A week of singing

I'll blog about last weeks choir concerts in a bit. Here is a little video of last weeks choral society's concert of Bach's Weinachts Oratorium to start with. Tilt your head and enjoy :)

Weekend with Wilbert

Hurray! Finally I got to show Wilbert where I live, where I go to class, to study, to shop, to drink beer, etc etc.

We speak (almost) every day on msn or skype but still it was weird that he did not have an actual idea of what it looks like around here. And so I was very happy that he came to spend a weekend with me (next to all the more obvious reasons of why you would want to see your boyfriend).
He arrived one day after our one Year aniversary (aaaaaw), I went to pick him up at Edinburgh airport. After having a very festive Toad in the Hole (for the neccesary cultural education) we spent the night on the Royal Mile.

Visiting Edinburgh castle is an experience...First you have to stand in line for about an hour and pay an obscene amount of money. But then the fun begins. The views from the castle are great and the amount of stuff that is there to see is enormous. We ended up seing two of the museums and the chapel and walking up and down the hills 300 times (it was FREEZING, but fortunately the hillsides weren't iced over) and then all of a sudden 3 hours had gone.

After picking up our bags we took the train up to Glasgow. That was actually the first time I took the train here (I went by bus on the way there) and it was quite good :) Nice hilly countryside passing by and the smell of chips and vinegar in the air. And it takes you only 45 minutes by train to go from Glasgow to Edinburgh.

The next two days I tried to show him everything I know about the city, mostly in the West End and the city centre. Luckily we didn't have much rain althoug it was pretty cold at times.

In the West End we spent some time in the Botanics (I hadn't been ín the glass houses before...althoug walk past them almost daily) and at the Hunterian museum in the Uni. As expected Wilbert was most impressed by the University (en terecht..) and said he 'wouldn't mind studying here', hihi.

On Saturday we had dinner at Annemieke's house. It was nice for Wilbert to meet them, since they are sort of my 'home-base' here.

When walking around the city centre we ended up in a little Christmas market with stalls where they sell mulled wine and bratwurst and that sort of stuff. I said 'if they would sell poffertjes here, I would definitely get them...' With the idea, of course, that they really wouldn't be selling poffertjes on a Christmas market in Glasgow. We seriously take two steps after I said this and we see a stall where they are selling 'traditional Dutch tiny pancakes' and belgian waffles.

WHAT? That was just very weird... Of couse I had to buy them, because of what I'd said before.

We end up talking to the lady that makes them, first in english then, after we realise we are all Dutch, in Dutch. She asks us if we are on holiday and I tell her I live here, after which she immediately offers me a job! Since I'm going home for Christmas and have an essay to turn in this week, I don't think I'll go back there to help her, although she did offer me unlimited poffertjes....hmmm.

We also visited the People's palace, which was new for me (and not extremely interesting) and Wilbert met some of my friends when we went to Waxy O'Connor's on Sunday evening. On Monday we did some serious shopping and started to get a bit depressed about the next day, when he was leaving again... So Tuesday duly sucked because of that. I had class so I couldn't take him to Edinburgh. I could bring him to Queen street station in Glasgow and then take the subway back up to class.

Truly a sucky day. Anyway, we had a lot of fun that weekend. I am so happy that it wasn't weird to have him here and that the only 'not so nice' thing was that he eventually had to leave again. No worries though, I'm still having fun here and enjoying (most of) it.

In the last couple of days some things in my course fell apart, with my head professor telling us he is leaving in February (excuse me???). The crisis is averted a bit after having a meeting with him yesterday. I'll keep you posted. The talk of going home earlier than expected has died down a bit, although I was quite close in the last couple of days.

Guiness.....ew. :)

Bridal weekend

Shopping for a wedding dress is FUN!

My mom and her best friend came over to stay with Annemieke so we could spend a whole weekend shopping for a wedding dress. Not for me obviously (though sometimes the 'little girl' side of my brain took over) but for my mother who is getting married on the 21 of March.

