Nepal

Yesterday Jochem and I had a free Saturday. I'm not sure if you guys truly understand what this means. It meant that I had no yoga class and that I was not running laps in the park. It meant that Jochem didn't have to work. It meant that neither of us had homework (at least not for that particular day). It meant that we didn't have to clean our house, or water the plants, or clean the fish tank. We were free in the truest sense of the word, in that we slept in till 11 AM, got up, got ready, had a cup of coffee (because now that we have our very own espresso machine we have become those annoying, arrogant, coffee connoisseur, "only our own coffee is good enough" kind of folks), and went to Bagels & Beans around the corner (our neighborhood, Wittevrouwen, recently opened a Bagels & Beans store after months of renovation and Jochem and I think that this shows that the Netherlands is indeed capable of giving room to all that is good about American food. We think it's a great addition to the neighborhood!). We then proceeded to spend the entire day downtown: buying Sinterklaas presents at Nisha for our Sinterklaas party next week; checking out some clothing stores like WE, Steps and H&M; checking out the goodies at the Body Shop (they have this new rasberry body butter that I MUST purchase! It totally fits the describtion of a perfect, chemically-enhanced (although not really, since it's the Body Shop) fruity smell); buying parmezan and buffalo mozzarella cheese at the market and Italian espresso beans (more snobbery) at Bigoli, this great little Italian food store. But the best part was checking out the travel stores and the book stores. We spent some time at the Perry Sport to look at all the backpacks and rucksacks and sleeping bags (I've found really cute girly ones with flowers!) and at Selexyz Broese we looked through all the Loney Planets of all the countries we want to visit on our world trip (it will be interesting to see how we are going to bring all of them with us). We did this to see whether the climate will be right for when we want to visit each country (so as not end up in India during monsoon season or to die in Tibet of frost bite). Besides some rain that we can expect in Indonesia, all should be fine. We also checked out the section on dangers, what with those protests in Thailand and the terrorist attacks in India. According to Lonely Planet, all should be fine. Just be aware of the usual dangers, such as walking around with a lot of money and valuables. And did you know that it is not a good idea to camp out in the wilderness all by yourself as a woman? A real eye opener for me, this one. But it turns out that Nepal is CRAZY! We want to travel from Tibet to Nepal to India, but apparently, this is very dangerous. First of all, Kathmandu, Nepal's capital, is supposedly a very dangerous place to be, and travel agents discourage you from going there. Second of all, to get from Tibet to Nepal is very dangerous. There is a train, but this train is absolutely packed, in the sense that people actually sit on the roof of the train and hang on to the sides and the back of it (I mean, where would you leave your backpack?!). Also, as foreigners you are not allowed to take this train across the border. Then there are busses, but according to Lonely Planet, in a ten-day period, there have been ten fatal bus accidents on the Tibet-Nepal track, killing over 200 people. So I'm thinking of just skipping Nepal altogether.

Manchego

Our weird habit of naming our pets after the foods that we like has reached a whole new level. During one of my brightest moments of the day, I suddenly realized that the abbreviation of Manchego's official name, Juffairs Armani Manchego, is JAM. I'm not sure if it means the same in English, but in Dutch it means LEKKER! :P HOW FUNNY IS THAT?! Jochem and I get to visit him on December 14, and will hopefully get him early on January 23.

Our Future?

The quest continues! Is this getting boring already? :P I'm sorry, folks, but this is something that occupies my mind, and therefore my weblog as well. After having worried about THE FUTURE for a very long time, and consequently breaking down afterwards, I decided to not think about the future at all. This worked pretty well for a couple of days (which is HUGE for me). Yesterday Jochem and I started thinking about THE FUTURE again. We spent our Saturday night at the dining room table, having dinner and discussing our options. It was great because I was able to look at the situation with a new perspective. We decided that we definately wanted to finish our studies first. I graduate in September 2010 and Jochem in January 2011. I will try to get a job in education in September 2010 while Jochem finishes his internship in the Netherlands. When Jochem graduates in January 2011 he will try to get a job in hospitality. We will work through August and want to leave on a world trip in September 2011. Jochem wanted to leave for six months and I wanted to leave for twelve months, so in the end we decided on nine months. We made a list of all the countries we wanted to see and made a rough plan of how we were going to fit them all in. You can see the 'route' on the map. We will stay in Oceania for one month, in Asia for 3 months and in Central and South America for five months. The trip goes something like this:

Netherlands - New Zealand - Australia - Bali (Indonesia) - India - Nepal - Tibet - China - Japan - USA - Costa Rica - Cuba - Brazil - Argentina - Chile - Peru - Ecuador - Venezuela - Curaçao- Netherlands.

