to write an essay about myself haha! Had to do some deep soulsearching to answer all the questions haha!
The group we had the seminar with is a great group, who I probably will be spending more time with from now on! We even already went to Google, which is even more awesome than the stories..
Well, I think I'll leave it at this for now.. I promise to be more diligent about typing my stories up from now on 😉 I do have an American cellphone number, but since I pay for every call or text I get (crazy American system :S), I'll just drop my Skype name here and you can call or message me there 😉 And that's even free and has videochat, what more could you want 😉 It's tessa.sprangemeijer so come and find me 😉
Miss you guys a lot, and till very soon, I promise haha! (A)
Kisz,
Tessa
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Steph
non-member comment
:O !!
Aaaah! Goed als ik morgen al kom? Damn! Dat ziet er goed uit! Maar Os en ik hebben eindelijk echt een wintersport geboekt! 11 April gaan we lekker een weekje naar Frankrijk, nou maar hopen dat er sneeuw ligt en dat het niet hele week 'groene' pistes worden ;) Maar ik moet toegeven... Die foto's zien er ERG verleidelijk uit! Zo, jij hebt inderdaad niet stil gezeten! Heel anders dan ik hier, ik werk maar gewoon een beetje en heb echt nog nauwelijks wat voor m'n scriptie gedaan.. Maar daar gaat snel verandering in komen, aangezien ik nu in ieder geval klaar ben met de proefpersonen aan de EEG :D Ik heb er al helemaal zin in! Goed dat je huisgenoten zo leuk zijn en inderdaad maar hopen dat het mooi weer blijft :) Komt Eliel al zo snel joh? Relaxed! Nou, ik ga maar eens wat doen aan m'n scriptie ;) Ik volg jouw goede voorbeeld, weer eens wat nieuws ;) Ik kijk uit naar je volgende blog en tot skypse! Kisses! (ohja en hugs natuurlijk!)