The weekend was so much fun. We didn't end up actually buying a dress, but at least my mom hs an idea now of what she wants. Most of the weekend was spent talking and eating, which is always good if you ask me.

I'm uploading some pictures here to illustrate the general happiness and fun times we had. I still have some weekends to cover in this blog ánd I have an essay to turn in next week, so no big blogging shall be done (probably...although procrastination is always around the corner..) until after the 16th, when I will be in Holland for Christmas! Yay!

So some pictures and tiny stories will have to do for now!

The infamous Sub-Pub-Crawl

Met Karen en Marieke na de schotse pizza :)

Zie het voor je:

Éen metrolijn, vijftien metrostations, dus vijftien pubs, één middag.

De metro hier houdt er om 11 uur mee op, dus als je een metro kroegentocht wilt kunnen afmaken moet je om 2 uur smiddags beginnen.

Op zich al bizar om te bedenken dat íeder metro station, of ie nou in een woonwijk of naast een snelweg ligt, hier binnen 100 meter een pub heeft...Britten.

De regels zijn simpel (en toch erg ingewikkeld soms):
* In iedere pub moet je een alcoholische drank tot je nemen.
* In de metro mag je niet zitten en niets vasthouden behalve de mensen met wie je op de crawl bent.

Variaties hierop zijn: deze metro rit op één been, of hangend aan de stang zonder dat je voeten de grond raken.

Topdag.

Mijn Finse vriendinnetje Meri was jarig, dus dat was een goede reden om ons met 15 mensen op 15 pubs te storten. Ik had me voorgenomen een 'paar' pubs mee te gaan en me daarna weer op mijn essay te storten. Na 9 pubs heb ik het opgegeven en zijn Karen en haar vriendin die over was, Marieke, gaan eten bij een italiaans restaurant in de stad.

Er zijn véél foto's gemaakt die dag. Niet met mijn camera though, dus ik steel van anderen :)

Just hangin' on the subway...

Ibrox stadium bar

Met Fredrik en Abby. (Abby! You're in my blog! Hullo! :P)
And yes I stole your pictures...if only because they're hilarious. Didn't take the worst ones though :)

Jarige Meri en Abby

The Day with Men on Boats

Karen and me had the opportunity to attend a 'borrel' (social evening) on a huge Dutch Navy ship a couple of weeks ago. Annemieke had gotten invited to this evening since the commander of the Dutch maritime forces is married to her cousin and she is a member of the Dutch community here in Glasgow. But since she was not going to be in Glasgow that evening she had asked the Dutch consulate if it was okay if she sent two Dutch students instead...
Karen was very excited when I invited her :) Soon we called the approaching day of the borrel the Day with Men on Boats.

The borrel was to be held on the HNLMS Rotterdam, one of the largest ships in the Dutch fleet. (http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/rotterdam/) You should realise that there is a staff on this ship of about 150 and the ship is designed to accommodate a marine battalion of up to 620 troops. The ship can also transport 160 armoured landing vehicles and has space in its hangar for 6 helicopters.
Get it? It's BIG.

I had told my grandfather that I was going on this ship and he was almost as excited as Karen and I :) He made sure I promised him to tell the officers we would meet that my grandfather had been 'one of them' and that I had Navy blood running through my veins. And of course I did. Since Karen and me were the only females under 40 there without a uniform on the young officers found us surprisingly fast ;)
The social was held literally in between the landing vehicals.

