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But, I’ve officially graduated. The diploma is mine, as evidenced in the attached picture where I am signing it as is part of Dutch tradition. And no cap and gowns here in Holland…sad:-( But, it was still a lovely day with a roughly 3 hour ceremony to acknowledge the 27 students present who were graduating and the other 15 not present. This was followed by a Borrel (drinks) to celebrate, and then one last hurray at our student pub, GeoVUsie (80 euro cent drinks kept us quite happy this past year, but the price just went up for the students this year….90 euro cents….we got out just in time:-)). 13241321

The next evening Jeff and I hosted my classmates at our flat for a “Last Bash” and was it ever! 1294 1297 We were amazed how many people we could fit into our smaller apartment in the city. Originally we figured by midnight we’d all head out to a club for some dancing, but since people brought so much alcohol the party went on till after 2am.

A couple strange events occurred that evening. First, was Milena spilling wine on the floor which took the shape of a skull! 13091312We of course had to properly honor this with candles and many pictures. Then, perhaps the most bizarre happening of the evening…my husband, one Jeff McLennan, proceeded to PASS OUT just after midnight. 1318He did so on top of everyone’s coats in our bedroom. There was much discussion about sharpie markers, shaving cream, inappropriate pictures, but in the end we all just laughed at him. Oh, and rolled him over to get the coats!

Anywho, just after 2am when the alcohol was running dry we finally got the party to leave the apartment and head out for some much needed dancing. I proceeded to leave Jeff on the bed and went dancing with friends till the bar closed at 4am. Then it was falafel and home to bed with a few house guests sleeping over.

We woke the next morning to a trashed apartment. But those fabulous house guests pitched in with the clean-up….a good thing because the maid stopped by early, only spoke Dutch and was insistent on coming in to clean. I am trying to sign to her that we had a party, the place is trashed, and we would like to clean it up before she comes in to do her cleaning. Finally, Xander translated and the maid started her cleaning upstairs (which she usually does, but for some reason wanted to stop in our place first that day). I mean she literally knocked on our door about two seconds after I had told Anne, Daniel and Xander that we had about 2 hours to clean up before the maid would arrive. Doh!

Well four bags of garbage later, all surfaces had been sufficiently cleaned of empty and full beer cans, wine glasses, liquor bottles, and perhaps some recreational drugs legal in Amsterdam. Even today a day later, I discovered a beer can on a window ledge (outside) that we had missed yesterday. Though I had found the beer cans stuck down in the plants on the balcony! Anywho, to finish our party cleansing we did a quick mopping of the floor and then we all vacated the apartment for some much needed greasy breakfast consumption. It was a beautiful sunny day in Amsterdam so we walked around for a little while before coming back to a VERY CLEAN apartment (did I ever mention how nice a maid service is!?!) and RELAXATION!

Today, it is back to that bloody thesis! Hope to be done at the end of October. Must really force myself to leave the apartment for the library during the week or I will never finish!

(Click on any of the photos to see more pics. To view the entire Graduation and Party albums go to my Facebook page Staci Putney McLennan and click on albums!)

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.

-Unknown

But, Jeff and I did find a little time to get into the holiday spirit. One day while at the University canteen, I heard Christmas music (back home traditional music) and woah did that ever put me in the spirit. I started singing right there! My countdown to coming home, seeing family & friends, kitties, and hopefully snow (got that wish) began!

So, in order to get us in the spirit (and yes, perhaps as a diversion from studying-I have been known to procrastinate in my day), and because buying a Christmas tree made little sense as we would be out of the country, I decided we would need to do the next best thing……decorate the large, fake ficus tree in our living room.

Now there are a few things to consider in this equation: 1) we had limited resources and buying ornaments which we would later need to ship home seemed like an ill-advised decision, 2) our parents do not live on the same continent so we couldn’t just borrow some of their decorations, 3) stealing ornaments from the decorated tree in the mall would NOT be in the Christmas spirit, and 4) I have NEVER, nor will I now ever, claim to have inherited the Martha Stewart gene.

Alas, here I sat one night looking at that sad, dusty, unsuspecting tree in the corner of our living room, and like the childish spirit rising up inside of me, I chose to revert to early adolescence and MAKE paper snowflakes. The one thing we did have on hand was paper for our printer (just the perfect shade of snowflake white) and scissors. You might be thinking that the first thing a person would (should) do in such a situation is google “how to make paper snowflakes.” Well, I was not this smart and instead thought I could summon my early childhood snowflake crafting skill days! I was wrong. So very, very wrong!

