A Brief Update for the End of October

Hello!

I don't have a lot of pictures, so I thought I might just come on here and say I'll be posting again when I get the pictures, but I might write a bit about what I've done, too, and then just follow up with more when I get the pictures!

First, my weeks have become very structured and regular. On Mondays, I'm usually elsewhere doing school visits - this past Monday I was up in Groningen, which is reeeaaaally far in the north of Holland. It took me almost three hours to get there. It was quite a trip for one day!

At work, I've been working on getting ready to call parents, and yes, this week, I started calling the parents of kids with and without ADHD to participate in my study. It's pretty interesting! Most of the parents are really receptive to my calls, and are even willing to try and speak Dutch with me when they need to. It's been very reassuring! It's still a huge challenge, though. Every time I get on the phone I sort of have to admit to myself that I will probably embarrass myself. It's hard, to call people over and over again, knowing that each time, you're going to have someone who thinks you're just slightly off your rocker on the other end of the phone!

But I had a super-powerful week last week, and called something like 20 people, and got around 10 who were 1) home, and 2) interested in the study. Which is a lot of people for 1 week! I need 40 kiddos overall - 20 ADHD, and 20 controls. Keep your fingers crossed!

This past weekend, I went to the Delta Works, in the south of the country on Saturday. The Delta Works is this giant feat of Dutch engineering, that controls the amount of water that flows into and out of the country at all times. Because most of Holland is under sea-level, they need an ingenious solution for when heavy storms and rain come from the Atlantic. The Delta-Works, a massive line of dykes, dams, and sluices that stretches across the entire bottom-half of the country, is that solution. Really cool. Like, reaaaaallly cool. I got to go inside one of the sluices. It was GIANT. With huge mechanical arms that move these giant metal barriers that allow water to flow in or out.

On Sunday, Melissa and I hosted a "Fall Party." I'm told celebrating fall is a very American thing. Perhaps it's because of Thanksgiving. But man, I love fall! I see every reason to want to get together and celebrate it! Cooler weather, the beautiful leaves, sweaters, cute decorations, pumpkin, warm soup, bread. I mean, who doesn't love all of those things? Crazy people. So, yes, we had a wonderful fall party with some of the other Fulbright girls. We made baked mac and cheese, baked brussel sprouts (surprisingly good), mulled wine, pumpkin cornbread, and baked brie with caramelized apricots. Not bad for a fall get-together, huh!? We also made cute pumpkin and leaf decorations, which I intend to just keep up in the living room forever.

This weekend has been really laid back. On Friday, I just came home and made home-made sweet potato (zoet aardappel) gnocchi (they were very, very good), and on Saturday I cleaned, and watched "Kung Fu Panda 2," and went to a big Italian dinner, hosted by my international group. The Italian dinner was delicious - although it ended with a tiramisu that had been liberally doused in rum. It still tasted good, though...and like real rum, it just got better the more you ate of it...

Today has been the slowest of the weekend days. I worked on my homework, and made some more potato gnocchi. I worked on a project I've been kicking around for a while. My life is extraordinarily relaxed right now. I'm taking it for what it is - a gift from God.

Dutch Pumpkins, School Visits, And Visiting Haarlem

Well, my dear readers, it's been a fair while!

There are so many things to talk about, as usual, we will begin with a systematic discussion of each one. I have a small bag of candy. Perhaps it will last the entirety of my post...I'll let you know when I'm done.

First of all, Mary and I had a delightful time, last week, making our own pumpkin puree. It's not hard, but it was fairly time-consuming. However, when you are done cleaning, carving, baking, peeling, cutting and pureeing your own pumpkin - you feel like a total champ. Like, I could have, I dunno, won one of those carnival games where you hit the gophers really quickly, that's how pumped I was.

The innards. And some tasty bread-things Mary brought with her.

After slicing the pumpkin up, we baked all the slices for about 45 minutes.

Ah, so tasteh and peeleh. You bake them so that the skin peels off easily.

Skins! Pumpkin-about-to-be-pureed!

Hooray! It kind of looks like baby urp at this point, but, well, I will tell you, it made killer pumpkin bread. KILLER.