I remember feeling very comfortable there. I found out that I know a lot more about the navy and the army then I had realised before. I was actually quite proud I was able to joke with them about the red stripe on the marines' trousers and silly inside info like that. I must have learnt a lot from my grandfathers old stories and the experiences in the army or navy of other men close to me.
I'm probably going to sound weird here, but I sort of felt my grandmother there. I felt she was proud of me and happy that I could see part of their lives and the position she had often been in as an 'outsider' woman on a Navy ship. I could vey clearly picture her feeling as comfortable there as I was standing between these young officers.
Anyway! I was very curious to see the rest of the ship and fortunately one of the officers we'd met could show us most of it. As said before, it is HUGE. It is as big as a skyscraper and contains a whole world. We saw everything, from the kitchens, the sleeping quarters and the hospitalwing to the platform and the guns. Of course we also had to meet the commander of the forces. When asking our new officer friends which one of the uniformed people he was they dropped their jaws and were impressed when we went up to him to introduce ourselves. 'Do you know him??' Well...he's family of a friend, so now we do :)




The ship had been on a training mission in the two weeks before, so this was the first evening most of the staff and marines had a night off. The official social where we were at had most of the officers there but obviously there were about 600 other people there too that were having small parties all over the ship. Walking up onto the bridge with two girls at their side probably made the two officers with us quite popular to the guys having their party there, haha.
We ended up taking three of the guys (who had changed their uniforms for normal clothes...pity but understandable :P) back up to the West End with us to show them some of the places students here go out in. We ended up having a lot of fun and having tea at my place in the middle of the night accompanied by strange conversations about Ikea foods and Karen leaving in a cab with all three of them :)
Walking the streets of Glasgow at night seems a lot less scary with three Navy guys walking next to you.

Getting comfortable, studying

Ofcourse I'm studying here (oh really?) so that is also taking up some of my possible boredom time :). I am now taking two classes,
- Approaches to Religious Pluralism and
- Literary and Artistic Approaches to Sacred Texts

Last week I had my first presentation for my Pluralism class. The girl that was supposed to do the presentation this week dropped out of the class...so there was an open space. I offered to do it, so after working on it this weekend in Holland, and taking twice as long as planned, (thanks to a crashing Word Document......grrr) I went to class last Tuestday quite confident and happy with my five-page long presentation on an article on Islamic theology of religions.
Our professor starts the class with saying that he has invited a guest to today's class, as he is an expert on the topic. So he introduces the Head Imam of the Scottish Shia Muslim community to the class.
My jaw drops. Am I suposed to do my tiny amateur presentation on Islamic ideas of other religions in front of this man? This man that could loosly be compared to a Catholic Archbishop? Right....breathe....focus....
No biggie, I'm only going to introduce the ideas of the man that wrote the article, no personal opinions or theory-posing yet, so I'll be fine.
And I was fine, thankfully! Before I started my presentation I asked the Imam to help me or correct me wherever he felt the need, which he only did to help me pronounce a couple of Arabic words and names of theologians. He was happy with the rest. Phiew.
In the discussion following my presentation it was very interesting to hear him speak about his religion. You don't often get to meet someone so involved or with so much authority on such a topic and it was inspiring to hear him speak.
And I mean inspiring in a 'I'm happy I'm studying this'-way, not neccesarily in a 'I'm converting to Islam tomorrow'-way.

Turns out that he did the Masters programme that I am doing now last year, and is still working on his thesis. I think it's great that he is involved in Inter-faith relations like that. Yup, worth big 'thanks for helping save the human race'-points in my book.

Getting comfortable, singing

Odd....You'd think that when you don't feel well and are mostly hanging out at home, you would find the inspiration to blog in boredom...but no! (Don't worry, I just have the flu, I expect it to go away soon (You hear me? Go away!))
I seem to be getting better at doing nothing here :) And I have to say that I quite like it.

Before I left Holland I prepared a huge pile of files to help me get through any possible moments of boredom or illness or general 'the weather sucks so I'll stay inside'-days.
My newborn laptop (which is my pride and joy) was stocked full of movies, series and ALL of my music. Those of you who know me and my obsession of music....you'll know how long it took me to get all of my music on this tiny computer. (Taking and extra suitcase for my cds just seemed a bit silly...). Ofcourse I use my music every day. Means of communication with home and new found friends like msn, facebook and skype are also used daily. Still....most of the 'possible boredom-pile' remains untouched. Fortunately ofcourse :) this means that I'm having a good time and I have enough to do to keep me from being bored.

