Cine and Wheese, Johanna was here

On Wednesday I got yet again a visitor from Finland - JoJo!

Really great to have her over. She got a sneak peak into the Erasmus life we've been living; Patronaat and such.

Wednesday

We were supposed to go for a ride to Leiden and Den Haag. Somehow we just didn't find the way (the kilometer amount just kept on going up! 22, 28, 35 - whaat!) We ended in Hillegom which became our favorite name for a town. Plus Bennebroek which became the area we want to live in some day! Gorgeous big houses. It looked just like the USA.

After Hillegom our "cine & wheese" -time. Not that tempting picture. But. It was good!

Thursday

Beach day.

And shopping in Amsterdam. Monki final sale...couldn't resist!

In the evening it was time for what else than...Thursday's Patronaat.

Friday

Lazy chill day. In the evening we did visit town for the ESN pub crawl but just for a while. Went to bed early in order to wake up for Saturday's new trip to Amsterdam!

Saturday

Amsterdam -day! And what a great day that was, indeed.

Enough with the bike pics? But yeah, someone must have had an interesting Friday looking at how bike 1 and 4 have been parked.

Of course a round at the RLD.

Fries with Jonas from Norway.

A football field on top of a canal house?

A desired studio apartment in the heart of Amsterdam?

My first time in Vondelpark! It will be so pretty during summer.

We ended our Amsterdam day by going to a really nice pub near the RLD. It was called Brouwerij De Prael and worth a visit. I shall go again for this:

11% and tastes like mämmi. Explanation of mämmi here.

I had a great time with Johanna over and she was already thinking of making a new visit in the beginning of summer. (Beaaach!)

Now, after all that unhealthy eating...it's time for a jog (and Sunday dinner at Yana's and Alex's later on)!

<3

L

Keep Dreaming

Today was a beautiful day. Went out to take some pictures. Got some young Dutch guys running after me swearing 'cos I didn't want to take photos of them. Crazy.

Also bumped into Vince. So here you are Vince, the "Vince's corner" I promised. :-P

Don't wanna say anymore goodbyes. Need some constancy.

Have a safe trip Luis!

Now I'm off to Zumba and XCO!

<3

Linda

Sweet Goodbyes, sweet hellos

All pictures and videos from Jonas.

Friday, the day nobody really looked forward to.

Goodbyes after goodbyes.

At 12.30 it was time for us to go take Hilla to the airport and at the same time pick up Jonas and Lauri.

After many hugs and tears we set of. Everything went well until...I think I saw a camera flash outside the center of Haarlem which would probably mean a speeding ticket. Didn't notice any speed limit signs but I was driving around 55-60 so I guess the limit was 50? Hopefully not less. We'll see if, when and where the ticket arrives. Heikki and Hilla didn't notice the flash but I'm pretty sure there was one. Well, we'll see.

That wasn't all. Hilla's flight was leaving at 2.10pm and we got stuck in a huuuge traffic on the highway. It was already 1pm and I was sure she was going to miss the flight. Suddenly the jam just disappeared and we found no explanation to how the jam had got there in the first place? Anyhow, savior! We made it to the airport on time and after running from the other side of the airport to the other, Hilla had finally made her flight.

Jonas and Lauri arrived on the plane Hilla probably left on. As a nice surprise the guys' guitars were on an adventure somewhere in Latvia, probably. We arrived safely to Haarlem and the evening was full of more goodbyes. Silence hit DUWO so I decided it was time to do some work out...Zumba it was (half of the lesson with a new instructor was just terrible...thankfully the old instructor took over later).

Saturday, morning gym with Nina. Crosswalk and pilates, a really good kickstart for the morning.

After we hit it to the Saturday market accompanied by the guys. The market is just amazing, I'd never been there before but I just fell in love with the atmosphere (read: free tasters).

Me and Nina tasted the fresh stroopwaffels!

After the market we went for a walk exploring the lovely streets of Haarlem. Walked in areas I'd never checked out before and thank god we did! We found an art gallery/shop which was owned by a 65-year old man and had a chat with him for a while. He was just hilarious, such a sweet guy. He had just bought a new guitar and was about to try it out. Blues is what he said to play...well...his sound wasn't that bluesy to me. An out of tune rock guitar with ehm, yeh, interesting tunes. Just amazing. The most random thing for a long time. Words can't describe what actually happened.

