Bori goes to Holland

 Hello everyone,

well I hate to admit, but I am overloaded by school. The thing is, that I have never experienced this kind of attitude before. This higher education system is totally different from what I was used to during my bachelor in Hungary. To give you an idea why, I will show you this nice summary about one of my courses. The following table discusses how the study load comes together in the case of this seminar.

As you can see, there are overall 140 hours accounted for this studyload - that equals 5 ECTS. Thats fine, nothing wrong with that. If you wonder what that magical number 7 is doing in the calculations: the official speed for reading academic text is 7pages/hour. (Dont you dare think that thats ridiculous: my personal record is around 11, talking about not really big pages.)

But if you take a closer look at the components, you will understand my concerns: the actual attendance of the class is only 24 hours, which is 17% of the studyload. The rest 116 hours, 83% of the time spent on this course is be self-study: by reading and preparing assignments.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, I do understand that this is master level, but still, just to give you a comparison: back in Hungary I had a few courses, where I just had to sit in class, and hand in ONE paper at the end of term. So 80% of the time spent on one course was by attending a class.

Dont get me wrong, I am not complaining, I am just overloaded: next to my work, I am constantly reading and writing assignment for a week now, and it just never seems to stop. I love it :) Except for the part when I started crying yesterday at 1 AM: I had to conduct an interview for a research and I had to transcribe it and the software didnt work, so I was doing it until 2 AM in the morning. The class today started at 10, so to get from Utrecht to the university, I got up at 7.45. I wasnt happy in the morning. AT ALL.

So, if I am not reacting to mails, posts or anything, it is because I am drowning in schoolbooks.

Keep fingers crossed that I survive. Without losing my job. I want to go on holidaaaaaaaaay.....

Finally I am done with my application for the Go! Study Abroad Scholarship.

A strongly recommended option was to make also a video parallel to the required essays. I was feeling overcreative, and worked for weeks now to finish my two videos (funny thing though, 20% of the work was the uploading itself, YouTube doesnt really like me). Voila, have a good laugh:

I dont know how long it will take me to get the ABBA song out of my head... :)

It's really been a while, so I have a lot to report on. Today's blog post will cover several topics, from geekiness to beach parties.

First of all, I got my first smartphone ever. It's this nice HTC ChaCha here, with infinite little reflections of myself.

Finally I have Google Maps and my whole Gmail account in my pocket! It's an unbelievably good feeling that I dont have to check everything before leaving home. I did have some struggle with socialnetwork integrations though. You see the Facebook button? That little blueish thing at the bottom which you might thought was just dirt until now? Well, thats not the only thing about this one that wants you to share and be online everywhere. It took me about 2 days to figure out how to get OFFLINE on Facebook chat - I was already on the edge of believing my phone could be smarter than me. But I won, thank god.

Second topic is university: I had my first introduction thingies at Erasmus University Rotterdam last week. Voila a pic of our first official drink:

Czech, Bulgarian, Greek, Polish, German, American, French, Nigerian, we have everything. Everybody's pretty cool, I am satisfied. Turned out that one girl from the group also lives in Utrecht, just did our very first assignment ever (at this university) together today.

  As you might have noticed, above the weather is nice, so just after the drink I headed with my boyfriend to the beach, and took a brave swim - AGAIN - in the North Sea at the oh-so-famous Scheveningen. Proof:

Yep, well, I am living my little Dutch-everyday-life, with all its pros and cons.

Nice things:

• - my Dutch bike 
• - everybody speaks English
• - while biking to work the only jams I get stuck into are bike jams
• - getting on with work - click to check
• - bike lanes everywhere
• - after Budapest (2M of inhabitants) a city below 1million is refreshing (in fact there is NO country above 1 million in the Netherlands)
• - postal service is extremely fast: I signed up for a bank account on Thursday and by Saturday (!) I had my bankcard delivered
• - trains and buses are ON TIME
• - here i can drink much more beer because 1 beer = 2,5dl haha :)
• - bikes bikes bikes
• - insanely lot of canals and lakes. This sunset took place just 10 minutes from our house:

Things I dont like:

• - rainy weather
• - shops arent open on Sunday
• - Dutch summer which means NO SUMMER AT ALL
• - the oh-so-famous trance and techno
• - cool temperatures
• - I dont speak Dutch
• - Oh, and the weather.

It is also cool that we live close to a huge studio with lot of rehearsal rooms, and today I took my first step towards my future music career:

Yes, the SINGER notice refers to me.

Also, I am really getting started with this cooking thing. Its kinda hard to keep my diet though - according to an allergy test I should try not to eat milk, eggs, sugar, yeast and preservatives. Nice, ey? But if it makes my eczema go away, I happily give up chocolate.

Voila the best diet meals until now - a crab-leek-tortilla with a spoonful of soy-yoghurt:

and a carrot-broccoli-risotto with a slice of pork, baked on oignons:

 If any of you guys know good recipes that suit my diet, please tell me so. Gonna go nibble some sugarfree cookies.

Surely you have some idea about how tolerant the Dutch are - concerning ANY topic.

Well another nice example of that is the Amsterdam Gay Pride, which took place last weekend, and we were touristic people enough to visit it. I have already gotten a glimpse of Dutch partying when I was here in March: the Carnival fever takes over these civilized people and they happily dress up as idiots. 