Like my choirs! I am so happy I found two groups of people to share my music obsessions with :) Although one choir is annoying because of a weird director and wailing old ladies and the other's still a bit scary because the level is very high and I'm not used to singing in such a small 'girls only' group (I miss basses....) I am still extremely happy with having al least that one night of hard-core singing in my week. I know I would have started to show some odd detox symptoms by now if I hadn't.

Concerts are already starting to appear on the horizon, on the 30th of November and the 7th of December. The first one will be the Choral Society one, Bach's Weinachts Oratorium. The one on the seventh is the Madrigirls Advent service/concert. That last concert is at the Uni's Memorial Chapel. We have our rehearsals there too, and the chapel is broadcasted 24/7 on the internet! http://mcu.gla.ac.uk/chapel-live.html So if you're interested, you can listen to our rehearsals on Thursdays from half past 7 'till 9 (British time).

I do really miss my Dutch choir though...I miss Gilles as a director and I miss my friends and I miss getting lost in the music on monday evenings. I'm not really 'getting lost' yet. I am still getting used to the different sound of the choirs and the different directors. Hm, it's exciting, I'll get used to it sooner or later.

Bach's Weinachts Oratorium is pretty self explanatory. For the Madrigirls concert we're doing some very interesting pieces. We're singing in English, Latin, Finnish and Norwegian :) Great fun. We;ve got a couple of contemporary pieces, a couple of very old ones and some compositions done by our director (who is great by the way, she's really nice and has a beautiful voice).

That is one of the things that are important to me it seems, the voice of the director! Maybe that's weird...but I realised that when I came here. If I don't like the director's voice I immediately get annoyed. Luckily, in retrospect, I liked Gilles' voice. Otherwise I'd have been in agony for four years, haha.

Exploring the city, going to church and screaming in pubs

Your average weekend here in Glasgow ;)

Even though I only have class twice a week, I still find myself doing the most interesting things in weekends. Like last weekend, which started with going to the city centre with Jenny and Allison.

Walking down Buchanan street is always a special experience, since it seems to be crowded all the time. This Saturay it was different though. An extreme amount of guys in kilts carrying Scottish flags walking around and singing....that can mean only two things: either the Scots got their independence back ór there is a football game on.

The last option seemed to be the case. Turns out Scotland would be playing the Norwegians that afternoon (hence the other groups of red/white guys dressed as vikings in the streets).

So after visiting the Lighthouse (Mackintosh/architecture museum, with a great view over the city centre) and having lunch at the Pasta Hut (yes...that used to be the Pizza Hut...they're changing the name for a healtier image, weird) I went back to the West end to watch the game at Curlers with some international friends and two Scottish guys. The only girls there being Dutch and German :).

It was hilarious. The pub was crammed and excited. With everyone getting into the game you can't help screaming when something goes wrong (again). That was a frustrating game...lots of opportunities, 0-0 outcome...

I'm definitely rooting for Scotland in this qualification round. Except ofcourse when they're playing the Dutch team, which will happen since they're in the same group. I don't know if I'll dare wearing my orange hat to the pub though...

On Sunday Annemieke and Duncan invited me to the annual service at Glasgow Cathedral honoring the Trades House (http://www.tradeshouse.org.uk/) of which they are both former Deacons. It was a great opportunity to see the upper eschelons of this city's high class operating in their natural habitat ;-) Picture men with huge golden chains processing towards the Cathedral altar to take a seat just in front of their 'Trades Ladies' in Sunday dress wearing hats and medals stating their husbands (former)status within the Trades House.

It was great. Since Annemieke was the first woman ánd the first 'foreigner' to ever be a Trades Deacon and Duncan being the former Deacon of all Trades I was in very good hands. I was introduced to almost everyone including the Lord and Lady Provost (the cities mayor) who are driven around in a Jag and constantly followed by a bodyguard whose sole purpose is to protect the chains they both wear. Good times!