Once our pumpkin was pureed, we decided to make pumpkin bread, with something along the lines of a cup of butter, from scratch as well. So, okay, number one item, pumpkin puree, done. By hand. By champs. Number two most important item for pumpkin bread - the spices. We had a really interesting time finding the spices. I get frustrated a lot, when I go to the baking aisle in the grocery store, and there just isn't the abundance of choices, products, and things that are supposed to be in the baking aisle. On this particular pumpkin-bread-baking occasion, we went to three different grocery stores searching - in vain - for baking powder. None. Nada. Oh, yes, they have it here. It's called bakpoeder. But alas. No one seemed to realize how serious and urgent it was that we get our hands on some. Finally, in a back alleyway, we came upon a little middle-eastern shop that, way in the back, had a rack of spices, and, lo and behold, baking powder!

Ah, yes, the infamous bakpoeder. Which, coincidentally, sounds like, "baak-poo-der." Which is not something I would want to put in my food, but, there you go...

Mary also bought whole sticks of cinnamon, and some whole cloves from the same store. Because we had these large spices on hand, and because we are mildly into being really awesome at everything,  we decided to grind our own spices with a mortar and pestle. Hey, it was actually really fun, okay?

Pounding some spices. Look at how fast my hand was moving!

Mary, likewise with the spice-pounding. 

Look at how well we ground the spices! Are you not impressed with our prodigious skill!?

Mixing up some magic. Or pumpkin bread...

The batter.

The bread. And boy, was it good.

This bread was amazing. It was so, so, so good. Hot, fresh from the oven, and really spicy, unique tasting. It was amazing, actually, the difference when you make it with all fresh ingredients like this.

As my lab-mates can attest, I brought this on the Monday after Mary and I made it, and it was a huge hit. They were all shocked that pumpkin could taste sweet. They said the bread reminded them of gingerbread - I suppose it is a bit like gingerbread, yeah? Eventually I'll get around to making a pumpkin pie for the lab, and we'll really shock some people's socks off.

Last week at the lab was excellent, as usual. I finished Spongers, more or less, and it now has levels, and pretty pictures, and well, I'm terribly proud of it, even though I didn't create it from scratch or anything.

Thursday was a rough day. I found out, Thursday morning, that one of my really good friends from home (Chardon), Jacob, had been in a horrible car accident, and that he had been life-flighted to the trauma hospital in Cleveland. He was a mess. He had a completely shattered left hip, eleven broken ribs, a skull fracture, and a tear in his aorta. Basically, we should all be thanking God for the miracle of Jake still being alive. Since last Thursday, Jake has gotten a lot better (once again, thank God), and is out of the ICU. He's got a long road to recovery though.

On Thursday morning, I didn't know most of what I just shared with you. All I knew was Jake had been in an accident, that it was really bad, and that he was in critical condition in the hospital. As you can imagine, Thursday didn't turn out to be a great day. I went, Thursday morning, to another thesis defense of one of the graduate students in the lab, because I really wanted to be there for him, but after which I promptly turned around and went back home to call anyone and everyone who might have news. It ended up being okay, and I got the information I was looking for - Jake was seriously injured, but it wasn't life-threatening anymore, which was the most important thing.

You know, people can be so amazingly helpful, and brave, when such awful things happen. Jake's parents were offered a ride by their neighbor, who owns a private plane, to fly them to Cleveland, so that they got there, I'm sure, MUCH faster than they would have if they had had to buy tickets, etc. Jake's girlfriend, Emily, one of the sweetest and most down-to-earth people I know, has not left his side, and I know from what Jake's mom has said, has been an absolute bastion of strength for Jacob and his family over the past week. When people do things like that - it's remarkable. And wonderful. Thank God people can be so resilient. It gives me faith in humanity!

Well! Thursday was rough. But as you can see, my week got much better, especially with continued good news from the hospital. On Friday, I had a really wonderful experience, that I'm truly sorry I don't have any pictures of - on Friday, I went on my first school visit!!

