“There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction”

So, the new semester's started, and there's some changes coming this way. First off, I'm moving out, away from the host family I've been staying with, and into to the dorms. This is at the same time a sad and happy tiding, but I believe it to be a necessary and good step in my program. Betty and I discovered that my social life was gravitating away from her house and in to the dorms. In short, I figured I was spending so much time there I might as well get myself a bed. They are way more comfortable then the chairs I spent nights in, in rooms not my own.

I haven't been doing a whole lot of interesting stuff since California. Classes are progressing normally, Chinese is hard, my algebra class is ridiculously easy (come on people, linear equations? It's a flashback to year one of my Vossius career), but getting more interesting every class. On the free time side of things, there's the regular multi player starcraft sessions like always (needless to say, I can kick the asses of a lot, but not everyone in the dorms. Ulukman is like a machine, unbelievable). Also, I've started to play the old Diablo games in anticipation of Diablo 3. While the original will get old in a matter of minutes, Diablo 2 is definitely a time-sucker. I recommend it to anyone who wants to play a good old hack-n-slasher.

The other thing soaking up my time (what I have left after taking off my social life) is Stargate: Atlantis. I have come into the possession of all five seasons of this sci-fi show. I watched the older Stargate: SG-1 a few years ago, and it was pretty good. Atlantis is a step up, however. I can recommend this series to anyone who is lamenting the absence of new, good star trek shows, and also fans of sci-fi in general. This is stuff worth watching.

So, tomorrow is move day. I do not know my room yet, but my roommate will most likely be Kersten, who is also moving out of Betty's house. We will still visit them of course, and call regularly. But it'll be a new and exciting semester.

Today's quote is from Winston Churchill. Couldn't find anything better, sorry.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my fathers forty-seventh birthday. Congratulations from the states dad! Don't miss me too much!

I've been having trouble getting posts out ever since coming to the states, so I have decided to put myself on a more strict posting schedule. Posts will be every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Sunday posting will be optional. for those of you following the mailing list, posting there will be twice a week, Wednesday and Saturday. These have all been recorded in my google calendar to remind me. There may be an overlap in topics, so if you follow both of these outlets, be prepared for repetition. Together with the new schedule will be a new format: every post title will be a quote from a video game, movie, book, or other such thing. The post topic will relate to the quote in some way but not to the source of the quote in question. Exceptions are made when a political event or other recent real-world thing will be discussed. I'm hoping this format and schedule will help me write some more interesting posts.

I bought a tennis racket and some balls this week. I haven't had the chance to use them yet but I'm really pumped about that. A few people at the dorms play tennis and I want to play them. There are a few things still on my to-buy list, including a mobile phone and a camera. I've been drooling over iPhones, but I'm definitely not going to buy one at the ridiculous 2-year plan (60 bucks a month!) that they come with. the iPod touch is also tempting, but the 32 gig is too expensive and I still have a good iPod. My inner gadget freak is just acting up again. Especially after seeing the refurbished section at the applestore, with 80GB iPod classics going for just 176 dollars. Every geek in the world has a thing for Apple I guess.

My current favorite songs are "the poet and the pendulum" by Nightwish and "I'm yours" by Jason Mraz. I guess it shows my conflicting musical tastes. If anyone is interested, I will keep listing these as theey change

I have arrived

Welcome, everyone, to my first message from the United States.

The trip to Wisconsin was mostly smooth, without any delays or other annoying stuff. It was, of course, tiring, but such things are unavoidable. My digestive system is still a bit upset, and I'm also still tired, but I'm sure I will eventually adapt. The weather here is a nice 25 degrees, mostly sunny (though today is a bit overcast). My host family is a married couple called Betty and Ron (I won't go into last names because of privacy). They have four children who are all out of the house already, and live mostly in Arizona. Ron is a long distance truck driver, so he'll be home mostly on weekends. Betty is part-time medical transcriptionist who I believe works for a dentist.

There is a nice mountain right across from the house, with a few skyslopes and everything. I'm looking forward to winter snowboarding and everything that goes along with that.

School hasn't started yet, it will begin next monday. I met a woman from NTC (my school) at the airport, who gave me a super thick booklet which I haven't read yet, but will. I've driven around town with my host mother, and seen the college already. She seems to think of everything as small, though it is all a lot bigger than what we have in the Netherlands.

This post was written from Betty's computer, but I'll be buying my own soon for the most work I have to do. So I'll see you all soon from my own pc. I'll also be buying a camera so you can all see what my new home looks like.

