Days 3 and 4

Hallo!

Ok so again not used to the time difference, jetlag is hard to shake...but we did try and get up early and then realized Emille, our caretaker, was off on Wednesdays so we went back to bed. When we finally woke back up at around 3pm we decided to go to the city center to do a little bit of shopping for phones and a wifi router. It took us a little while, without a map mind you, to find our way to the phone store called The Phone House. Thankfully majority of store owners must know some English, and we lucked out that they were able to pick us out 2 prepaid cheap phones and plans that will work during our small stay here in The Netherlands. They even helped us set the phone in English, since being in a foreign country it was pre-set in Dutch ;)

After we left the phone store most of the shops had closed for the days, because it was already past 6pm, or  18:00. So we decided to see if we could at least find the Media Markt that Lise and Edwin had both told us about for other electronics, since we weren't sure if they were still open. Sure enough we located it easily and found out it was still open, so we went inside and found a brand for a wifi router we recognized and both had back home: NETGEAR.

Feeling like we accomplished something, we headed back to the apartment to set up our wifi. It took us just as long to find our way back, but can you blame us? We don't speak Dutch, we didn't have bikes yet, and we didn't have a map. That makes things a little more complicated. Anyways, so we got back and got our wifi set up, when the polish girls, Agnieeszka and the two Iza's, came by to ask us if we would like to join them on their balcony for drinks. And like a friend back home once told me, "Don't say no to anything, you will regret it." Obviously he didn't mean everything, but this was something we were not going to say no to. So we grabbed our chairs and some drinks and headed on over across the hall. It was great, within the first 10 minutes we were all laughing and joking about stuff that in our countries back home we don't think about that much and also drinking ages ;) We didn't realize how late it had gotten and at some point when we were running out of topics, we called it a night.


"Thirsty Thursday"
We slept a little bit better that night, mainly because we were so tired from being up so late. (And for me finally starting to get used to my bed...) But we still were not on a European time sleeping schedule. So knowing that most shops and such would be closed, we tried the supermarket for some quick food. Sure enough it was open and we were able to buy some lunch/dinner. We came back to the apt, and were greeted by our new foreign friends on 9th floor and they told us about an ERASMUS, (EuRopean Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students), party in city center tonight. ERASMUS is the European Exchange Program. So we ate dinner, got better dressed, and joined them for the meet and greet downtown. Again, very good idea to go out. We went to Sally O'Brians Irish Pub, and met like 30+ students from around the world, it was unrealistic. We spent close to maybe 2-3 hours hanging out there until their early bar time, then a small group (lead by SUN mentor Bart from group white) decided to go to a more student-oriented night club type of place called Flying Horse. After a bit we decided it was getting too crowded and Charla, Bart, and I decided to head next door to De Doctor, which was more of a laid-back sit down bar. We hung out there for a bit longer until Bart walked us back to our apartment building and we headed off to bed, pretty much as the sun was starting to rise.