I went to a school called Lyceum Shcravenlant in a city called Schiedam, which is outside of Amsterdam. These school visits are really neat - the Fulbright asked for our bios, which they then gave out to high school teachers all over the Netherlands. Teachers could then invite whichever Fulbright student they thought fit, according to what was in their bio. I've gotten a lot of invitations, as I think I have mentioned previously. Anyway, Lyceum Schravenlant was my first! Several trains later, I arrived in the lovely city of Schiedam. I went to go visit an English class taught by a woman named Ineke. Ineke was so wonderfully welcoming, and sweet. She even gave me boxes of tea as a gift! I've tried them all (naturally), and they are all really excellent. She and I ate lunch in the teacher's lounge (there was cake - we need more cake in the teacher's lounges of America...) and afterward we went to her 6th form class (I think 6th form must be something like sophomore or junior year of high school for us - they looked around that age, anyway...). Her class was awesome. I just LOVE talking to students in a big group like that. Really, I love teaching, I think is what it comes down to. After they got over their initial shyness, they asked some really good questions. A lot of them I expected, but were still interesting - they wanted to know if everyone in America owns a gun, if there's a lot of crime in America (like there is in CSI), they wanted to know what high school was like, and whether we really have cliques - this was something really interesting - they all seemed to agree that "cliques" in the American sense don't exist as much in Holland. Given what I've been told previously about the egalitarian nature of the Dutch, this seems to fit. They also didn't think that the Dutch had as much of an obsession with dieting, and being skinny as Americans, which was also interesting. I informed them that I am firmly on the border of the geek-nerd clique, by the way. So proud.

All-in-all, the visit was wonderful. Revitalizing, some might say. It was a beautiful fall day, too. God was just in his hour last Friday. My next school visit is to Groningen (in the far north of Holland) this upcoming Monday. I love it! It's such a perfect way to see all of Holland, get a break from work (not that I don't love my work, but still), and be able to do what I really love - teach!

Friday night, my friend Clement invited me to go with him to a "bockbierfestival." I'm not entirely sure what a "bock" is, but it's a little lighter than a stout and a little darker than a pale ale (technically a bock belongs to the lager family, I just looked it up). HA! I'm so beer savvy. In any case, it was quite fun. You had to buy a special glass for 3 euro, and then coins, also each for 3 euro. The coins could be used to fill your glass. I tried a porter, a "herfst" or fall bock, a wilde bock (that one was weird, slightly reminiscent of dirt and spicy things...), and a really mild bock whose name I cannot remember. I only spent 12 euro, but I got one of my drinks for free...on accident, I think I just sort of walked away and the counter person couldn't find me in the giant, raging crowd of people...In any case, by the end of the night, I had received three extra glasses, I'm not entirely sure how - I know two came from some older Dutch men who were like, "To the prettiest girl at the festival!" and one might have come from someone standing nearby who just didn't feel like returning hers... - Well, I had four by the end of the night! And you could turn the glasses back in for your 3 euro back. So, yes. I ended up not spending a dime, because I got 12 euro back. Hehe.

Clement. And someone who looks a wee bit like Anne Hathaway. It was packed, by the way. As one friend said, "It was like a crazy experiment to see how many people they could fit into such a small space..."

So, Friday was great. Saturday, I went to the lab in the morning to try out Spongers in the scanner - it worked fine - and afterward, I made my way to Haarlem to go have dinner with my friends Lizanne, Sara, and Lara, who all work in my lab. I'm going to have to start making up adjectives for how much I enjoyed the things I did this weekend - the visit to Lizanne's was absolutely splendiferous. ;)

Lizanne invited us all so that we could see her really nifty house (it's very narrow, one room on each floor - we are all really curious about what it used to be, because it has been there for a while, well over 80 years, I would say...). In the process of getting to her house from the train station, Lizanne, Sara and I took a walk around the city:

A Cheese Shop!

This store was so neat - they have all completely, 100% homemade body products, from deodorant, to face creams. So cool! Some Christmas gifts might be coming from here.

The beautiful, giant church in Haarlem.

A beautiful scene. Perfect capturing of Holland.

A leaning building.

"Thoughts from a bench in Holland"

When we finally got back to Lizanne's (we tried having me ride on the back of Lizanne's bike, but, well, I haven't mastered this skill yet), we ate some bread with a variety of jams, butters, creams, and sprinkles (The Dutch love their bread toppings), all of which were delicious. Sara (who is from Italy) and I especially loved a creamy peanut-butter like substance called Speculoos, which is a type of cookie - the spread is basically cookies mashed into butter - like if someone made a peanut butter from mashed Nutter Butters. Oh, it was good. Lizanne showed us all these pictures of her time abroad in Thailand - it was really impressive. She went to Thailand for a year when she was only 16! It was also really neat to look at her pictures and recognize some of the places she went as places that Jonathan also went when he lived in Thailand over the summer. We had falafel for dinner - it was really tasty. Sara and I got back to Utrecht around 1, which was quite late. Sunday, therefore, was spent cleaning the house and chilling out a bit. No homework...it's like a completely bizarre, amazing glance into what adult-life will be like!

