Thanksgiving and Homework

It sure seems like time is flying by and I have no idea where it's going...

Last week, my friend Eric was in Amsterdam for a meeting. Since the Netherlands is super small and thus everything is really close, we caught the train and met him on Wednesday for some climbing. Saturday morning he came down to Rotterdam and we hung out, got some food, and caught up before he had to go back to France.

It turns out that Eric lives in the mountains and is close to several ski resorts. Ev and I officially have plans for my spring break.

On Sunday we had Thanksgiving with some fellow Americans. Lots of delicious food, wine, and good company. It was awesome.

I made lemon sweet potatoes (because they're kind of my favourite food ever), an apple pie, and a raspberry pie. I was super stoked that the raspberry pie managed to hold its shape (ish) after cutting. And of course I can't find the picture of this magic, so you'll just have to take my word on it.

Christmas lights are going up everywhere, and downtown Rotterdam (and Delft, although I've seen less of those) has some impressive arrays of lights all over, especially in the center of town. On December 5, Sinterklaas comes to the Netherlands with his helpers, Black Pete. It's probably worth noting that the Black Pete thing involves a bunch of people in blackface and is just a tiny bit racist. There is no way I can properly explain this, so feel free to learn things about other cultures! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas

I'm just gonna leave this here...

This last week has been kind of crazy. We did all our Christmas shopping and got it in the mail. I've been working on an assignment for my Behavior of Soils and Rocks class, which is essentially an advanced mechanics of materials class, which is an awesome class. The catch is I'm incredibly out of practice with this whole doing actual math thing (I think I did actual math with something that wasn't FlowMaster or Civil 3D like, three times while working), so the going has been slow. I'm spending waaaaaaaay too much time on something that I'm pretty sure isn't as complicated as I think it is. I officially have the questions coded in both Excel and Matlab. Brushing up my programming skills! I'm gonna call that a silver lining, I guess...

On that note, I'm going to go back to attempting to finish this stuff.