Monday. still haven't gone to bed before midnight yet. the late afternoon nap yesterday helped though. i love mondays!! we have the uitsmijter sandwhich in the cafeteria every monday. an uitsmijter is an egg sandwhich with ham and cheese. uitsmijter translates to "bouncer" in english. like a night club bouncer. haha! mondays we have our weekly staff meetings and those are always nice to see everyone in the same room.
at noon today, these crazy sirens started going off outside. i asked robin if there was some sort of Fugro safety drill or test alarm going on. he barely noticed the sirens. he said no, at noon on the 1st day of each month they test the air strike sirens. air strike? i was shocked. since there has been no war on american soil (since the civil war), the thought of an air strike siren was so foreign to me. i wonder what it was like here during the world wars. the air strike sirens are used for air strikes obviously, but also for alerting terrorist threats, chemical hazards, or some other major catastrophe. the noise of the siren was so eerie. i felt so solemn as i sat at my desk and let the sound verberate through me. the sirens last about 2 minutes i would estimate.
i had a productive day at work again. finally starting to feel like i'm making headway. i finished up an RFQ, made some revisions and completed a pile report, and began working on a sheet pile wall design. still learning the software. tricky.
after work i went to my awesome kickboxing class! the class is unique becuase it has nearly equal parts men and women. most aerobic classes are dominated my women. the men hit the bags REALLY hard, and its good motivation to do the same. i'm getting really good at counting from 1 to 8, thanks to this class! i did really well today following the instructor. when i got home later i watched this show on my computer about MMA fighting. how cool would that be to be an MMA fighter?? i wish i could take a year off work and train for it. wow that would be unbeleivable. maybe in my next life :)
after kickboxing i headed up to amsterdam for my dutch class. i got lost on the way there (of course) and i was about 10-15 minutes late for the class. i really hate being late for class. i want to be the best one in the class so i have to show up on time!! my GPS should be coming this week thank god. dutch class was good, learned how to say some more practical phrases, like what's your email address/phone number, how to order in a restaurant, how to say places that you are travelling to etc. good class.
On tuesday, i worked most of the day on the sheet pile wall design. stil figuring out the program and learning as i go. several variables for groundwater, tiebacks vs. no tiebacks, modeling different soil profiles, different steel sizes, floor anchors vs. not, uplift pressures, surcharge pressures, how deep are the sheet piles, how long are the tiebacks and at what angles, what spacing, what height etc. the program can do so much. just trying to straighten it all out with all the different scenarios is confusing. but, by the end of the day i'm getting the hang of it. i'll probably run more scenarios most of tomorrow as well.
after work i stayed at my desk and studied my dutch books for about 1 hour, then went to my spinning class at 18:45. my spinning instructor is still injured, although robin told me he saw him over the weekend at a running training camp and he was definitely running. whatever. i like that he's "injured" because then instead of riding the bike during class, he acts out riding the bike and jumps and dances around the room. very entertaining. he looks kind of like a monkey.
by the time i get home i'm STARVING. at some leftover ravioli and green beans from sunday. yesterday i NEED to go to the grocery store, although it looks like i wont have time until thursday. ive been eating weird combinations of things to get by.
i emailed the other girls in my dutch class to see if they wanted to grab dinner before class on wednesday. monika emailed back and said yes, hopefully jill and sarah will as well. that'll be fun to hang out, have dinner, and get to know them.
i'm starting to feel like much less of a tourist and really settling into my temporary life here. making some friends, going to the gym, going to work, going to my dutch classes, running errands. busy every night of the week as per usual. even got a poker game together! got to know most everyone in my group, plus many others from other groups. one of my co-workers, susanne, i think she works for the FEBV opco, she told me at the sinterklaas party that i was the perfect example of integration. she said, 'you know, you're coming to all the work events, you're taking dutch, everyone knows who you are, and you're only here for 3 months! people move here permanently and never make any of the effort you are." i thought about it more, and she's right. but people are different. i WANT to fit in here. yes, i'm only here for 3 months, but if i had that attitude, my experience here wouldn't be nearly as fantastic as it has or will be.
friday is sinterklaas day here so i'm going to make robin a poem. that's what they do here, write little poems and leave small presents in shoes, and sometimes act out little skits. i've got to think of a pretty good poem. i'll work on that on thursday :) i think this weekend i'm heading the fresian islands up north to do a little island hopping bike tour. hopefully its not too cold/rainy! (yeah right!!!)
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