Scream.

When will people learn that it's OFFENSIVE to say "You certainly eat a lot. You should watch it or you'll get fat. It'll probably happen though. It always does."?

When will people learn that the proper way to deal with people is NEVER to treat them like inferiors?

When will people learn that I, contrary to popular belief, am NOT RETARDED?!

I Command The Demons Inside This Oven To COME OUT!!

Holy potatoes! So today I didn't have school (again) and decided to do something worthwhile. Time for some homemade bagels, awwwright. Everything went smoothly except the part about running out of white flour in the middle, but I used wheat flour and yeah, they're probably healthier now anyway. So yeah, you know, I did all the bagely types of things, boiled 'em, did the egg wash...and then it came time to cook them. Now, I am WELL aware that my host family's oven is quite different from mine in America. It has a whole host of weird symbols and buttons on it that don't make any sense to me, but I selected the settings I thought would be most appropriate and popped the bagels in. The recipe called for 35-40 minutes at 400F, but this oven only goes up to 250. Whatevz. Bagels were in and I went about cleaning the kitchen. After NO MORE than three minutes, I began to smell finished bagel. "Well, that's odd," I thought to myself. I opened the oven and lo and behold, the bagels on the top rack were done. DONE! I took them out and inspected them; they were quite browned on the top but the sides and bottom were not as well done. Regardless, I did not want to burn them and so I set them aside. "There is NO WAY these are done," said I. Curious, I took one of them and cut it in half to see if it was still gooey inside. It wasn't. I took a bite. It was cooked all the way through.

THERE ARE DEMONS AND LITTLE SATANS RUNNING AROUND IN THAT OVEN.

It's Not As Bad As It Sounds

It seems to me that this blog has taken on a somewhat negative cast, which is not entirely fitting with the rather good days I've been having lately. I think a second post is needed to clarify that no, I am not having an awful time.

Yes, I have been sick, but we'll gloss over that hahaha.

So on Saturday we went to Cologne. Amazing, amazing, amazing. This city was founded in 30 BCE. That is so long ago it's ridiculous. We saw the incredible cathedral and the really old city gates...ah man, I can't even explain what it's like to be looking at something that old. Hell, there's a church in Ede that apparently was built in 1300 something. Old stuff is all over the place here; that's strange for me, considering that my country has hardly any history.

Flute lessons today were better than they have been. I've decided that I'll listen to the teacher's suggestions and incorporate them into my playing when I'm around him, but I'll decide for myself what to keep. This way he's happy and my lessons are more tolerable. It really did make all the difference today.

So apparently I have no school for the rest of the week...?

One piece of bad news: my phone freaking out is due to a software problem and it cannot be fixed. So now I have to buy a new cell phone. Yeargh.

And now for pictures from Cologne, for which I know you've all been anxiously waiting. My face sucks. The cathedral does not.

A SWEET window in the cathedral. Yes, it is supposed to look like this.

Spirals own.

A kind of bad picture inside.

One of the three remaining city gates.

This is what I saw as soon as we got off the train. Incredible.

Current events rant, skip over if you like.

Okay, so it's never a good time when I go off into a rant. I try to avoid doing so at all costs. But really, here it is unavoidable. Read the following article before proceeding so that you know why I am so incensed. (Copied from My Yahoo!, all credit given where due)

Outrage turns to laughter at Ahmadinejad NY speech
By Mark Egan Tue Sep 25, 9:38 AM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Vilified as a Holocaust denier, a supporter of terrorism and a backer of Iraqi insurgents, the president of Iran was actually able to make New Yorkers burst into laughter -- but not at a joke.

