Look guys, okay? I know that I've been gone a while, and, in the best traditions of drunken deadbeat fatherhood have abandoned my spouse to care for our child alone in this cruel, cruel world while blithely going on my epicurean way. To be fair though, I did try! I bought some presents with my gambling money and tried to buy back her love with them, only to forget to bring them four consecutive times..
AND I DID WRITE OUT A PRETTY EPIC BLOG ENTRY. One of them. Once. Somewhere...
AND I'VE BEEN PRETTY BUSY, OKAY. THOSE APPLE JUICES DON'T JUST DRINK THEMSELVES, Y'KNOW. But I mean between school and my epic(ly embarrassing) graduation dance performance and studying abroad (IN THE NETHERLANDS WHY DID I EVER CHOOSE TO DO THIS) it's been tough even getting my own stuff together. For a year. With breaks. And three months off.
....
Okay, okay. You got me. I guess I just wasn't ready for the responsibility, was afraid of what our child would pick up from me. Maybe I just wasn't ready to give up the drinking (of apple juice. Or any other juice who are we kidding here).
BUT NO LONGER, MY FRIENDS. I AM TOTALLY TURNING OVER A NEW PAGE. I WILL GIVE THIS BLOG THE ATTENTION THAT IT NEEDS AND DESERVES. Plus, I'm in the NETHERLANDS SOB FOREVER EMILY I NO LONGER SENSE YOUR PRESENCE which means that this is the perfect opportunity to congratulate myself occasionally for staying alive. BASICALLY WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY IS. GET READY FOR SOME BI-WEEKLY UPDATES PEOPLE.
Yeah, you heard right. I said bi-weekly.
Bi.
Weekly.
And not in a curious-about-my-weekly-orientation way.
Look, I know what you're saying right now. "Hey, Sameera," you say.
"Yes," I reply.
"This sounds an awful lot like you are making a foolhardy attempt to make up for lost time, which, coupled with your absence and a childhood lacking a stable parent makes the blog ripe for hating and rejecting you, then wearing eyeliner and writing death-metal songs about the bourgeoisie."
With which I can only agree.
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SPECIAL! TWO-FOR-THE-UPDATES-OF-ONE PROACTIVITY POST!
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So I guess the best place to start is the beginning...
After three weeks of being extremely excited for my semester abroad and another two weeks making my last visits with friends (WE NEED TO PLAY THE LAVA LEVELS EMILY I C U) and subsequently extremely regretting my semester abroad I WAS FINALLY ALL PACKED UP. TOTALLY HAD EVERYTHING TOGETHER AND FORGOT NOTHING.*
Because my parents know me and herded me with extremely specific directions through customs all the way to security, I had little trouble at the airport. At least the one near my house. I mean the only uncomfortable thing was the full-body scanner. Oh yeah, and my suitcase was too heavy to check in so we had to step out of the (crowded) line and take out all my stuff in front of everyone. It was actually pretty comfortable.*
And then it was an hour flight to Georgia for the eight-hour flight to The Netherlands THE EXCITEMENT. By around hour seven I was pretty certain I was going to die on the plane. Especially since the two people sitting on either side of me were dangerously close to sleeping (and drooling on) my shoulder and also they were like fifty year old men. I know what you're saying though, you're saying "Sameera, couldn't you have just taken a nap or watched TV?"
To which my reply is HAVE FUN DOING ANYTHING WITH THIS ON EITHER SIDE OF YOU:
Which really isn't an excuse for what happened next.
I'm going to blame it on hearing a Cyndi Lauper song the second I stepped out of the gate and went towards the baggage claim. I wasn't expecting the Dutch national anthem or anything BUT I MEAN CYNDI LAUPER? FLAWLESS TASTE AIRPORT I AM NOT GOING TO LIE BUT YOU COULD HAVE AT LEAST HAD THE DECENCY TO PLAY SOME EUROTRASH DISCO BEAT. I wasn't disappointed for too long though as there was the appropriate displays of tulips, waffles, chocolate, windmills, tulips, wooden clogs, tulips, and waffles. All. Over. (The waffle stand was when I realized I made the right decision in coming here.)
I mean despite everything being in Dutch it was actually pretty easy to find my way to the train terminal, where I would depart on the third leg of my journey down to the very southern tip of the Netherlands to Maastricht (where I'm at.) When I googled it before leaving (and this is important - I googled it without actually look at the routes or printing out the way to get there. I honestly arrived in Amsterdam with no idea how to get to my university. And lo, I still have no idea how to get to my university, but that is another story for another bi-weekly post.) It honestly seemed simple enough. I mean, pfft, pffft, how hard is it, really, to take a train, pfft.
Pfft.
After asking the same ticket attendant five different times how to get to Maastricht, how to buy a ticket, how to board the train, and how to get to the train station, I finally managed to get both a ticket and an itinerary (trying to endear myself to the ticket attendant with my quirky ways but mainly succeeding in doing what I've consistently done since coming here: convince other people I am not a functioning human being). Now all I had to do was go down the escalator to the underground train station located directly under the airport.
On paper it sounds really easy.
But over there, being all weird and abnormal and..European, the escalators aren't escalators. They're ramps. Pointing in the same direction. That don't move until you step on them. "Well," you say. "That sounds like a perfectly understandable and effective solution for European populations who do not have the room to accomodate your gigantic capitalist American escalators. "
And my only reply is that if you're going to put two escalator-ramp things next to each other and facing the same direction, at least give people a sign. So that they don't see the weird population-control bars in front of the one and think that means not to use it to go down step on the remaining ramp realize it goes up fall backwards onto your suitcases try not to make eye contact with any of the people in the airport and go down the right ramp only to find that everyone at the train station was watching you from below, staring hungrily up at you like a European, cave-dwelling species of Trollz.
After getting on like five wrong trains I finally made it to the station in Maastricht, except I had to take some time and recover from how ABSOLUTELY UNFORGIVABLY QUAINT everything is. Being the responsible and prepared person I am (see above) I completely neglected to bring a camera so I coudln't show all the great train pictures I got of the adorable Dutch countryside. I mean, there were lush meadows! Flower farms! Linden trees! Fields of Shetland ponies and sheep! WINDMILLS! And the most adorable little houses you have seen this side of the Sound of Music.
Oh, yeah, and a random gigantic Chinese palace in the middle of Dutch dairy countryside.
HOPEFULLY NEXT TIME I WILL HAVE PICTURES. And a phone. And a bank account. And an ability to find my university.
The amount of times I actually LOL'd at this probably made my roommate think I was freak. You ARE SO GOOD. The writing, the drawings, the everything.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Sameera is 3x more talented than I am.
ReplyDelete