The rest of this week has passed in relative peace. I'm running terribly low on funds, and yet I have a trip to the south of Holland to go see the water works this Saturday, and a fall party on Sunday! Let's hope I can make it into next week, when I get paid again! For now, this is everything! I will put up some more pictures, etc, later, when I have time. Oh, and to all my family and friends in Ohio, please don't get eaten by a wild animal. That is all!

Amsterdam! Josh Groban! Dutch!

Well hello there, my captive audience.

There is a lot to update you on. First and foremost, I got my residence permit last week, which means I'm totally legal now! Totally. I was really happy when I got it, though I must admit, because the letter was in Dutch, at first I was panicked that they had rejected me. But Google Translate came to the rescue (man, is that a neat service! I love it.)  and helped me to understand that, in fact, the International Department had granted me a residence permit till June 1st of next year. Hooray!

So, the best news with regard to my residence permit is that I can regale you, my adoring audience (I do flatter myself) with tales of my workplace! First of all, my workplace is a wonderful land of joy, and cake, and espresso. The NICHE (neuroimaging in children) lab is just an all around excellent place to work. Populated by grad students, post-docs, and Sarah Durston (the head of it all) it is one of those rare research groups where everyone gets along quite well both inside and outside the lab, and people actually collaborate on things. I love working there, basically. Oh, and they have an espresso machine. Like, a really fancy one. With a milk swoosher (what in the blazes is that called? A milk foamer? Anyway, it makes foam.). I have had to make serious personal limits to my coffee consumption because this thing is literally right next door. When I first started working in the lab, I went a bit mad, and had about four cups of this wonderful, nutty coffee in one day, which resulted in massive heart-racing, stomach-cramping discomfort. So, then I decided that I didn't want to go to an early grave, and that maybe one cup of espresso per day was good enough.

I currently am working on (and should have finished by the end of the week...but that's what I said last week...) programming (yes, PROGRAMMING) a task for children to play while they are in the fMRI scanner. The task is called Spongers, and it's based on what's called the Monetary Delay Incentive (MID - I know, so technical) task. Basically, kids see a screen with Spongebob and Patrick side by side. The choose one, and either get a small amount of money, or they choose one, and "lose" and don't get any money.


Let's talk about how mind-bogglingly, paradigm-shifting-ly difficult it is to program this simple, simple idea into a workable "video-game-esque" program. It is SO HARD. But! I am happy to say that in the past several weeks, I have learned how to program using a software called Presentation, and I have created a lovely video game. I will put pictures of this process below, and I expect you all to be duly impressed, because holy cow, I knew how to do NOTHING before I stepped foot in this lab, with regard to programming.

My workstation! Thrilling.

Sorry it's sideways. Lean your head and appreciate the complexity of the code!

The Oefenscanner! Also known as the practice scanner. With our sweet little elephant patient.

The thing you use in the scanner to respond to my task.

Spongers!

So, that's work. It's been going very well, and I look forward to going back to it every morning (which is a great feeling, I can tell you!).

As to my adventures this weekend! On Friday, I traveled to Amsterdam to film a short interview between myself and the head of the Fulbright program here in the Netherlands - Marcel - talking about my first few weeks here. Marcel basically asked four of the current Fulbrighters to give interviews now, in a couple of months, and at the end of our time here, about settling in, etc. The interview was fine, and afterward we had a very good, very long conversation about life, and he bought me lunch, which was very nice (though, it was so small, because we went to one of those really cool, high-end restaurants where the portions are super-tiny but super-artistic and delicious).

After we parted ways, I wandered into Amsterdam, looking for an open air market. I found it. And some coconuts.

Coconuts! With straws! Naturally, I had to buy one.

So, raw coconut milk is actually delicious. For about the first ten sips. Then I got sick to my stomach. My advice? Drink it in small portions, slowly. Very slowly. Preferably mixed with something else. But the fresh nutty flavor was amazing.

Albert Cuypstraat, a giant, open-air market.

Marketing!

More marketing!

So I bought these awesome pants, at this market. Which I didn't take a picture of, but which I assure you, were awesome. They look like this. Except cooler. And with black designs all up and down the legs.

