Quick Update

Right now it is almost 12am here in Gouda. we are staying with host families and the family that I am staying is letting me use their computer to write this. We have only been here for a couple days and things are flying by. we had a full day of touring and traveling around amsterdam yesterday, and today we had 2 concerts in 2 cities.(Gouda and Dordrecht) Both went very well, but I am tired from how packed our days have been and it is not going to slow down. Tomorrow we go on to Delft, which is where the famous "Delft Blue" is made.

I am going to head to bed, but just one more thing. the first place we visited yesterday was the largest international flower auction in the world. it is quite the operation. There are millions of flower on tons of carts that are all in the most massive wherehouse I have ever been in. Mom, you would have loved it. More flowers than you can imagine. I would post pictures but that requires me to save them to the computer and it is not mine. But I cannot read the Dutch to save it in the first place either.

Weltrusten...(goodnight)

"Profound, enticing title followed by thoughtful , concerning and then hopeful blog post."

That's the way all blog posts are supposed to go...

Right?

No.

I am drowning in expectations, and it all has to do with Dordt. Grrrr. This post will fall into the category of venting, frustration, complainging and "everything kinda sucks and won't get better until it's all over".

I am not done with exams, I have a 10 page, 4 page, 2 page (x4) and a 1 page(in spanish) paper(s) due in the next day. I have a list of people that I am avoiding because they are somehow related to reminding me of the pile of things to accomplish, when my own thoughts cannot think about anything else anyway. I have yet to start packing. Then I am torn each night when I have friends ask if I want to hang out, go get dinner and some drinks or whatever, and then have to regretfully decline because of the work I am barried in. But then of course I go work on the papers and the studying and cannot help but mourn that fact that I want to be with my friends so badly.

I will ALWAYS value people over work! But survival instinct is preventing me from committing scholastic suicide. Talk about the most bittersweet week of my life thus far.

When conversations tend to end in
"so when will I see you gain?"
"I don't know" (thinking maybe never)
When it takes 30-40 minutes to fall asleep because the brain cannot be distracted from the list of responsibilities long enough to recharge.
When the goal of exams is to just finish and never mind the point of learning and retaining what has been learned because I value/ enjoy the material.
When my school comes to me with a promisary note to fill out so they can ring out my bank account for the next 10 years and make sure I don't flee the country/debt.(almost make me feel like a fugitive)
When the list of responsibilities and expectaions has precident on the sabbath and everything is crammed into one last week of "you better hope you can get it all done, or you fail the last four years of life"

I tend to thing..."something is wrong here. This is not the way it's supposed to be. How can we/ do we justify this? This is so wrong. This is not serving the purpose of our goals."

And I will leave it there. No resolve, no solution and suspended from a relaxed ending.