finding my way...

i arrived in tilburg yesterday. as tante ria drove off into tilburg traffic, i realized i was on my own! it was exciting! i'm in a city that i've never been to, surrounded by people speaking a language i do not understand and trying to live on my own which is probably the most foreign thing to me.

once i arrived in the university, they explained welcome week, i signed my housing contract (453 euro a month! yikes!) and they drove me to my new home. the address? 241 oerlersestraat, tilburg. (please don't ask me to pronounce that because i've already butchered it ten times). i live in a house with three international students: two guys from poland (Voltoik & Frank) and a girl from germany (Keersten). we hung out for a couple hours yesterday and they seem nice and a lot of fun (plus, i think their english is better than mine).

once i unpacked, i walked to the albert heijn (a supermarket) about 3 minutes away. i grabbed a basket and proceeded to meander through the aisles of groceries. it was then that i realized "i have no idea how to shop for one person." what made it even more difficult was that i couldn't read anything. i had to carefully examine the package to make sure what i picked up was tuna and not sardines! in the end i picked up the dutch necessities: bread, cheese, butter, vla (a amazing dairy product that tastes like a mixture between yogurt and pudding) and stroopwaffels.

in the evening i figured out the bus system so that i could get downtown to meet an edmonton friend, hanna and her two cousins olfi and jan. we walked through the streets of downtown tilburg (which is beautiful) and for dinner? mckroket!

there are two main residences for students: verbs and staaps. yesterday night there was a party at verbs and the four of us (plus montse from spain) decided to go. with none of us knowing tilburg at all, it took us about 2 hours to find the place while picking up another bike to double.

biking double. another adventure. at about 1am we decided to go to our respective homes and get some sleep. ellen and hanna both had a bike, but montse and i are getting ours today. since i live far away, they kindly biked me home so i wouldn't need to walk 45 minutes alone in the dark. i rode with ellen on the back of her bike and hanna with monste on the back of hers. however, biking double is not as easy as they make it look on those european tourist posters. and after a couple rounds of flip cup (which the canadians DO rock at, sorry spaniards!) it gets even more difficult. especially when you don't know where you're going. also, dutch boys like to honk their horns so everytime they did ellen and i would both fluster thinking that we were biking in the wrong lane or our lights were wrong and almost kill ourselves trying to get off to see what the problem was.

let me tell you, yesterday definitely made me appreciate having a bike!