Wendesday. Robin brought with him to work today a bag of chocolate covered kruidnoten. also known as crack!!! i'm completely addicted! a bag that costs about 2 euro is about 150 kruidnoten. its a special holiday cookie for sinterklaas (which is this Friday). they are small round brown cookies that taste similar to gingerbread. a relative of the pepernoten.
the kruidnoten are covered in white, dark, and milk chocolate. i like the dark chocolate ones the best. robin made me a little cookie dispenser out of the bottomless red cups we have at work. after about one cupful i felt so sick (i mean it was only 9:30AM!), but i couldnt stop eating them!!! then i had a big pancake for lunch with powedered sugar and syrup. ugh my body was hating me today.
Arnoud (hydrologist) came over to my office today to help me with a dewatering/sheet pile project. he helped me model the water levels and the drawdown etc. arnoud hardly speaks any english, and i hardly speak any dutch, so the entire exchange was quite comical. or at least robin thought so!! arnoud is a really funny guy, kind of like matthew perry on friends. i wish i understood his dutch jokes better :)
after work i drove up to amsterdam to meet sarah and monika for dinner before our class. we went to this cool cafe/bar and had the best dinner i've had in weeks! chicken skewers with peanut sauce, salad, and a baked potato. sounds simple, but soooo delicious. 'kip sateh' it was called. yum.
sarah is working for some christian/catholic church doing outreach and recruiting. she's worked for the church all over the world. her next trip is to romanio to assist with the deployment of goods and clothing to local childrens hospitals and orphanages i think. i would guess she's about 26 or 27. from minnesota. no accent. apparently she lost the accent while in college in florida. she has blond curly hair, about 5'5", wears wire glasses, very low maintenance. although she works for the church, she doesnt come across as overly religious or restricted. she has a nice genuine aura about her. her passport, she claims, only has two more stamp spaces. i'm green with jealousy. i tell her, my passport only has two spaces stamped!!!
monika is from sweden, and maybe i'm wrong about sweden, but she doesnt look like i would expect. she's very petite, maybe 5'2", very fair skin with jet black hair and ice blue eyes. she looks like a porcelain doll. she wears skirts with boots all the time. i like her fashion sense. she speaks very good english. she's her doing payroll services for her company "indefinitely". i would think she's about 24 or 25. she wants to go to check out brussels, so i think we're going to arrange a trip together the weekend of 20 or 21 December. Quidan (a cirque du soleil show) is playing its last weekend in brussels on the 20 and 21st, so i really want to catch that. hopefully we can work our schedules together.
class was good, learned more practical things again. started learning adjectives. class is moving very fast i still dont feel like i can really carry on even a simple conversation. hopefully i will start progressing over the next few weeks.
during dinner, sarah was telling me how she booked a flight on ryanair to morocoo for like 50 euro (roundtrip). so when i got home, i searched for thier website to find the cheapest flight for the weekend. anywhere. and i found one to Alicante, spain, for less than 100 euro (roundtrip). i booked it! Alicante is a gorgeous coastal city right on the mediterranean. check out the website. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicante its more touristy in the summer, but i checked the weather and it will be about 15 deg (C) which is alot better than here (about 5 deg C). did i think i was going to spain this weekend? hell no! but i am. and its going to be awesome!!!
Thursday. woke up a bit late this morning and scurried into work about 15 minutes late. eek i hate being late. i was up so late after dinner and schoole and looking for flights. i spent most of today modeling my sheet pile wall again. i've gotten pretty darn good at this program. i even figured out how to model poured-in-place underwater concrete (fairly common here) with tie-downs, then pump the water down later and introduce hydrostatic pressure on the concrete floor.
today for lunch i had this really good corn soup. i think its worth mentioning. for dinner i had some sort of ham and cheese panini i grabbed at Hema (equivalent of like a mervyns but they also sell some food). overall pretty good food today. no choco coveredkruidnoten thank god. but, i did have about 4 cups of hot chocolate. actually, lets talk about the red coffee machine. i think i've mentioned before, but i really should buy some stock in that company. those red coffee machines are everywhere. the machine makes all kinds of coffee, capuccino, cafe au lait, espresso (i think??), and my beloved hot chocolate. its about 2.5 feet high and about 1 foot wide and 1 foot deep. when the lady comes every day to fill it up, its like the guy on the construction site who comes to clean the porto-pottys. most important person around. the machine makes a distinctinve whirring sound while dispensing the drink. its practically a perpetual sound around the office. the hot chocolate is perfectly dispensed in my bottomless red cup with just a little bit of foam on the top. its a little too hot so i usually pour some cold water in it and drink it right away.
i downloaded the new john legend record last night. you must get it. "Evolver". i think it's his second or third record, but he's produced/collaborated/written/played for the past 10 years on other people's records. ie. kanye west, jay z, alicia keyes, lauren hill, etc. he's won 5 grammys and he's really talented. i've been listening to his record non stop and i can't get enough!! great vocals. so mellow yet provacative.
i talked with adriaan today about doing a presentation about the ventura office. we scheduled it for monday, 15 december at noon. 1 hour presentation to about 50 people. i'm really excited about it actually. i'll work really hard on the powerpoint and it will be a really good presentation. i thought i would be nervous but i'm not. just excited really. looking forward to it! adriaan just laughs at me.
after work i headed to the grocery store and the bank, since thursdays are the only night open late and i will be gone for the weekend. got home around 8PM, packed my bag for the weekend, took a shower, cleaned up the apartment, did some laundry, checked in online for my flight, researched things to do this weekend in alicante. I'm SO excited about the archaeological musem in alicante! they have an exhibition right on roman civil engineering: "ROMAN ENGINEERING IN SPAIN: The exhibition Artifex. Roman Engineering in Spain aims to bring to light the great technological legacy of the Roman world. The display highlights the Romans understanding of different areas of technology, especially civil engineering. " wow i'm so lucky!!
Then did some blogging. now doing some sleeping. likely i wont update until i get back on sunday night or maybe monday, but i'll post pictures so it will be worth the wait!
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