Last Thursday the orientation for TU Delft started. It runs until September 1, so it's kind of long. Oh well. The first day of orientation we were given an address in the massive auditorium. They managed to put around 1,200 international students in there.
The university facilities are pretty spectacular. Each department building has its own cafeteria and pub (I guess they know how to keep engineering students happy), and the lab facilities seem to be top of the line. The Civil Engineering building is ridiculously long, narrow, and 7 stories tall.
Interesting tidbit:
The ground floor in the Netherlands is floor 0. So the Civil Engineering building has 6 floors, which translates to 7 stories. Our apartment is on the 9th floor, aka the 10th story.
So the introduction weeks continue fairly uneventfully. It's been nice meeting the other people in the Geo-Engineering program and making friends (I hope). If I play my cards right, I'll make a friend or two with a car who can be convinced to go on awesome adventures to places with geography.
I miss vertical relief. The closest thing to a mountain we've seen in almost a month are some bunkers at the North Beach in Den Haag. Not really hills, per say, but not flat.
Hilarious Tidbits of the Netherlands #1:
When we went to the beach in Den Haag on Sunday, we saw a guy running down the beach. Completely naked. The beach was fairly crowded, and nobody batted an eye. Apparently nude running on a public beach (that also happens to be a tourist spot) is totally kosher. It. Was. Awesome.
Speaking of awesome, I would like to introduce a new section of the blog, called...
Random Overheard Conversations:
"Obviously its a crotchless tutu" - dude wearing a kilt and batman shirt
On a completely unrelated note, I present the second installment of hilarious tidbits.
Hilarious Tidbits of the Netherlands #2:
We keep seeing people biking on their old, beat up cruisers (you don't have a nice bike here because it will get stolen. There are a lot of junker bikes.) with aero bars. For shizzle. Aero bars that probably cost as much as the bike. The first time I saw it I thought it was odd, but probably just that one guy. Turns out, I keep seeing people with them. There's something incredibly amusing about someone tucked down in the aero position on a bike that's designed to keep you upright.
Also, this guy:
Yes, he is juggling knives on an insanely tall unicycle. Yes, it was awesome.
Visa stuff for Ev is still ongoing. The IND (Dutch immigration department) has been very helpful, although Rotterdam City Hall has kind of been a pain in the butt. There have been issues with bank accounts (I can't open up one on my own without a BSN number (Dutch equivalent of a social security number), which I can't get until I register with City Hall. After calling daily for almost three weeks, I finally got an appointment to register... on October 2nd), birth certificates (have to have originals - apparently notarized copies just don't cut it), declarations of unmarried status (originals had to be mailed back to Alaska to get an apostille from the Lt. Governor), which may or may not be accepted by the IND because they're not on fancy letterhead with a watermark... the whole point of showing up here three weeks early was to get Ev's application out of the way. I'm glad we came when we did, because there is no way I would have been able to deal with all of this while doing orientation/taking classes. Luckily, we were informed that we have 90 days after arriving in the Netherlands to file for his visa. Once we've filed for it, he can legally stay until the IND has processed it and either granted his residence permit or told him to gtfo.
The homesickness is starting to set in again, and I'm sure it's only going to get worse over the next month or two. I really, really miss mountains and low population densities. And our friends. And family.
I was showing one of the guys in my orientation group some pictures from our Birch Creek river trip last summer (he asked about the desktop background on my laptop) and was hit with an intense desire to find a place where there's nobody else around.
I'm not sure what possessed us to move to the most densely populated country in Europe.
Then I found some pictures from Bison Gulch and Mount Healy a couple winters ago...
You just can't get a view like that here.
I really need a field trip.
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