Carnival in the Netherlands is also called "Vastenavond" or "Vastelaovend", and is most celebrated in Catholic regions, mainly the southern provinces North Brabant and Limburg. Dutch Carnival is officially celebrated on the Sunday through Tuesday preceding Ash Wednesday.

I was lucky enough to wittnes this madness in Eindhoven, which is pretty much down there in the region. This picture was taken in Eindhoven downtown, Sunday, 6th March, 12:19 PM. So they are doing it for 3 days, non-stop. It might not be clearly visible, but the age of the participants varies from 10 to 80. 

 This day on the train I was sitting together with two surgeons covered in blood. A few stops later Batman joined us sitting next to me. The freakiest part was that it was totally normal, everybody was busy texting each other, not even noticing the customes' of other. That's why I didn't dare to take pictures.

So, I already had this impression of crazy-Dutch-daytime-partying, but the best was yet to come: visiting a the canal parade of the Amsterdam Gay Pride. To be honest, I would have never expected such a crowd: as you can see there is a huge line of people standing in front of me, standing on the bridge and in between they are standing on a boat. 

 I could hardly see anything, all these pictures were taken during the few minutes I spent sitting in (on?) a neck :)

  Please take a close look at the cute bathing suits of these almost naked piratemen, matching the inflatable masts of their cute little pirateship. 

 The Canal Parade went through the whole city, and this massive crowd was accompanying it all the way. I mean not walking along, there were people standing throughout the whole length of canals, staring at the 80 ships passing by.

They arrived in the big bay of which I still dont know the name. It was lovely how the overall grey color of the bay was lightened up with these pink patches floating on the water.

Of course all this with some lovely (?) trance and techno music. After these experiences I have no idea what I should expect on the next Queen's day, which is said to be THE biggest happening for the Dutch. Fortunately I still have time to prepare, as this event takes place in April.

It is my great pleasure to inform you that according to the information you provided me with on your homepage - and also according to the very significant Facebook poll I set up - I will grant you the pleasure to be one of your full-time students in the master's programme Media, Culture and Society for the academic year 2011-2012.

The decision wasn't easy, as it involved refusing to be a student of the Communication and Information Sciences master at Tilburg University, which would have allowed me to live out my geeky side, but due to time schedule problems and other factors You are my final choice. 

So, dear Erasmus University, I hope you are going to fulfill my expectations, and see you next weekend on the Introduction Days!

Best regards,

Your enrolled student

P.S.: Please refrain from using the 'prospective' adjective with the word 'student' in your future letters. I hate it so much.

This blog post is dedicated to my parents.

As you might already know, ich liebe die deutsche sprache jaja, because I lived there when I was small, from 2 to 3 years old. Now, after 20 years I returned to Renningen, where I was said to live at that time, to see what I have no memory of. It's a cute little town or rather village next to Stuttgart, "just" 5 hours driving from Utrecht. And as you might have guessed, no memory came back to me. At all. Maybe better, I dont know how much it would have freaked me out if I started having flashbacks of eating catshit just around the corner. A strange mood did come over me though, but I guess that was just a placebo effect and would have happened at any other place where I assume to have spent a part of my childhood. But at least I could make this compulsory then-and-now collection.

First combination is 2 Boris with an average age of 12,7. The second one is a tribute to my lovely sister, so it's just 1 Bori and 1 Zsuzsu.

Yep, it was my first day. No, not the first of being in Dutchland, but the first of work. Employed at Distimo. Had a lots of fun with the colleagues, even learned that owling is the new planking. And saw the weirdest sandwich in my life: strawberry slices, sugar and butter - all this between 2 slices of bread. Dutch can apparently make a sandwich out of anything.

... here. Utrecht. A huge pile of stuff in the middle of the room. Now I only need a few cupboards.

...All engines running.

I packed my life together. 

And they say "think out of the box". Yeah right. I did use IKEA bags though.

But nevertheless: Liftoff! We have a liftoff!

Hát elérkezett az utolsó visszaszámlálási pillanat. Még sose pakoltam 1 évre. Fogalmam sincs, hogy kell. 8 pár cipőt és 3 liter pálinkát biztos kéne vinni.
Arra jöttem rá, hogy ha nem szűnne meg a pupillatágító hatása, amit a szemész belémtolt, akkor csak a zászló alapján meg sem tudnám mondani, hogy egy másik országban vagyok-e. 

The final moments have come. I never had to pack for one year before. I have no idea how to do it. I should surely take 8 pairs of shoes and 3 liters of palinka.
I just realised that if my pupil would stay as wide as it is right now because of the stuff the eye doctor gave me, then I wouldn't be able to tell if I'm in another country just by checking the flag.

 Felvettek mindkét egyetemre ahova jelentkeztem, úgyhogy már csak rajtam áll eldönteni, hogy Tilburg, avagy Rotterdam. Jó kis cliffhanger gyanánt ezt csak a következő részekből fog kiderülni. Hamarosan...

I have been accepted to both universities I applied to, so it is up to me to decide, whether it is going to be Tilburg or Rotterdam. To keep it as a nice cliffhanger, you will get to know this only in the following episodes. Coming soon...