After the service we went out for lunch to a very nice Italian restaurant with about 15 other fancy people. I ended up meeting a really friendly scottish girl my age. She offered to take me to Stirling some time, which should be great fun.

When meeting 'high class' people in Holland they tend to be/act stuck up and arrogant sometimes. All of the people I met that Sunday were genuinely friendly and interested and comfortable with their 'high' status. I know this might sound strange...but most of them have been in this privileged position since they were born, and many generations of their family before them. Hierarchical structures mostly based on status or family history like the Trades Houses don't feel awkward or stuck up. And they actually do great work for charity next to all of these fancy lunches/dinners/dances. Then wearing a kilt, morning coat and golden chain to church on Sunday is not weird at all. :)

Good times. I hope Annemieke will invite me to a dance or something sometime this year :)

Birthday Weekend

And then, all of a sudden, I turned 22.

Als je nog niet zo lang in verweggistan bent geweest en je bent weer even terug, thuis, dan ga je je op een gegeven moment afvragen of alles wel echt is geweest. Of je wel daadwerkelijk al een maand ergens anders heb gewoond. Of er echt aan de andere kant van de zee een plek is waar jouw spulen staan, waar je mensen kent, waar je verplichtingen hebt, een studie volgt. Echt een vreemde gedachte. Het leek wel alsof ik een weekje op vakantie was geweest.
En toen ging ik weer terug naar 'huis', in Glasgow.



My birthday, on the 3rd of October, started at three in the morning. A taxi picked me up at four and, after being waved off by Jenny (who had just come home from a party :)), took me to the airport. At 8:45, Dutch time, I was at Schiphol airport...weird.


I had planned to do a couple of things that weekend, like eat a broodje kroket, hug my boyfriend until he turned purple, buy dropjes,visit my dad in his new house, eat 1000 kruidnootjes, spend time with my best friend and go out for dinner with my mom. I did all of these, yay! Not neccesarily in that order though...

And then I went back 'home', which felt weird but good but weird but good.
Strange...

Last Tuesday was my birthdayparty here in Glasgow. It turned out to be a great evening. We had a traditional dutch dinner (I made Hutspot and Boerenkool) with a typical german salad (:P) and belgian icecream and english cake for dessert. After dinner more people started coming in and we had a fun evening in our kitchen.
Pictures of the fun can be found on my facebook.

My Chinese flatmate had her first potato-mashing experience that day :D Look how happy she looks!


This week is going back to 'normal'-week.

Class, Choir, Tibetan Society. I'll tell you all about it later.

Love

ISoc takes over Edinburgh

Last Saturday the International Society organised a trip to Edinburgh. The city is beautiful! I did one of the walking tours in my Lonely Planet with two of my German friends just to get an impression of the old city centre. We also got a small tour of the Divinity faculty of Edinburgh University which is situated in a very impressive old building :). Unfortunately we didn't have that much time, so I have to come back to see more! I'll post some pictures here to give you an idea.

In front of Edinburgh castle

Knights seats at St. Giles Cathedral. The angel in the upper right hand corner is playing the bagpipes!
Inside St. Giles Cathedral

Everywhere you look....Kilts and flags.
Wichery tours and Christmas shops :D
Adam Smith and St. Giles Cathedral
The Royal Mile

International students flood the streets of Edinburgh :)

Cones on statues....it's tradition here. Seriously. Divinity Faculty with statue of John Knox.

I just realised I didn't take that many 'people'-pictures....hm. Next time.

Tomorrow very early in the morning I'm flying home for my birthday! I'll be back here on Monday night.

First week of 'normal' life

This last week was my first week of 'normal' student life here in Glasgow. Obviously almost everything I do here is still NEW, but 'normal' things like going to class started to appear in my schedule.
Another 'normal' thing, at least at student halls is seeing the firemen coming by twice a day because of false fire alarms...they are not very happy with us.

