And it's evil. I totally forgot how much studying for exams sucks. And I totally didn't realize that TU Delft was on a quarter system until I was already here.
That's right, I have finals FOUR times a year.
I'm slowly losing my mind.
... OK, maybe not that slowly.
On the plus side, I've been spending lots of quality time in coffee shops the past week. On the slightly-less-plus side, I've been drinking a looooooooot of coffee.
Besides the massive amount of studying thing, we've been doing surprisingly well at getting out for a run or climb pretty much every day. The climbing this is really great, since we've both gotten a lot better since we came here. I think it's a combination of the endurance from the tall wall and the general difficulty of a lot of the routes around here plus some bouldering. Whatever the magic item is, I've managed to put up a couple 6a's (that's a 5.10a/b for the Yosemite people) and yesterday Ev and I both got up a 6b (5.10c/d). Well, I kind of thrashed and stemmed my way up it; Ev did it much more gracefully. And without the weird dyno at the top.
We're totally training up for climbing in Mallorca over Christmas. Apparently the routes there are super sand-bagged.
I'm so excited.
Next Thursday we're going to Reel Rock in Amsterdam, which is going to be awesome. And an excellent way of celebrating the end of my first round of finals in almost 3 years. We're planning on going to Belgium for a weekend of climbing next week, too. We even joined the American Alpine Club so we can climb there (Belgium has a rule that you have to be a member of a climbing club in order to climb there. They actually enforce this and will ask you for proof of membership).
On a completely unrelated note, it's time for another installment of:
Lesson of the Netherlands #6:
The trams always come in pairs. Just because one tram driver stopped for you to cross doesn't mean the driver coming the other way will.
This past week there has been something weird going on with the metros: they have an automated voice announce the current and next stations, but for some reason the automated voice has decided that the Stadhuis station doesn't need to be a thing anymore. So, instead of saying the current station is Stadhuis and the next station is Beurs, you get to hear that you're at Beurs! This is mildly annoying when you're familiar with the metro and know it's lying to you. It's been kind of funny watching people not familiar with the metro get confused and try to get off at the wrong station.
The metro has a sick sense of humor.
(I should probably confess that the conductors generally announce over the automated voice when they realize it's wrong. BUT they don't always catch it immediately... because of this, Ev and I have decided that we aren't going to turn any parents loose on the metro)
Lesson of the Netherlands #7:
Random, niche running shoes that are kind of hard to find in the States are impossible to find. Also, leaving the new pair of shoes bought when your shoe model was discontinued in a tote in Alaska buried in your parent's barn means you don't have a replacement pair of shoes when yours die.
OK, lesson #7 is kind of obvious. And I really should have learned the whole "buy many, many pairs of running shoes when you find a model that works really well for you, because they will release a new model and it won't be the same. In fact, it will probably suck and you will once again be forced to search for running shoes that fit just so" lesson years ago. This keeps happening to me.
But after several hours of careful searching, I managed to find what might possibly be the only size 9.5 Altra Intuition 1.5 running shoes for sale on the internet. I am way more excited about this than I should be.
Oh hey. I'm procrastinating studying by writing a blog. I should probably cut that out.
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