So! It's been an interesting last few weeks. I apologize for the delay in posts - I am finding myself extremely busy, with scanning, interviewing later in the day, going to the gym for a least an hour four times a week...
But, I have some lovely new photos, etc., to share with all of you.
The first come from a school visit I made to a wonderful little village called Ijmuiden. The school itself was houses in these stone buildings that looked really old, very classic and pre-Victorian era. I loved it. The students were lovely, and their teacher, Dalal, was very kind. They even gave me this beautiful bunch of tulips (appropriately white and pink as the school visit was on Valentine's Day).
In the last class, I had two very interesting things happen - one was that a very sweet kid asked me if I would be his Valentine, which I sadly had to decline, seeing as I am a happily partnered woman, and already have a Valentine, and the second was that when the class found out I could sing, they immediately started begging me to sing. Now, mind you, this is after hours of talking. So, I sang a really short intro to a song from Phantom of the Opera, after which, to my delight, as well as the teacher's, another student asked if she could sing too.
After the school visit (which was on an island-type thing), I took a unique mode of transportation to get home:
This is the "Fast Flying Ferry," appropriately named, because it does go quite fast across the water. I took it from Ijmuiden back to Amsterdam.
Between that school visit and now, I have really just been working - nothing too exciting, but then, yesterday, I did something really, really cool. I went with the ING (International Student Group) to a Dutch National Park. Now, in and of itself, going to a park may seem, I don't know, blah. But a National park is a different story. This National Park was called the Veluwezoom, and it was very big, and very, very beautiful. It looked just like Southeast Ohio. I LOVED IT. I mean, I miss many things here, but really high on the list is hiking, and exploring the woods, kayaking, etc. This was such a jolt of awesome-goodness for that feeling. I took a bike tour, along with a new friend, Hannah, who is from London (she's lovely), and 17 other ING folks. It. Was. Crazy. Up and down hills, winding, looping, huge vistas, close, dense forests, dunes, trees, and fresh, fresh air everywhere. Now, you have to realize, most of the Netherlands is completely flat. Going somewhere where there were hills - well, it was very exciting. The whole day was thrilling. Like being reminded of how alive you are, how good it feels to be active.
Here are some pictures of the day, and some videos, too!
A graveyard for Dutch soldiers in WWII (there was a huge battle near the park we were going to)
Dis muh fwend.
A snuggle/story-reading circle. This is genius.
The sheep field.
All the baby lambs!!!
I am so proud that I biked to the top of this hill!
This is the area where people can bring their dogs to run about freely - all the tan ground is sand! This place used to be under glaciers, which left huge sand deposits when they left. Crazy!
Aforementioned doggeh.
A forest-fire viewing tower
Two roads diverged in a wood..
Great Scott! What's that?!
Close.
Closer
Even closer...
Yep. Really close to this cow (it's a Scottish cow) on muh bike. His name was William. Hello there, chap. Nice horns.
Warning: Wild rooster. I have no idea what this actually is. Wild rooster? Are they so fierce?
So, that was my very exciting Saturday. Today was a scan day, which basically means I spent all day in the lab (yes, on a Sunday), doing practice scans, and sitting in on real scans, back and forth, etc, etc. Tomorrow I'll look at the data. Hopefully it's good! It's always hard to sit there and watch the scans happening for hours and know that even if you scan all day, if the kids don't lie still, your data will be mostly useless...
Now, on to next week! I am taking off Wednesday to have a nice vacation day, where I can cook and laze about, paint my fingernails, maybe give myself a haircut...
I wish all of you the best! I miss everyone, as usual. Looking forward to seeing my good friend Rachel in a few weeks here - when we will be taking a totally awesome, exciting trip to London! And Wales! Doctor Who! VERY cool. Till then, my lovely family and friends.
So, this week has been full of events, busy and hectic, and ultimately good.
Of note, on Thursday, I gave my speech to the group of high school counselors and organizers the Fulbright Center had brought together - the group was very small, not more than ten people in total - but the speech went very well, and when it was done, everyone had good questions, and we had an excellent discussion about what I had talked about. One of the people in attendance told me it was an "inspiring, excellent presentation." So I take that as a sign that it went well! I love giving talks like that. Here are the promised photos of the day! Alas, I could not ask someone to film the whole thing - if only I had a tripod, I could have stood the camera on it! But, as it was, I will leave how I spoke to your imagination, and give you these photos as consolation.
My face is really funny in this photo if you look close. I don't remember what I was talking about!
Thursday afternoon, I headed back to Utrecht to exchange some emails (about a Skype chat) with a potential adviser for graduate school, which is very exciting. The adviser is from The University of Colorado, Boulder. If you've never looked at pictures of the school or the area before, I encourage you to do that. My goodness, is it a beautiful place. All brick and stone buildings, nestled right beneath the Rocky Mountains. Breath-taking. And when I think about all the Farmer's Markets, and hiking, and kayaking, and bike-riding, man. I just think it would be the greatest adventure. So, we'll see what happens with that. I'm just so excited that there is even a possibility!
Thursday night, I went to dinner-meeting with my lab. We hosted another lab from Germany on Thursday and Friday, and I missed most of Thursday because of the speech, but I'm glad I got to go to the dinner and meet the German lab group.
At dinner, they had these odd little pipettes with olive oil. Very "modern gustatory"
The tasty bread for the pipette-olive-oil
Sara, the other international student in my lab. She is from Italy.
The German lab side of the table
The NICHE lab side of the table.
I love getting free food, especially good, delicious free food, but the dinner was almost three and a half hours long! It was quite a wait (mostly because we had so many people). I went home and was very happy to just get back and be able to read my book.
Friday I spent with my lab and the German lab, doing neat "group-science-activities" like having round-table discussions about relevant issues in psychology and neuroscience research. It was really great. At the end of the day, we put up the sheets where we had put our ideas about a variety of topics (including things like, "If I had unlimited funding, I would:") and talked about the topics with the most "likes," indicated by little post-it notes.
Then, on Friday afternoon, and pretty much all day on Saturday, I went ice-skating on the canals! I am so glad I bought a pair of ice skates (for a delicious 8 euro) a week or two ago. They proved very useful, and very, very fun! Here are some of my favorite videos and pictures.
The Canal, and the paths cleared for skaters.
The view from the end of the canal, and if you turn around on this spot:
That's the line of houses that my house is in! See how close it was!?
Boats frozen into the canal. So bizarre. Like a skating rink grew up around boats, and houses on the water...
Clement, looking at a suspicious crack in a side-canal.
So excited to skate!
I brought some hot chocolate to share! So tasty, and we had a thermos, so it was boiling hot when we finally brought it out - exactly what you want when it's chiller outside!
And here are some videos! Enjoy!
Sunday has been a good day - trying to get back into my running routine, eating leftovers from the dinner I made with Clement and Mary after skating yesterday (Potato and Carmelized Onion Tart and Little, Hand Pumpkin Pies), and introducing a new potential housemate to the house. Tomorrow, it's back to work, and a school visit on Tuesday, and hopefully recruiting ten and a half million participants and scanning them before May...