They're called Harem Pants. And they are SUPER comfy. I wish I could buy about ten of them. As it is, some will be purchased, doubtless, for Christmas presents.

 Last, but CERTAINLY not least, I went to go see Josh Groban on Sunday. Oh, Josh. How I have loved thee, and thy adorable curly hair, and thy amazing, inspiring voice.

Basically, I got super lucky. I went on the website, having been reminded that there was a Josh Groban concert in Amsterdam soon, and found out a) the concert was in a week, and b) there was exactly ONE. TICKET. LEFT. So I literally bought the last ticket. The minute I paid for it, the website was like, "This concert is now sold out!" And! My ticket was in ROW 8. I was so close to him I could have..I dunno...leaped the stage or something! It was so amazing. I must have gotten VERY lucky, because the concert had been (apparently) sold out for months. Someone must have canceled right before I got online. In any case, I bought the ticket, and went to Amsterdam on Sunday, around 1.

I dressed very carefully. I went for the slightly nerdy, but sweet and cute look. (This all sounds so creepy as I write it, but I tell you, I have loved Josh Groban for ten years, and this was my chance, you know??)

When I got there, I quickly found his buses:

 Which I sat outside of for sometime, willing Josh to come out and greet me. Then I got a bit braver, and walked around to the back of the building, where I found a lot of ladies hanging around. I had found the place Josh was rumored to be arriving at.

So I chatted with some moms. And some grandmas. And we discussed our love of Josh. And I discussed my desire to be whisked away in his bus at the end of his concert...

The band arriving.

Apparently this giant dog thing is a Josh Groban-thing. I'm not enough of a super fan to know these things, I don't think...

After about three hours of waiting around with no Josh - you know what? I was a bit fed up. This is my fed-up face.

And yet another silly, yet fed-up, face. Note the glasses, which were intended as Josh-Groban catching magnets, drawing him into my similarly nerdy and deep soul. I am NOT a creeper. At all. ;)

Suddenly, Josh pulled in, on a bus! He waved, we waved back. Then they closed this big metal door, and Josh was gone. Such a tragic day for me and the moms.

But, we still had an awesome concert to look forward to! I went to dinner - they were playing Josh Groban music everywhere - and swifty left dinner to go inside the music hall.

I was flipping out when I saw how close my chair was. You know how close it was? SO CLOSE.

This is how happy I was. There was also a lot of Heineken. I will not lie. I mean, it was held at the Heineken Music Hall.

See how big it was? See how CLOSE I was?!

And then, the lights went down, and he emerged, and it was like...heaven. It was amazing. It was so much better in person than listening on a CD. It was visceral. And moving. And astonishing. I mean, the man's 30, and he's got this powerhouse voice. And he's funny. And he had the whole audience laughing at every break. Like, at one point, he gave this very interesting speech about his love life, ending with, "Yes, folks. I've had sex." Which, coming from him - the audience was howling.

I have a bunch of videos, too, but I'll post those in another blog, as this one is getting excessively long (looks like my programming script!).

But! I could not leave without telling you two things. The first is that Josh did FOUR encores. Each one more loudly received than the last. The last encore was the entire audience singing "You Raise Me Up" together. It was incredible. I was belting it. I even did the gospel-y parts. People gave me some funny looks. I did not care.

The second thing is, I got a ton of pictures of Josh! I got to meet him after the concert! (Not, like, formally, just as he was moving along, signing autographs, but still).

He was just as beautiful as he looks in his photographs.

Look how psyched I am! I mean, his hand touched my face!! Sadly, I did not get an autograph, opting to take photos instead.

My face. Josh's face. What more could you WANT?!

And the last one, before he was gone. Le sigh.

So, that was my Josh Groban adventure! Alas, I did not get to ride away into the night with him on his bus. But I'll settle for these totally rad photos and the amazing concert he gave. Till next time, right?!

I also started Dutch classes on Monday (Monday was a long day, seeing as I got back from Amsterdam at 1 AM on Sunday and had to get up at 7 on Monday). They went really well! Let's hope I learn lots of excellent fundamentals. The Dutch is getting better, by the way. I'm taking a trip to Barcelona in the spring (more on that later), and I'm having a really hard time separating the Spanish and Dutch! Oh, well. Everything in its own time. I'll recall the Spanish soon enough, I'm sure!