Pre-leave post

It's not that far away now anymore, the exchange. I may or may not have mentioned this, but I will leave for the states august 11, just under two weeks from now. I am strangely calm. Serene, I would almost say. In contrast, my mom is sort of freaking out all of a sudden. She has the impression that I need to do a lot of things before leaving. I wouldn't know what, really. Clean out my room, pack my bags, and we're all set.

Tania, my mexican alter-ego who will be replacing me during my time abroad, will arrive the ninth, two days before I leave. She'll have to bear with the guest room for a few days, but I don't think that's such a big deal. I'm floating between excited and nervous about meeting here. She speaks decent english, so it probably shouldn't be a problem, but I'm still nervous. More than about my own host family, which incidentally I don't know a thing about.

I should probably mention the dark knight. A friend of mine had tickets to the (Dutch) pre-run, the night before the official opening. We were seated basically exactly in the center of the IMAX theater, which was really awesome. As a bonus, free beer and nachos were served. And let's not forget the movie, which is awesome for a three reasons: the performance of Heath Ledger, the character that really drives this thing along. Second reason is not placing all attention on awesome special effects. They're there, but they don't take center stage for a change. And third reason is Morgan Freeman, one of my favorite actors of all time. In my eyes, a movie gets points just for him being in it.

I'll be seeing Wall-e tomorrow. I'm really expecting a lot from that movie. I'm hoping it'll be a pixar movie worth owning, which I haven't seen since Finding Nemo. Ratatouille is also good, I heard, but I never got the chance to see it. Maybe I'll rent the DVD once.

School's over for me!

I've been back for a few days now, but there has been so much going on I didn't have the time to get around to posting something. Well then, where to start, where to start...

Probably most important is that I passed my exams with flying colors. Here are my marks:

Dutch:	7
Latin:	6
Philosophy:	6
English:	8
Chemistry:	8
Physics:	8
Math:	8

There will also be german and french marks appearing on my diploma, but I passed those classes 3 years ago with similar marks. Festivities have already commenced to celebrate my diploma.

And when I say festivities I actually mean my job as a python programmer has just started. I'm sitting in an office right now, making a wxPython application that I won't bore you with. It's actually quite fun, though I have spent most of my time reading documentation and experimenting with the GraphicsContext API.

In my previous post I said I would be going on a vacation with some friends. I mentioned Ameland as a likely destination, but actually the goal was Terschelling, the island next to it, throwing all my rabid fans and paperazzi off my track. Actually, I just forgot what island we had decided upon and picked one at random, but he former story sounds more exciting.
Anyway, we had a lot of fun there, the weather was great, and we played midget golf. That's all you need to know really. I will give you one more nugget of information: our vacation at some point involved beer and a soccer match, which we won.

Now onto more important news: exchange. In the middle of my vacation, I took a leave of my friends and traveled to the city of Arnhem, where the exchange information and preparation weekend was held. About a hundred of my fellow exchange students showed up. Strangely, about eighty percent of those also went to the USA, with rather a lot of them going to states in the lake michigan area. About the weekend I could also bore you with endless details, but it should suffice to pass judgement in a single word: exhausting. There was beer here also, and the amount of hours spent sleeping were surprisingly little. Though we were talked to a lot, I would not call the weekend informative. Most of this talking carried the same single message: judge not, for thy culture is different. A not altogether surprising variant to the well known biblical saying.

Last but not least: two little kittens can now be seen walking in our house, chasing each other or sleeping lazily in the sun. The chasing must be quite tiring, I believe. I love them already. Pics will be coming up ASAP. They do not dare enter my bedroom yet, granting me my sleep at night. The stairs are a very intimidating obstacle, I concur. But this will not likely last long. They already wake up my sister wrestling in her room at night. Sometimes even on her bed.

Crystal ball says it may be Wisconsin

Just before I got on vacation, I received a strange email from a Korean dude who is apparently from North Central Tech. As if that wasn't enough, he spoke to me about how excited he was I was coming to the same college as him, and how he wanted to meet me. The English was lacking in quality, littered with '^__^' symbols and the like, but the message was clear. He was convinced I was going to NTC, and he was excited about it. He was also a YFU exchanger.

Now I was quite surprised a Korean dude was emailing me, but even more surprised he knew where I was going before I did. I always assumed, that if the YFU had found suitable host parents, I would here it from them, not from a random student. I was, quite reasonably, a little wary of this excited stranger. However, he seems to know a considerable amount of details about me, such as the classes I will follow, and (not unimportant) my name and email address. So, while I remain cautious, I have drawn the conclusion that I will most likely go to North Central Technical College, Wausau, Wisconsin.