"In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at Columbia University on Monday in response to a question about the recent execution of two gay men there.
"In Iran we do not have this phenomenon," he continued. "I do not know who has told you we have it."
Loud laughs and boos broke from the audience of about 700 people, mostly students at the Ivy League school whose garb included "Stop Ahmadinejad's Evil" T-shirts.
Everyone from presidential candidates to September 11 families had expressed outrage that Ahmadinejad would speak there.
After his assertions that Israel persecutes Palestinians and that Iran's nuclear program is for energy not weapons, the Iranian leader's comment on gays broke the tension.
But it spurred strong reaction too.
"This is a sick joke," said Scott Long of Human Rights Watch, saying Iran tortures gays under a penal code that punishes homosexuality between men with the death penalty.
When Ahmadinejad, speaking in Farsi, actually tried to crack a joke, it drew no laughter, although maybe the nuance was lost in translation.
"Let me tell a joke here," Ahmadinejad said. "I think the politicians who are after atomic bombs, or testing them, making them, politically they are backward, retarded."
The crowd seemed uncertain how to react. Some applauded that pacifist sentiment, others seemed befuddled by the insensitive use of the word retarded.
DELUGE OF OBJECTIONS
Ahmadinejad's visit here was preceded by a deluge of objections when it became apparent he wanted to lay a wreath at Ground Zero and that he would speak at Columbia.
Presidential candidates from both major U.S political parties took swipes at the president of a country President George W. Bush calls part of "the axis of evil." They said he denied the Holocaust, supported terrorism and armed Iraqi insurgents.
U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York had a different way of capturing all that.
"Sometimes we have snakes slithering through the streets of New York," Weiner told protesters outside the United Nations, where Ahmadinejad will speak on Tuesday.
And in a city known for its blunt manners, the Iranian president's reception was bound to be frosty. The New York Daily News had the front page headline, "The Evil Has Landed."
At Columbia, university President Lee Bollinger pulled no punches. He called him a "petty and cruel dictator" and said his Holocaust denials suggested he was either "brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated."
"I feel the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for," Bollinger said to loud applause.
In retort, Ahmadinejad berated Bollinger as a rude host.
"Many parts of his speech were insults," he said. "We actually respect our students and the professors by allowing them to make their own judgments."
Not everybody objected to his speaking appearance.
"If the (Columbia) president thinks it's a good idea to have the leader from Iran come and talk to the students as an educational experience, I guess it's OK with me," Bush told Fox News.
(Additional reporting by Claudia Parsons, Michael Erman, Michelle Nichols and Megan Davies)

This is ridiculous. Anyone who has not been living under a rock understands that the relationship between the US and Iran is delicate at best. (As a side note, anyone who threatens to invade Iran is not to be trusted. Same with Pakistan--ahem, Barack Obama.) Therefore, anyone with half a brain would be mindful of preserving this delicate relationship and take utmost care to avoid turning things sour. Does anyone now see the stupidity of the American public in general, and Columbia president Lee Bollinger in particular, in so thoroughly disrespecting Mr. Ahmadinejad? Okay, I understand if you disagree with his viewpoint. But come on, people, he's a world leader. He's developing nuclear technology. And he already has an unfavorable view of America and Americans. You treat him with respect. Come to think of it, treat everyone with respect. Whether it's a suspected TARE'ist at Guantanamo Bay (or Abu Ghraib, shudder shudder) or the most esteemed Nobel Peace Prize winner you're dealing with, human decency always applies. I'm not even going to go into the maltreatment of prisoners right now, because currently I have something to be more pissed off about. (Usually I don't, heh, but one day I will vent about that whole bit too.) How does introducing an INVITED--emphasis on INVITED--speaker as a "petty and cruel dictator" help anyone? Think about it. Now Mr. Ahmadinejad has complete support for any argument against America he may make back in Iran. He says Hey guys, the west doesn't understand us, we can bomb them at will, and who will there be to disagree? The world saw how he was treated in New York. This does not bode well for the US's ever improving its world image. Seriously guys, get some manners and maybe people wouldn't hate us so much.

Also, start trying to understand people who are different from you instead of just blindly attacking them. Peace will never be achieved if no one wants to understand and accept anyone else.

Gimme an F! (F!) Gimme an O! (O!)...oh, I give up, just give me some FOOD!