It's crazy, I know. We don't know what to do about our apartment, or what to do or where to go when we come back, or what to do about our pets, or if we are really able to live off our backpacks for nine months, or anything specific, really. But we DO know that we can afford it this way without having to work while traveling and without having to jeapordize any major summer holidays. Isn't it GREAT?! :P I guess it's a shame that I am still a planner at heart, but I feel much better now! :)

Jamie Cullum Is My Home Boy

Lyrics to Twentysomething:

After years of expensive education

A car full of books, and anticipation

I'm an expert on Shakespeare, and that's a hell of a lot

But the world don't need scholars as much as I thought

Maybe I'll go traveling for a year

Finding myself, or start a career

I could work for the poor, though I'm hungry for fame

We all seem so different, but we're just the same

Maybe I'll go to the gym, so I don't get fat

Aren't things more easy, with a tight six-pack?

Who knows the answers, who do you trust?

I can't even separate love from lust

Maybe I'll move back home, and pay off my loans

Working nine to five, answering phones

Don't make me live for my Friday nights

Drinking eight pints and getting in fights

I don't want to get up, just let me lie in

Leave me alone, I'm a twentysomething

Maybe I'll just fall in love

That could solve it all

Philosophers say that that's enough

There surely must be more

Love ain't the answer, nor is work

The truth eludes me, so much it hurts

But I'm still having fun and I guess that's the key

I'm a twentysomething and I'll keep being me

I'm a twentysomething!

Let me lie in!

Leave me alone!

I'm a twentysomething!

Of course, this would make anyone feel better...

His official name is Juffairs Armani Manchego!

Cheer up!

Family. Friends. I am alright. People have been calling me, leaving me voice mail messages, sending me text messages and e-mailing me all day, undoubtedly because they are afraid I am at the verge of falling apart. Any second now. My last blog was a very long rant about stuff that's been bugging me for a long time, but it is really not as bad as it sounds. I do feel a little lost, but I am not the girl from UCU anymore, nor the girl who almost lost it during her internship. I have cut down on my responsibilities and take better care of myself, I have a beautiful man to help me (when he's at home, at least :P) and family and friends for spiritual guidance. One of my students told me that a lot of people suffer from the same semi-flu that I have, and I feel a little bit better today than I did yesterday, so I'm sure it's just some sort of virus. And I already feel better about my situation after having written the blog (ah! the power of writing it 'off'!). I haven't even thought about the future all day. See? Growth! So please: DON'T WORRY (althought it's nice to know y'all care :)). But, if there is anyone out there who knows a way for me to take a sabbatical without losing my financial aid, without compromising my graduate studies, without losing my apartment, and without ending up broke back in Almelo, do share! ;) Here's a little something that I always keep in my e-mail inbox whenever I need cheering up. It's a picture Jochem sent me one day out of the blue when we had been dating for about eight months. Cheer up!

Existential Crisis

Franz Kafka is my new best friend. He and I are like this [insert picture of right index and right middle finger crossed]. I understand this man, this literary genius from turn-of-the-century Prague.

I think I am in an existential crisis. Or have a burn-out. Or both. But I just feel like crap, even though my life is pretty great. Let me tell you of some of the reasons why I feel this way.

First of all, I have absolutely NO IDEA who I am, who I've become, how I've become how I am, why I've become how I am, or whether I am like this because I want this or because I've been doing it every single day for the past six years. I used to have such a clear vision of who I was and who I wanted to be and how I was gonna get there. Graduate from high school. Leave Almelo and never come back. Go to University College Utrecht. Go to UCLA. Graduate Cum Laude. I succeeded in all of these goals. Sure, it was hard at times. During the first two weeks at UCU I pretty much called my (now ex-)boyfriend every single day in tears to let him know that I didn't fit in, that it was too hard, that I would never succeed. Although I spent sixty hours a week studying and had no time for a job or any other extracurricular activities besides drinking myself into oblivion every Tuesday night, I made it, did a good job and made some lifelong friends in the process. I became a Chief in the UCSA College Bar. One of my papers was published in Eidos, the UCU Academic Magazine. I felt invincible, unstoppable. I never thought of myself as someone who was smart, but as someone who worked hard, and since I continued working hard, I would get everything that I wanted. Or so I thought.

