My sleep clock is still not adjusted, and staying awake all night with new friends is making the correction much harder.

I woke up today in the afternoon and went to the kitchen I've been assigned to in the student house, Winschoterdiep. I share this kitchen with roughly thirty others, but this does not include the friends of friends and students who don't like the kitchen that they were assigned to. I've been eating yogurt for the past few days which is odd. My relationship with yogurt I think was originally that of enjoyment, then candy yogurt (e.g. trix yogurt, gogurt), then thinking that eating living bacteria was gross, to finally finding out that probiotics are a helpful and important part of my health. To the point, I like yogurt and the yogurt here is good.

Sharing a kitchen is a new experince for me, but everyone here is very nice and most seem to want to meet new people as much as I do. Everyone speaks english, but most as a second language. This makes conversation somewhat onesided on my part. I'm picking up a little dutch, but I wish that I knew three languages like most of my fellow students. So far French, German, Dutch, and English seem like the most common languages spoken. English ends up being the common tongue between someone from say Nigeria and France, but to me their conversation seems also strained and slightly forced. Ideally I'll learn Dutch similarly well as spanish and I can begin reading the paper and having small conversations with people.

There is an arthouse cinema (images) ten minutes away, which is exciting to me, I've never lived somewhere they had a cinema that could focus on a director like cassavetes for a whole month and still make profit. I look forward to meeting other cinephiles from around the world.
I also live ten minutes away from the football stadium (note: I'm going to call soccer football, and use twenty four hour time) today was some sort of meet and greet with groningen's football team and the place was packed with people.

I went to a neighboorhood gorcery two days ago, but found that the place to shop for cheap was jumbo. Jumbo is in the same complex as the stadium and a movie theater. I bought gorceries for cheap as a mob moved into the store with me. I've never seen fifty people all waiting to rush into a store, that was funny and fun.

I have some un-edited photos to post.

carrots are bigger in the Netherlands

This is what the street looked like on the walk home with my new friends, David and Wilhelm

PHD student Giuseppe, and Wilhelm

This is the Canal that I live on, Winschoterdiep.

Two evenings ago, friday night, I was walking to see some cheap music of local bands at a festival in the park that takes place at the end of every summer. It started to rain so I stopped into a pub, to wait it out. After taking a few notes and drinking a little, Giuseppe approached me and we began to talk over drinks. He's a Phd student in Physics from Milan who is given a large sum in Euro every month to simply do his studies here. He began to teach me some basic dutch words and vowels as well as introduce me around. Wilhelm showed up and began to drink with us as well. He lived on a broccoli and tulip farm in the country but has been in Groningen for six years because he didn't like to farm. Wilhelm and I got to talking and he told me that he has his own film production company in Groningen. Wilhelm and I then went and he took me on a "local" pub crawl. I meet more people through Wilhelm than I've ever introduced to someone in one city, everyone seemed to know him. It was a lot of fun, but not the type of lifestyle I'm used to, can afford, nor think I can get used to. At the end of our conversations both Wilhelm and Giuseppe gave me thier information and told me to contact them if I needed anything.

I like the spontenaiety of my life here so far.

I start classes tomorrow.
Good night to everyone in the states.