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.