After spending my weekend mostly in bed after the Pirate party and the return of my cold, I started the week discovering 'Toad in the Hole'. (look it up) Nice :)

The rest of the week was spent partially on more registration (since last week the machine at University registration would not take my 'foreign' debit card) which eventually resulted in me having a beautiful University of Glasgow student card. I'm proud.

As every university, this one has a university library. The first 'normal' week is the perfect week to go there and find a place where you can spend a large part of your year studying. You would think.... Glasgow university library is just plain scary. Twelve floors of low-ceilinged, student-packed madness. I left as soon as possible...I have only seen two floors. It might take me a while to find the courage to go again.

On Tuesday morning I had my first lecture! I'd been looking forward to it and was a little nervous. The subject I am studying, as I've seen in Leiden, is not a very popular one. Everyone that you talk to about it always says: "Wow that sounds so interesting! I wish I had done that, blabla" But not many people choose to actually do it. So I was worried that I might be the only person there.... Turns out that me and this other lady (former elementary school teacher) are the only two taking the full Masters course this year. Fortunately there are always people taking these types of classes as auditors or as one or their optional courses. Now we are with 7 people for the Tuesday morning lecture on Approaches to Religious Pluralism.
The texts we have to read for this course are really interesting! We are looking at different ways in which major religious traditions have viewed people of different faiths.

Occasionally the sun does come out here in Glasgow! We even had a couple of days in a row with considerable sunshine throughout the day! As all of the Glaswegians do, we all went out and enjoyed it. See here, the first, and probably last, picture of me in the sun on the pavement at a cafe and a picture of my new (sunny day) hangout place at a nearby church. The steps are comfortable and right in the afternoon sun (if there is any). Note my bike! I love my bike...

On Wednesday I had an audition for the Universities female chamber choir. I was nervous but happy with how I did. I loved that they tested my sight reading by giving me a peice to sing together with two choir members, in three voices. On Friday morning I heard that they accepted me! So from coming Thursday I will be rehearsing with them every week.
They mostly do ancient and celtic music, but the repetoire is quite large. Last spring they sang for the BBC and they go on short tours regularly. I'm so excited! If you want to know more about 'my' choir:
http://www.music.gla.ac.uk/musicclub/madrigirls.html
http://www.myspace.com/madrigirls
(The sheperds wife song on the myspace is the one they made me sing at audition)

On Thursday I was supposed to have class, but there was no one there....not even a professor. Weird. Don't know how that's going to work out yet.
Oh, and yes, concerned family members, I am eating well, haha. Often cooking with my delightful flatmates :)

Kennen we deze nog?

Kennen we deze nog?









Ja? Herinneren we ons de boosaardige huisbaas die vertikte ons honderden jaren oude dak te vernieuwen, waardoor wij met lekken, duiven, maden, afbrokkelende muren en advocaten te maken kregen?
(wees gerust, de dode duiven en maden foto's zal ik niet plaatsen...)


Mag ik u dan nu voorstellen aan.......*tromgeroffel*

De Schotse Versie:

Knap, vindt u niet? Een stuk creatiever dan die in Leiden, gezien dit gebouw uit 2002 dateert en wij op de begane grond wonen, met 3 verdiepingen boven ons.



Kudo's voor het water, dat trouwens ook in de afgelopen twee weken al acht verschillende dagen niet warm wilde worden.
De vriendelijke heren van E-on, die wij afgelopen week al drie dagen over de vloer hebben gehad, hebben morgen weer iets nieuws om naar te kijken.



Minder kudo's voor de Senior Resident die boven ons geen overstromend bad aantrof en ons dus adviseerde de lampen in de gang zolang maar uit te laten. Want water en electriciteit is vaak geen gezellige combo.



Wanneer denkt u dat het gemaakt kan worden? We'll call someone, but it's Sunday.
En daar gingen ze weer.
Daaaag, tot morgen.