So, way up north, in a small town. It's not like the Florida vacation I just had. I did, however, indicate my hobby of ice skating (the going fast kind, not the dancing kind, mind you). And I expressed my wishes to continue pursueing this hobby in America. I stand by that wish now, and I'm on the whole content with my destination.

Of course, perhaps this was all a mistake of epic proportions, and Korean dude was never meant to email me. I don't know for certain, since I still haven't received word from the YFU about my destination. I will have to wait and see. But my crystal ball says it may be Wisconsin.

Webdesigning

It's been a while, hasn't it? I must have a boring life or something, I don't know. Either way, my family has picked a student for the exchange. She is a Mexican girl. I won't reveal any more private details here, but I have faith it will all work out beautifully. She's supposed to send us a letter or e-mail sometime soon. So I'll get back to you by then.

Now on to the title. A while ago I landed a little job. I am to design a small website for a small family that runs holiday apartments in Greece. A friend of my mother belongs to the family, knows I am 'good with computers' and asked me to design a new website for them. Their current website, which can be found here, basically sucks.
The nice thing is they don't need something a lot more complicated than what they have now. That makes my job a lot easier, and it has convinced me that I'm up to the task. But that's not the best thing about this job.

The best thing is the payment: free stay in one of their apartments on a small Greek island called Nisyros. So provided I can afford the plane tickets, I'm going to Greece this summer! To pay for aforementioned tickets, I'll be working for my dad's company writing some python application.
It appears I have my work cut out for me.

School ending

Spring is coming up, and with that come also what I believe you might informally call finals in American (like midterms, but at the end, right?). What I mean to say is, exams are coming up. There's about half a dozen of them next week (the 'school' part), and than the actual, official ones that make up 50% of your end grade are in may. That's pretty damn soon.

I was basically coasting along this last year, enjoying the ride, looking at the scenery, and then bam! Exams come up and you end up in this whirlwind of teachers trying to complete the course in time (apparently our Latin teacher will need to schedule some extra classes to get it done), having to suddenly know all sorts of stuff (how the hell do you calculate the mass of a certain gas, given temperature, pressure and the amount of mole?), and official lectures by dusty professors (seriously, respect to them. They know. A lot). The year that started so relaxed ends in tons of worries.

I must confess, though, I'm still pretty relaxed most of the time. The hardest part (oral exams) are already behind me, and I passed those (albeit barely). Chemistry and English are a breeze for me, so the real hard stuff is in math, physics and Latin. That's mostly managable. So like I said, most of the time I'm relaxed. It's just these evenings on the couch when I sigh, and my mom says "Only a month left, Hugo," and I just think "damn, just a month? That soon?"

I guess I've had mostly good grades for the past five or six years though (those passed pretty fast as well by the way), so I should be ok. It's about time school ended anyway. It's been dragging on like this for a few months now. And I'm really excited about the exchange.

P.S.: (volume * pressure) / temp = mole * gas constant
one formula down, tons of others to go.

Passed the test

As part of the procedures that need to be followed in an exchange such as this, I took the CELT test last week (that's Comprehensive English Language Test. check it out here). I can assure anyone else who needs to take this test for some reason, it is almost too easy. I was told that no one in YFU had ever seen someone fail the test, ever. Me? I scored 296 out of 300. If you want to know, the required amount of points to pass the test is 160. With that behind me, I have now been definitively accepted into the YFU exchange program.

Now is also an appropriate time to address a few questions I have been asked regularly by friends and family. First and foremost, when I will be leaving. I don't have an exact date of departure, but the website tells me we leave somewhere near the first week of August. Secondly, where exactly will I be going? Unfortunately, I don't know yet. Allow me to explain.

The procedure I mentioned earlier involves filling out a whole bunch of forms (more like a whole book. It is really a lot), which together form a comprehensive profile of yours truly. The YFU then sets out and compares this with forms filled out by potential host families, and tries to find a good match. The forms include a lot of information, like health status, personality, likes and dislikes, teacher evaluations, the list is endless.

What I'm trying to explain, is that YFU will need some time to find a proper host family for me, someplace where I can fit in. That doesn't happen overnight, and these families are all over the states. So, until they find a host family, I won't know where I'm going to end up. It could be anything from Hawaii to Utah.