I proceeded to make several small, odd shaped, down right ugly paper ornaments which I will not malign by calling snowflakes. When Jeff saw what I was doing, and took pity on me (I think that: 1) he knew I was homesick, 2) he knows how much I LOVE Christmas time, and 3) he realized my art 101 creations were quite pathetic and he could do better), he kindly pulled up a chair and started cutting himself. I have to admit I was quite shocked by this, and then incredibly touched. You know how you have moments where you are overwhelmed with love for a person, when it kind of takes your breath away? Well, that was one of those moments.

Now, granted the jerk, Picasso that he was he began making absolutely beautiful snowflakes. They became more and more elaborate as he rediscovered his prepubescent art years. They were good. No, they were great!! My husband has an artistic side (who knew?). If you check out the gallery, I am sure you can pick out his from mine! But I didn’t care. I had such fun decorating our over-sized ficus tree with paper snowflakes for our first Christmas in Amsterdam (or season, if not the actual day). It became a very fun evening. And gave us a little Christmas here.

The other picture in this post was from a great little pub we stumbled across on Nieuwmarkt one Saturday evening when just the two of us went out for dinner. In the back of the pub was this fantastic snow scene that reminded me instantly of the Santa’s North Pole at the downtown Lazarus where Mom and Dad would take Keri and I when we were little. I loved that place. It was a wonderland. And this little pub in Amsterdam took me back there if only in spirit.

Anywho, I hope you all had a fabulous holiday. Enjoy the picture gallery and try not to laugh to hard at my lame artwork! I will soon post an update from our time in the States and pics from our Christmas back home!

So, please click on the following pictures to access 3 photo albums (Bon Voyage Party, Trip Across the Big Blue Ocean and Our Arrival in Europe). Or you can click on August under the Archives menu bar to the right if you want to go to the original posts with updates.

Dank u wel.

Now I have eaten pierogies since I can remember. My Grandma Sue, Dad’s mother, used to make them for holidays. When she stopped making them, we could rely on the stada babas at St. Josephette’s in Cleveland to have delicious batches of homemade pierogies on hand. We just had to be sure to head into town on a Thursday or Friday afternoon. Or beg locals to bring us shipments when they came to Columbus (thanks Chip and Tricia). Of course there was always Mrs. T’s in the frozen food isle at the grocery store.

This pierogi making lesson came about during the Volgermeer bike excursion. On that long trip home, I got to talking with a new girl in class, Marta. She is here in Amsterdam on an exchange program for 4 months. When I learned she was from Poland my next question was about pierogies. I have been trying to find them in this city to no avail. Well, I got one better, lovely Marta said she would teach me how to make them. She was going home to Poland in a week and would bring back the essential Polish white cheese.

So, now I have learned how to make pierogies from full-blooded Polish girls! That is right, Staci took Pierogi Making 101 with experts straight from the homeland. My fabulous teachers were Marta and Anna, along with a friend of theirs Jolanta who stopped by to eat the rewards but also joined in the task. Earlier that week when I received an email from Marta telling me to be prepared to work, as I would be doing it all and they would supervise, I was both nervous and excited. Fortunately, the girls were patient and fun teachers who did help out but made sure I learned each step. And they were resourceful. When the rolling pin was nowhere to be found, a SPA water bottle was substituted. Click on the picture to check out the photo gallery.

So, last Friday was P-day (Pierogi Day). I earned my Polish merit badge by learning to make pierogies from 3 proper Polish girls. Now it was so entertaining to hear Marta, Anna and Jolanta talk about how their grandmothers and mothers each had their own way of preparing pierogies. And we quickly learned the meaning of too many cooks in the kitchen, as they each had their opinion of what should be stuffed inside, how the pierogi dough should be rolled and then sealed.

Sealing the filling in the dough is a key element of this process. If the seal isn’t tight the filling will leak out when you boil the pierogies. So here is a quick summary of techniques for sealing pierogies: 1st is the easy fork press option for beginners (which I will have you know I DID NOT resort to), 2nd is when you repeatedly roll over the dough in a series of ribbons, and the 3rd technique is pinching sections of dough between your fingers to make ridges (this was the winner of the night).

Now, I’ve been told some of the grandmothers individually roll out the dough in small pieces (that amazingly are the same size every time) and fill from there. Other grandmothers roll the dough in a big section and use a glass to cut the dough. We eventually switched to this time saving option.

Once all the pierogies were assembled we began dropping groups in boiling water till they floated. We added butter and onions and consumed, consumed and consumed some more. Ah, the fruits (potatoes) of our labor were glorious.