Lauri

Jonas and...a bike. A cool bike.

We also went for a coffee to a cute pub on some side street. Atmosphere, atmosphere.

Our evening was full of chittychatting and trying to get my water pipe to work. Hardly any success. More like a super failure, unpleasing experience. Thankfully playing "guess who" was more entertaining. Oh and the guys got their guitars back!

Sunday, gym morning aussi! This time just basic gym work out.

For the rest of the day: chill.

We were supposed to go to Ikea for some köttbullarna but surprise surprise it was closed. Damn. So we went for an even healthier choice of meal to Burger King.

We just watched "The Social Network" -movie. It was OK. Toooo much speaking and too fast, though. Plus the choice of Justin Timberlake acting in it was slightly humorous to me. He did a good job, no complaints, but I always connect him to N'Synch so it was weird to look at him play the Napster creator.

Now I call it a day - good night! Time for trying out XCO at the gym tomorrow, 10am.

x

L2L


Song of the day

Smoothie night

As I already mentioned before, we had a smoothie night earlier this week with Hilla, Nina and Ida. The aim was to introduce the girls to new, interesting ingredients they hadn't heard of or tried before - mostly superfoods.

We kicked off with the famous green smoothie.

I wasn't sure if it was a good thing to start off with, since often people are very sceptic about trying green smoothies considering they include so much...green! It's the "how can healthy be good" -prejudice!

To be honest, I can't remember all the ingredients we used but at least this green smoothie of ours had:

Avocado, salad mix, chlorella powder, spinach, banana, water, salt, kiwi gee...what more!

Surprisingly the girls actually liked it. They liked the color, looked healthy, and thinking that it was a smoothie with salad and spinach - the taste was interestingly good.

From green we moved on to berry. The berry smoothie consisted of at least:

Blueberry powder, yoghurt, goji berries, buckthorn powder, acai powder, fresh strawberries...

Personally I was reaaally disappointed with this smoothie but I kinda had the feeling it wouldn't be that great from the very beginning. Fresh berries are always best or berries from the freezer. Powders always have that powdery feel to it and taste which isn't that nice.

Anywhoo, the girls liked this one, too. Yay!

Then we get to Hilla's favorite - fruity! This smoothie was a total fruit blaster with:

"Ananas" (pineapple), mango, apple, lucuma, maca, salt, msm...with also a few hemp seeds on top for decorating.

MSM became the girls favorite ingredients, they got really interested. Well, it is good for your bones, hair and nails - no wonder it was fascinating. Also hemp seeds turned out to be pleasing.

And last, the cocoa flow including:

Banana, cocoa powder, a few cocoa beans, yoghurt and I can't remember if that was it...

This was my personal favorite and am I right remembering that Ida and Nina liked it most, too? Tasted just like the perfect dessert.

Note: Ice crush would have made all the smoothies soo much better. Unfortunately we didn't have any. Development for next time!

The evening was a lot of fun and was nice to see how excited the girls were about all the new stuff they learned. Ida even promised to go superfood shopping to Amsterdam with me!

This weekend has, so far, been slightly weird (no parties!?) but also really nice, calm and full of working out. It's so quiet since everyone is gone. Though, a great help and company have been Jonas and Lauri, who we picked up from Schipol on Friday. They are from the same degree program as me, Heikki and Petteri (who left on Friday). I'll tell more about our weekend later. Maybe I'll even get some pictures from Jonas since I haven't been carrying my camera around.

By the way, you can also stay tuned by reading Jonas' blog here.

Have a relaxing Sunday and be healthy! I know at least most ESN-Haarlem 2010-2011 Aug-Jan -people have some "healthy life" plans for the upcoming weeks. Gaining kilos is definitely not an Erasmus student's weakest link, eh? ;-)

xxxo

Lindaaa

ps. wihii, we bought KT FRIGGIN' TUNSTALL concert tickets today with Jonas. SO happy and excited for the 3rd week of March!