As graduation was fastly approaching, my father told me that any ambitions I had of studying abroad for a master program would have to be put on hold when it came to his financial contributions. UCLA had cost him too much for him to finance my dream of going to Harvard, Oxford or Cambridge, so that dream was out the window. Fortunately, I was fine with staying in the Netherlands after having spent six months in California, so this was not a major setback. I wanted to stay in Utrecht and study at Utrecht University, so I tried to get into the only master program that I wanted to get into: a prestigious research master in Literary Studies. Although I was sure I had it (I came from UCU after all), my interview didn't go so well and then the earth-shattering news arrived that said it all: I did not get in. My friend suffered the same fate when she applied for a research master in Art History, also at Utrecht University. Another friend of mine, who had heard about the Literary Studies research master from me, and who had applied to the same program, did get in. Reason for not letting me in: I hadn't taken enough Lit. classes. I could understand this because UCU only offers four Lit. classes. However, I had taken an additional four Lit. classes at UCLA, which made a total of eight. Four more Lit. classes than my friend who did get in. I was heartbroken. It became painfully obvious that they had made up an excuse to hide the fact that they just didn't want me. It's pretty much been downhill from there.

Although I did manage to get a great apartment in the neighborhood of Wittevrouwen, it was hard to overcome the illusion. Anna will know what I'm talking about. The illusion of UCU. The illusion where you're groomed for three years into believing that you 're better than anyone else, that you can do and be anything you want to be, only to be turned down by your own university. As I had to watch my fellow graduates going to important places and doing important things, I enrolled in a second bachelor program. I suppose this was a blessing in disguise. I was able to acquire a minor in American Studies and meet three beautiful girls whom I can't imagine my life without right now. But it was not so much fun having to get a job in hospitality with the frat boys and sorority girls of Utrecht whom I'd conveniently ignored while at UCU, or having to work another job in education that I loved but was not appreciated for at all by my employers or by my colleagues, or having to explain to both teachers and classmates why I was doing another bachelor program. I took extra classes and also did an internship in publishing, which almost killed me. It's one thing to study sixty hours a week on campus, but when you have to do the same when you also have a household to run, is quite a different matter. I'd wanted to go to Harvard since high school, but it turned out that even Summer School would be too expensive for someone who does not have a trust fund, to that didn't happen. I then decided to go to New York, but was unable to enroll in a university summer program as a foreign student, so I ended up spending only one month there learning things that I had learned in high school already six years before, and missing Jochem so much that it almost ruined the entire experience for me.

Then there are the CHOICES. They will one day drive me into schizophrenia, I tell you. I couldn't decide between the American Studies master program (which I LOVED because it's one of those alfa/what-are-you-gonna-do-with-it/well-it's-just-for-intellectual-saticfaction-kind of master programs) or the Educational Master (which would be practical since I wanted to teach). I had one year left of financial aid (two if I chose the Educational Master, since there's a shortage of teachers in this country), so I really had to pick just one. I ended up picking the Educational Master, sensible girl that I am. I made myself feel better by trying to get into a couple of American Studies master classes, but I could only enroll in one. I convinced myself that it would still be a challenge because I would sign up for the international track, which was also prestigious. Of course now I don't know whether I want to sign up for the international track because it's really expensive, because it's really hard (you have to take two extra classes), because you have to go abroad for three to four months (and I don't want to leave Jochem again - call me the anti-feminist if you want), because you have absolutely no control over where you get to go (and no offense, but Scandinavia or South Africa are not places where I want to spend any amount of my precious time here on earth), and because it does not seem to add anything substantial to my résumé. Still, when other people, including good friends of mine, talk about doing the international track, I get so jealous that I immediately start to doubt my objections to the program, which I even wrote down on a list (so as not to forget in situations like this). Now, do I really want to do the international track, or is it just my competitive streak (a legacy from UCU) that tells me to do it? I DON'T KNOW!!!

There are other choices as well. The second year of my Educational Master includes one year of work, combined with classes, research and reports that have to be done for the university. Should I enroll in the internship program (which will raise my student debt to about 40,000 euros but will offer me more freedom, less stress, and more structure), or should I enroll in the job program (which will stop me from going into debt even more but will force me to work harder)? Should I try to get a job at an international school and try to get into the international track so that I can still do the program without having to go abroad for three to four months? Should I get a job in Utrecht, or in another city, where all the international schools are (I love international schools, but hate commuting)? I have to know the answers to all these questions by April, when I sign up.