I suspect it would take several attempts to get your best technique and filling perfected. For my first attempt, I would say they were delicious! Hopefully, I can replicate this when I come home over the holidays!

So, that morning I bike 15 minutes to meet some students at Uilenstede (otherwise known as the slum housing for students where Jeff and I lived for 5 whole days). Sergi from Barcelona has offered to be our fearless leader as he has lived here for several months and knows how to get to CS (central station) by bike. The other members of the biking crew are Angela from Peru, Giovanni from Mexico, and Sayaka from Japan. Now mind you that Angela and Giovanni have not ridden a bike in YEARS and Sayaka has a really crummy bike that requires double the effort. Off we go and Sergi quickly realizes his usual trip of 25 minutes is not gonna happen. The group repeatedly gets separated by traffic lights, slow riding, near crashes with professional Dutch bikers and general chaos of keeping a group of dysfunctional bike riding non-Dutch people together.

All this while I am mesmerized to be seeing the city from this view. I am traveling new streets, seeing buildings, canals and parks that I haven’t passed on my treks through Amsterdam to date. It was beautiful. And fairly easy considering streets are interwoven with bike paths, so while you need to be brave to ride the roads with cars (more often other bikers are the bigger concern or aimless tourists who wandered onto bike paths unsuspectingly – hint, the red paths are for the bikes!) you are pretty safe to also enjoy the scenery.

Well, 45 minutes later we arrive at CS and take the ferry to north Amsterdam. From here the true biking begins. We pass through a small suburb and then hit the typical Dutch countryside. Lots of green space, canals, polders (low lying areas reclaimed from water), sheep, cows, horses, and cute little towns with brick houses, orange roofs and tiny gardens. It was a beautiful day, not too hot. Sun here and there but no rain to be seen! We were lucky. We biked to the waste site of Volgermeer and had another presentation by the reclamation company. Then we biked to Marken, a coastal town off IJ-meer that is known by tourists for its green wooden houses. Extremely quaint. I even managed to find a nice kitty cat that let me pet it for a while. We ate herring (ok, the Dutch people ate herring, I watched, then ate a beer and oude kaas broodje (old cheese sandwich)). We sunned ourselves along this harbor and relaxed.

About 1 1/2 hours later we started the bike ride home. About one hour into this ride it became clear just how far we had ridden…and how much further we had to go!!! We were traveling the path along the river at this point but couldn’t even catch a glimpse of Amsterdam. Finally, we know we are getting close when we see a bus stop. But alas, the map proves we still have kilometers and kilometers to go. At this point some of us were considering taking the ferry back to CS and taking the metro home, but we decided to suck it up as a group and we all headed into the city via a bridge that the local Dutchies lead us across. Our new local tour guides (fellow classmates) lead a group of 20 of us through the city from the northeast. At this point, my ass is screaming, though my legs are hanging in there. I am not alone as other students are also ready to call it a day. Eventually, we make it back to school where the younger of us separate to go play some football (soccer) and the smarter of us go home!

So, just how far did this excursion take us you ask? Well, I left my house at 8:30am. I got home at 5:30pm. I would say about 2 1/2 hours of that was NOT biking. So, I have mapped the general area we traveled. This map gives you a taste
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I traveled from Amstelveen to Central Station to Marken (though we went straight north first) then back down again. In essence we biked 75 km or 46 miles! Yes, 46 freaking miles! My ankle and ass took a few days to recover. But, I wouldn’t trade that day for anything. It was beautiful. I saw a side of Amsterdam I would probably never have discovered on my own. I got the chance to ride and chat with tons of classmates while enjoying beautiful scenery. It was amazing. I honestly thought the next day my legs would just turn into ripples of muscle like FloJo. Well, they may have felt like that for a few days (internally of course) but the external conversion didn’t transpire. Damn. Guess I will need to do 75km biking excursions regularly to get that look!

It would take another 20 years before Amsterdam, the Netherlands and residents agreed upon a cleanup plan. This plan is now being implemented and should be finished in the next 5 years. The engineers working on the project presented to our class prior to our excursion to the site. The reclamation involves covering up the waste site with a plastic liner, including gas lines to vent the methane, adding soil layers and building a series of small ponds which will circulate water within the system. Outside the confinement area monitoring wells are set up to track pollutant levels in the water tables in the “safe” area. Eventually, the site is planned to be a “natural area” where you could take your kids and dog for a walk! Just pray those monitoring wells and liner are really working!