You may be wondering about the title. The title refers to my inability to find edible things here. Sure, there are items resembling food, but they're nothing compared to what I usually eat in America. I didn't think I ate really well when I lived in America, but by these standards I'm like a nutrition guru. Let me list off what I want to eat but cannot find:
-Annie the Bunny
-Kashi everything
-Snack crackers like Triscuits or Wheat Thins
-CELERY
-Soy bars
-Caribbean Spice tofu from the Co-op
-Tempeh
-Cups of cinnamon applesauce (here it only comes in jars, impossible to bring to school for lunch)
-Cups of yogurt (here it comes in cartons, also impossible to bring to school)

And yeah, so much more. I was going to compare my usual meals, but I don't dare.

The dudes at the local organic living shops (I went to both.) have never even heard of soy bars or Kashi. Wow. Eating this food makes me feel like I'm slowly dying.

Little Boxes

So, random updates.

I switched into the fifth form at school because I'm older than all the kids in the fourth (where I was originally placed). My schedule is now filled with classes that seem like an utter waste of time. Actually, school in general is seeming like a huge waste of time right now. I have physics in my schedule, but seriously...I ALREADY TOOK IT. The math I'm in is Math B (death). I don't want to repeat things. It doesn't hold my interest.

School is seeming more Christian by the day.

I joined an orchestra. My first rehearsal--the second overall--was last night, and it was enjoyable enough, I suppose. Unfortunately the orchestra is comparable in size to AYO, and the conductor's attention to detail is not quite Andrewsian. CYMers will get the reference.

I also had my first flute lesson yesterday. I would like to be positive here, but it sucked. Really. The teacher seems like a very nice person, but the lesson...ugh. Just ugh. I was asked to play something I hadn't prepared (the first movement of the Mozart Concerto in G) and then he gave me feedback that contradicted EVERYTHING I'VE EVER HEARD. Okay, it's nice to get opinions from many different people, but when one person's ideas are in direct opposition to the views of three other highly capable teachers, one begins to wonder. Maybe he's right, but I haven't known him long enough/found out enough about his background to trust him above three other people. I played a chromatic scale for a warm-up and the tone above high A was absolutely terrible, but he didn't even touch on that. He went after my stance (...what? I have NEVER been told to stand a different way, especially not in the awkward position he encouraged.) and--AND!--how I hold my flute. There are many people who tilt their heads to the side and hold the flute at an angle when they play. That's fine if it works for them. Their lips are still parallel to the tone-hole, whatever whatever. I, on the other hand, hold my head straight and my flute pretty much parallel to the ground; I've always felt that to be a position of greater power and more freedom of motion. Dude, if you're going to change my stance "for more freedom of motion", I really do not need you to pull my flute down at a ridiculous angle WHILE I AM PLAYING IT. Eurgh. And he wants me and Julia to play the same pieces and études. Okay, my idea is that different people learn differently and have different strengths/weaknesses, so they should be given different approaches in their lessons. Seems logical, no? Not everyone fits in the same little box.

Weekend

Ahh, the weekend is nice. Yesterday I went to Amsterdam and met some of my FAMILY (!) that I'd never met before. They were rad sauce cookies, for real. I have pictures.

Also, tonight I went out on a bike ride to take pictures of more sweet rural Holland. Enjoy. Amsterdam, woo!
Me and Julia. I love my face.
Bathroom graffiti. Are you even KIDDING ME?! (It says "I love God!" "Me too!")
Yeah you go Go family!
Bike Ride.

Bike Ride.

Second Day of School

So today was not so bad. My classmates were more friendly today...I had people to sit with in classes and at lunch. Today's issue, though, is schoolbooks. The system in Holland is very different from the US system. In the US, the school has a collection of books that are given out to the students each year and returned at the end of the year. The only time an American student has to pay for a book is when it gets lost or destroyed. (Some classes, like PHYSICS gah, "strongly recommend" that students purchase review books for test prep, but even then there are special low prices through the school.) Overall, books are not too much of an issue in the United States. None of this is true in Holland, however. Here the students BUY their textbooks each year, and the textbooks themselves are different...not thick hardbound tomes like many US books, but thinner, often soft-bound booklets. My French textbook is like a magazine. What is the problem here, one might ask? They are RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE. This magazine French book? €37.95. Insane! I calculated out the total cost of my schoolbooks, and it is €500, no joke. AFS (me exchange organisation) is supposed to pay for schoolbooks, but Julia and I called them today and they said we have to buy the books ourselves first and then send AFS the invoice. That means that I have to lay down €500. Arghhhhh. I also have to buy a graphing calculator for €85 that AFS refuses to cover. I do not understand this, but whatever.