Then travel. Should I join Jochem when he will do his internship abroad, or should he try to find a suitable internship in the Netherlands so that we can keep our apartment? Should I give up the apartment, or should I sublet it? Should I sublet it to a friend, or to a stranger? Should I ask for more money, or not? Or should I get a job after graduation, wait six months for Jochem to graduate, and then leave together? Should we live and work abroad, or should we travel? Should we go to Italy or Spain or farther away? Should we backpack or not? Should we backpack in Asia or in South America? How about shaving and cutting your toenails when you're backpacking? Or should we both get jobs, work for a couple years, and then go abroad? For three months, six months, or a year? How will we finance it? If we want to make such a long trip right after graduation, we will have to save so much in such little time that we probably can't go on vacation at all till then, which is something I just couldn't bear. Should we get a car? How will we get a parking permit in Utrecht? Should we get our pug then, or wait until we're settled? Should we get a pug before, or after we've had kids? How old should the kids be before you have the pug? Should we give up our apartment and store our stuff at my parents' house in Almelo, then go abroad, and figure out what to do when we get back? Do we stay in Almelo, or move back to Utrecht, or to another city? Amersfoort, Den Haag, Groningen, Maastricht, Nijmegen, or somewhere in Brabant? Do we rent or buy? An apartment or a house? What do we do with the cat and the goldfish while we're gone? How do my grand wedding plans fit into all of this? Not that we're engaged or anything, but weddings are expensive, and you can't possibly get married right before or right after a major trip abroad. So when should that happen?

You see what I mean? I live in the whirlwinds of a future that hasn't even happened yet, and I can't snap myself out of it. Meanwhile I have to explain math (MATH! ME!) to elementary school kids and am forced to read really nasty, scary, Hostel-like books for my American Studies class in which eyes are pushed out of people's skulls and people's hearts are cut out and eaten, and my professor pretends that this is the kind of 'literary' stuff that'll give us some insights into multicultural America. Meanwhile, I am afraid in my own house, because I am always home alone because Jochem gets up at 5 AM and doesn't get home until 10 PM every single day for the next two months, and this is only week two. Also, I am surrounded by incompetent German professors during my master program. Not that I have anything against German professors, but they are just so scatter-brained. Unfortunately, and for reasons unknown to me, the German department seems to be in control of this master program, and I just can't understand why the people who are supposed to teach us how to be structured teachers have no structure to speak of. One professor has still not finalized the syllabus, the assignments and the reading list, and hasn't ordered the book either, and it's almost week three. It's infuriating!

And I'm sick. My entire body hurts, although I don't have the flu. I am constantly either ice cold and spending two hours straight in front of an electrical heater, or I am sweating profusely to such an extent that no deodorant could fix it, but I don't have a fever. Yet I wake up once every night covered in cold sweat. My neck, shoulders and back hurt, but not like they usually do - this time it's not the muscle pain from having the wrong posture of from working behind a computer for too long, but a pain in my bones. The bones in my legs, knees and ankles also hurt. I wonder if it's because of the hard-core yoga that I've been doing, but then, wouldn't I just have sore muscles? I have a headache that just won't go away, so I take pills all day every day, and am starting to get worried about the effects. My skin is also acting weird. I just feel so weak. I've lost four kilos in four days, because I live off oranges and soup. I feel sick, but I keep working because I'm not so sick that I can't function. I usually wake up after having slept for twelve hours, feel slightly better, then get to one class or work for four hours, and then I feel sick again. I am in bed by 9 PM and wake up at 9 AM, get work done, but then I am so tired afterwards. I wonder if I have a burn-out, or mono, or something. I've felt like this for the past six days.

I am just so, so, so TIRED! It never stops! What should I do? After writing all of this I kind of feel like a spoiled and whiny twenty-something, but you know what? It's my blog and I can at least write whatever I want!

Suggestions are always welcome.

Change of Plans

There's been a slight change of plans since my last update. The creature above is Manchego. This male (yes, it's a boy), chocolate-haired, blue-eyed cat is now our cat. My dad, who picked up his own male, chocolate-haired, blue-eyed cat yesterday reserved it for Jochem and me this morning and we will get him at the end of January when he is three months old (he was born on November 3). As I wrote in my previous update, this was not exactly 'the plan'. We were planning to get a kitten next year in the fall, but my family infected us with their kitten enthusiasm and after reading all of Kiran's book on cats and discussing the pros and cons a lot (I am in a couple now after all), we decided to go for it. Besides, everyone is always telling me to be flexible when life throws you a curve ball (or some other English expression). And we are really excited!!! :) More information can be found on: http://www.juffair.overijsselnet.nl/ (also: http://www.kinderlines.nl/juffair). Also, we named the cat Manchego because we (read: I) didn't feel that Parma was the right name for him. I tried to convince Jochem once again to name him after one of my favorite authors like James (Joyce) or Ernest (Hemingway), or after that crazy English king who got married a bunch of times and beheaded Queen Elizabeth's mother, Henry, but to no avail, especially not when Anna started to intervene and said we should stick to our food theme. So now our cat will be named after a Spanish sheep cheese as opposed to an Italian ham.