Ok, ok perhaps you don’t want to know the history of this waste site. I was just somewhat dumbfounded that there was a 20 year gap in action! They are using soil from the metro line being developed under the channel to north Amsterdam to cover the waste dump. Some 2.3 million cubic meters of soil will be used on the site.

Other days, I ride to school on my bike in the rain with gray skies blocking out the sun and think, hmmm what is the weather like in Ohio right now? or anywhere but here? So after repeatedly getting drenched, I decided to try Dutch girl impersonation #2, riding bike with umbrella! Well, I quickly learned that if the rain is coming down with any sort of strength an umbrella is fruitless, as the rain likes to change angles every few seconds. Combine that with strong winds and you truly take your life into your own hands with this stunt! Needless to say, I arrived at school nearly as drenched as if I had left the umbrella at home. Impersonation #3 was going to HEMA and buying a rain suit! I am sure you will wanna see pics of me in that!

Anywho, biking can mostly be a treat. There are some gorgeous canal views just on my bike ride to school. There are lots of natural areas since we are living south of Amsterdam proper. I see herons all the time. Absolutely gorgeous. They sit on the bridges of the bike path, peering down into the water below looking for lunch. In fact, I’ve even seen them in the grassy fields off the bike path picking up unsuspecting field mice with their long thin bills. Fortunately, my gawking and neck craning to view them has not resulted in an accident, yet! I’ve gotta say I enjoy my bike and surprisingly have not missed my car at all! Ah the joys of a bike friendly town.

So at this point in the story, we’ve been in The Netherlands 5 days. In that time, we’ve moved into and out of one apartment and moved into a second. We don’t have a bank account, cable or internet access. We do have a pre-paid mobile phone thanks to Jon, and there’s an open wireless internet connection in the neighborhood that we’ve been leeching from (thanks neighbor,) so we’re not totally out of contact, but it sure feels like it.

I should mention here that it is pretty tough to get anything done without a bank account. And you can’t get a bank account without a residency permit, which we don’t have at this point. (In fact, Staci won’t be getting that until Sept. 19, I think.) The university was helpful in that they’ve made arrangements with a local branch of the largest bank in The Netherlands so that students can open an account without a residency permit, due to the university vouching for the students. After finding this out, we immediately went to the bank to open an account, only to find out that we wouldn’t be getting our account information right away. Staci had to fill a form and submit a bunch of paperwork, which was fine as we were prepared, but then the bank had to send the application, etc. off for processing and we’d receive our account information in the mail in 5-7 business days.

Ok, so more waiting, which I guess isn’t so bad, if you have a mail key to the mail box. Have I mentioned that yet? When we moved into the new place, the rental agency didn’t have the keys for the mailbox, storage room or garbage room. The rental agent said the owner would be in touch as they had the keys for that. Once we finally got in touch with the owner (who it turns out wasn’t the owner but the owner’s business partner,) he said the keys should be with the rental agency. After much back and forth over many days, it was determined that the rental company did not have the keys, and the owner only had the mail key as the previous tenant had left with the garbage and storage keys.

To top all of this off, the owner’s partner was leaving for South America for a week and couldn’t get us the mail key until he got back. Great. Fortunately, enough mail had stacked up in the mailbox that Staci cold reach through the slot and pull some mail out, so we were able to get our bank account information (sans ATM card or online banking.) Once we had that, it was time to order cable and internet.

We ordered cable, phone and internet on August 31, but the cable company said it can take up to 3 weeks to deliver the cable box, modem and phone to the house via postal service. I opted for self-installation, though I was under the impression only the cable modem was going to be installed by me. Turns out I was wrong. A letter received by us (in Dutch) was mis-translated (by me) using online tools. Staci had a classmate translate it and confirmed that everything was going to be installed by me. Oh well, should be easy enough when it comes. “When” being the key word. It can come any time between now and Sept 21. Hopefully it comes soon, because I’m going out of my mind leeching off a weak, open connection in the neighborhood. (Thanks ‘Default’, whoever you are. Hopefully my browsing habits haven’t gotten you in trouble or slowed your network down.)

So as of today, that’s where our saga stands. No cable, home phone or internet access, a bank account without an ATM card or online banking and no key to our private storage. The ATM cards are on the way and should be delivered within the next couple of days (we hope.) We won’t have access to online banking until we get our ATM cards because they’re needed to sign up so we can get the code generator that they’ll send us once we apply for it. It’s a vicious, ever-ending cycle it seems. I think we’ll be all settled by November. On the bright-side, we’re in a nice place and having an adventure in a foreign land. Once everything gets settled, I’m sure things will be great.