How do Dutch parents afford sending their children to school?!

First Day of CHRISTIAN School

So, my fears have been confirmed. They are, indeed, crazies. Today was brainwashing-free, but I expect science tomorrow morning to be a treat. I asked the guy showing me around this morning what science was--physics? Chemistry? Biology? I was told it deals with social applications of science, like ABORTION and DNA ohz noez.

People here do not comprehend "ohz noez".

There are a few nice things about my school...for one thing, we are allowed to leave during breaks and free periods. They DO NOT have a cafeteria though, so during the half hour lunch break Julia and I had to make a mad dash on bike to some gas station to get a bit of food. It's alright though, we made it in time and we have already packed lunches for tomorrow heh heh. Anyway yeah, free periods are actually free (unlike the PHS system) so Tuesdays mean late arrival and EVERY DAY is early release, bahaha yes.

I can't think of anything else to say, though I know there's plenty. I'll leave it at this for now. Ta!

Photographic Evidence

So today I finally uploaded a few of my pictures. Emphasis on "a few". I did make a post to share them, though, because I know some people--myself included--want everything about my exchange in one location. There you have it.

Scenery on a bike ride.

Open-air market the first day.
DE SPEELBUS.
Another bike ride.
This train has two levels. Crazy, right?

The sweet Nijmegen cathedral.

My seeeeester! Julia. We were eating lunch at a café in Nijmegen.

Farm Fresh

Lately I've been noticing the interesting mix of rural and urban space found in the Netherlands. In the US, there are towns, and then these towns sprawl out forever...from a town center, it usually takes quite a while of driving to get to any open fields or farms. Basically in the US, there are concentric circles of population density; driving outwards one goes through regions of fewer and fewer houses packed together until AT LAST there's maybe one farm before the next town. Here in Holland it is different. I live with my host family in kind of the northern reaches of our town. I say this not because it's beginning to get rural out here, but because we're out a bit from the centre. The entire town seems to be of uniform population density, though. The neighborhoods here feel about the same as the neighborhoods right next to the center. If I want to go for a bike ride in the fields, though--something I do nearly every day--I need only bike out the north end of our neighborhood and BAM there they are. Town just...ends. No concentric circles here! It's very different from the US, but I think I like it this way. I can bike to the Hoogstraat for whatever shopping needs I might have just as easily as I can go for a long bike ride in the gorgeous Dutch countryside. Conveeeeeenient.

So yesterday and today I was in Nijmegen, which was amazing. It's very, very old...I think the city might have existed before America was discovered. This is a mind-blowing thought for me, like these people had an amazing, thriving culture before my home country was even thought of. Yesterday Julia and I took the train in to meet up with Andrew and spent the day just wandering about. We saw an AMAZING old cathedral, beautiful Gothic architecture and everything, but sadly it was not open for walkthroughs that day. Today we went back with our host mom for an excellent concert of some amateur orchestra and choir. They did some really great pieces, and it was an exciting opportunity to see such a huge production--a massive orchestra and probably a 30 or 40 member choir. Also, the concert hall itself is supposed to have the best acoustics in the Netherlands aside from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Heh.

Tomorrow I have to go to school (!) at 11 AM to discuss course selections, as I believe I mentioned earlier. I think school starts on Wednesday for real. Eeek!

This evening I went for a very, very long bike ride in the fields. I saw signs for a bike route, so I followed them. The scenery was incredibly beautiful, but when the route started being more and more dirt roads and fewer paved bike paths, I decided to turn around. Dirt roads with massive potholes are NOT pleasant on bicycle, to say the least.