On Pets

Jochem and I love animals. My animal love has an obsessive side to it in that I support several animal organizations (and have convinced Jochem to do the same) and can't bear to see animal cruelty, not even in movies; however, I do not even come close to being a vegetarian. I blame my Spanish culinary upbringing and my meat-driven boyfriend for this, but the truth is, I have no willpower. I see things in black and white. Were I to stop eating meat for the animals, I feel that I would also have to stop eating fish in order for it to make sense. And this is what always stops me. I can imagine giving up steak and luncheon meat and I can even imagine living without tuna on my pizza, but as soon as I remember Kyushu, the Japanese restaurant where Jochem and I go to once a month and spent fifty euros on the best sushi I have ever had and where the wait staff recognize us and don't even give us menus anymore because they know we always order the same things, I always give up.

But I have always been an animal friend and as a child my little brother Jordi and I were able (or should I say: allowed) to take care of almost every pet known to man: goldfish, birds, hamsters, rats, rabbits and lots and lots of cats. For some reason, guinea pigs never made the cut, nor did my one true wish: a dog. A puppy Golden Retriever to be exact. This obviously scarred me for life, because I still want a dog. So does Jochem. Exept the Golden Retriever has made way for a new breed: a pug. Pugs are the absolute cutest puppies and Jochem and I desperately want one. Not just because we think they're cute, but because we truly believe a pug would be a perfect dog for us and for our life style.

Never a couple to "go over ice in one night" (yay for Dutch expressions), we did a lot of research. We walk together a LOT. Once a week we walk around the city center of Utrecht and several times a week we walk through the Griftpark near our house. We are always jealous of those people who are accompanied by a dog, so one time we looked up a book. We were looking for a dog that we could take out walking, but not a dog that would need hours a day of running (think: huskies or German shepherds). We also didn't want to worry too much about grooming since we both hate cleaning and because I am such a neat-freak when it comes to my house. It turned out that so-called companion dogs would be our best bet since these are usually small, therefore don't require a lot of excercise or food, and are very attached to their owners. They can even be potty-trained! They are basically cats (the book said this, not me), since they don't require a lot of care, like cats, but are not as strong-willed as cats. This sounded perfect for us, but with us being poor students who travel a lot and have no idea where we'll be in the next few years, we don't feel it would be right to get Cracker just yet. Yes, we already have a name for our future pug. So as when we walk in the park and are jealous of all the other dog owners, we say "I wish Cracker were here". I'm not kidding you.

So, with our pug plans put on hold (GREAT alliteration!), we figured getting a cat first would make more sense. A cat is a stubborn kind of creature but from experience I know that they can be very sweet, they can stay indoors, they clean up their own mess and you can even let them stay by themselves for a weekend. But getting a kitten requires a lot of money and attention as well, something we just don't feel ready for yet. My aunt might give us a kitten next year when her two cats have gotten together, but until then there will be no Parma. That's the name we've given our future cat. I'm still not kidding you.

And after we decided we weren't ready for the dog yet and wanted to practice for the dog with the cat but decided we weren't ready for the cat yet either, we decided to practice for the cat with two goldfish. And that's how Pasta and Pesto came into our world. Yesterday Jochem and I went downtown to an animal store and bought the whole nine yards: a fish bowl, green pebbles, some water plants, fish food, a fish net, two devices that allows us to leave for either a weekend or a week without starving our animals, and, of course, two goldfish. We are determined to name all of our pets after food (see the sections on Cracker and Parma), and so we've named the golden fish Pasta and the black fish Pesto. We think it's a perfect match! :) I've also tried to convince Jochem to name them James and Joyce or Ernest and Hemingway, but he hasn't fallen for it yet. We placed the fish bowl in our study/extra bedroom where we spend most of our time, on the table next to the sofa bed. It''s silly but we really like our new pets and talk to them all the time and check about every five minutes to see if they're still alive and generally feel very good about this new 'responsibility' of ours (I mean, it's not like we can go to Italy again for four weeks without coming home to a nasty situation). I even wrote "Welcome Pasta and Pesto!!!" on our fridge!

Now, let's just hope that the future dog won't drive the future cat crazy so that it won't eat our present fish.