Kirsten, 8 april 2011
Verenigde Staten , Auburn 12°

Double Trouble

A month has passed already and a lot has changed in a short period of time. For starter: I moved to a different apartment! A102 is my new home, still in cca, but way better roommates than I had. After Eian and Alaena moved out, I got two new roommates who weren’t very social. Don’t really want to get into it, but I am really happy with my new roommates! Now I’m living with Maria (Norwegian), Sab (Korean) and Amy (Korean), and we all get along really well.

After the last time I wrote, I had my finals, stressful, but also successful! And I’m really happy with my grades, was a bit worried about it, because I had so many visits that quarter. But with a 3.9 for choir, 3.6 for psych and a 2.8 for history, I’m pretty pleased! Meanwhile I’ve started my new quarter, same classes, different subjects. Choir is pretty much the same, different songs; we are mostly singing Broadway songs. We are now working on Sweeny Todd and Jersey Boys and I’m really excited about it. My psych class is about human sexuality, which I think is very interesting, but there is one down side to it.. My teacher looks exactly like my grandfather.. which is kind of hilarious, but he is also not the best teacher I’ve had. His lectures are a bit boring, so sometimes it’s quite difficult to keep my focus. Mostly also because he’s lecturing about previous material I’ve already learned in Psych 100. Still, it’s really interesting! So I’m just ignoring that he looks like my grandfather and he is kind of boring and make the best of it! Then history is about the Second World War and therefore not very difficult. I’m taking it together with Gideon and Luuk and every time my teacher mentions the Netherlands, she can’t help it to points out that we are from the Netherlands, which is pretty hilarious.
So as you can see, I’m laughing my ass of everyday! No, but seriously, I do really like my new schedule.

In between quarters I had my Spring break in Los Angeles! The trip started a little rough, because of some mistakes made in reservations for the rental cars and the hotel. So we had to make some changes, but everything worked out just fine! After we finally arrived at our hotel, we immediately left again to go to Santa Monica Beach. It was so wonderful to walk in the sunshine, even though it was a little bit cold because of the wind, but it was really relieving. The next day we all went to Warner Brothers Studios and took the tour through the stages. It was very interesting to see where all the movies and series got shot, but it also kind of made me realize how fake most of the movies are. Still it was really awesome to see the friends’ stage and a lot of the probes they used in a lot of movies. After the tour me, Lina, Cathrine and Cathrine’s friend, Therese, and her father, Knut, went back to Santa Monica to have lunch at Bubba Gump and walk around the pier. Shopping was next on the list and we met up with the others to have dinner at a Thai restaurant. On Wednesday Carl and Anders took the car to go golfing, so we were around the hotel in the day. Me, Cathrine, Lina and Therese enjoyed ourselves with mani-pedies, where the guys ruined my nails, but that’s fine.. When we were done, we were quite hungry and got the best experience of LA traffic you can get. It took us an hour to get to the restaurant and one and a half to get back, awesome! That night was awesome though! We went to a Kareokebar and had a crazy time singing all kind of songs. It was hilarious to see everybody trying to follow the lyrics and stay on pitch! The two hours were gone in a flash and Wednesday turned to Thurseday, the day we went to Hollywood. The walk of fame however was a bit disappointing. My expectation was a glamorous street with beautifull shops and gorgeous buildings, but reality was a common street with mostly tattoo and lingerie shops. Only a small part was dressed up. I did walked the entire walk of fame, because it’s on both sides of the street and it’s a long street! Did see some interesting stars; Matt Damon, Michael Jackson, but also Big Bird and the Simpsons! While the guys went on a tour to see the celebrity houses, the girls went shopping! I was shopping for something very specific and since there were so many shops of it, I decided to just do it! I finally set the piercing in the top of my ear! First I was quite nervous about it, but it didn’t hurt at all, a small pinch is al I felt. Only sleeping on it was a bit painful, but it was certainly worth it and I’m very happy with it! After lunch at the Hard Rock Café we went back to the hotel and Thursday turned to Friday. On our last day in LA, we went to Rodeo Drive, the street with all the expensive shops. Ralph Lauren, Roberto Cavalli, Gucci, Prada, it was wonderful and expensive! The only tag I looked at was a pair of sandals at Ralph Lauren which cost 350 dollars, so I stopped looking at them, it would just be to depressing. We made a promise to come back there in 10 years and see who would be able to shop at Rodeo Drive at that time! Our last stop was Venice Beach, gorgeous beach with our last sunshine. Leaving Los Angeles in the sunset we were ready to go home, back to Washington and to end a glamorous vacation we took a limousine home, because it was cheaper than two cabs! Lovely.

7 months here, 2 months and 10 days left. For the people who can’t calculate that fast, I’m going back on June 18 and arriving on June 19 7.00 am in the morning. It’s very strange to know when I’m going back. Before I did knew I was going back, but the date makes it more realistic. I’m sad and excited at the same time and it has been driving me a little crazy. I’m trying not to think about it to much and still enjoy the time I have left here. Geniet!

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