Orientation Activities — Blue Sky Mind

I love my new bike! I dont love the fact that I forgot to take the key to the back lock out and, in an effort to be a dick for no reason, someone took it, leaving Bae currently immobile. If I've surmounted the local language barrier in my efforts to make an appointment, a lock cutter should be coming on Sunday.

Beautiful church where welcoming activities took place.

Yesterday, we began our international student network (ISN) orientation, where we were separated into groups of all the international students at UvA to make new friends. My group is great, and I can now say I have friends from Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada.

Our group leaders are master's students at UvA and resident locals, so they took us to a few bars last night before our ISN party. Hey CHUPITOS aka a shots bar with over 100 different combos. We got harry potters, which were lit on fire pre-consumption. Pretty neat. Then we grabbed a Belgian draft at a pub and moved onto the orientation party. This was no USC welcome week foam party. This thing was the real deal, with a dutch DJ, light shows, drinks and all. It was so fun.

As for today, we went on a little canal cruise through the city, then took a crash course in Dutch. Its really hard, and I'm really bad at it, but I'm beginning to figure out the pronunciation and that feels good. I'm currently headed out the door to dinner and a comedy show with my group, then a "borrel" (Dutch for "social drinks") at Coco's on Rembrantplein after! (Update: this is day 6 of going out)

So! That's it for now. School starts in two days. I would love to laze all day tomorrow, but I will probably have to do real people activities, like buy groceries and figure out where in this city my classes are....daunting.

However, those worries are for another time. Right now is - as we've been kindly informing our new Dutch and other international friends - time to turn up. BYE!