Thesis and holiday tingles

A few weeks have passed since my last post, so it's time for an update. First of all, Tim turned out not to be a pervert, so we (my parents and I) decided to rent the room. Even though it's a little more expensive than we anticipated (700 pound per month instead of 600 pound), but the location is absolutely perfect (walking distance from the lab), and the house is really nice and I get my own bathroom! So we paid the down payment last week, and now its officially mine. Hooray! Even if the internship turns out the be crap, and the people at the lab turn out the be horrible, I know I'll have a nice and comfortable house to come back to at the end of the day. Can you tell I'm starting to get nervous? So nervous in fact, that I'm already slowly starting to gather stuff that I want to bring with me to England. Like a masher, for the boerenkool (old Dutch recipe with potatoes and kale) and peeler, because we couldn't find one in the holiday cottage last summer. It's also because I've got way too much time on my hands, since I still haven't heard back from my supervisor. Last week I got a little fed up, and tried to ring him at his office. Turns out he's gone abroad. So today I was finally able to make an appointment for next Thursday, so we can finally discuss the progress of my thesis.

Meanwhile, I've sort of finished my thesis, started reading up on my Oxford internship, downloaded this awesome pc game called Warframe (a Halo style game, play it here) and went to the Country and Christmas fair at Castle De Haar at Haarzuilens. Which may be a little early, but was amazing! The atmosphere, the stalls, the Christmas decorations and the glühwein! It's a sort of family Christmas tradition we have with the three of us. And we also buy a lot of our Christmas presents there, especially if we have a hard time deciding what to give one another (which turned out to be a new pair of Dubarry Roscommon boots for me). Even though we said we were going to celebrate Christmas a little milder this year, with my trip and all, I believe those promises are only short lived. After all, it's the one time a year to spoil each other rotten with gifts! Let the holiday season begin!

House hunting

Since I’ll be leaving in January for my internship at Oxford, I thought it would be a good time to start house hunting. Or house-share hunting in my case. I started looking for properties back in August, but I soon found out that the turn-over for properties in Oxford is so high, that many people start looking when they’ve arrived at the location. Which is not my style, I like to arrange things well ahead. So I postponed the search a few months, but now I’m starting to get twitchy. So the hunt is on! I’ve found some nice properties, but there are some problems. One is that by the time I inform about availability, there gone already. Two is that most are above the budget I set for myself. And three, is that many people don’t want to hold the property until January, because they think they can rent it right away. But seriously, December is coming up! People are way more likely to leave than to come in. Oh and four, which is just minor, is that people really don’t know how to put some proper pictures online. For heaven’s sake, I don’t want to see a picture of your cat, I want to know what the bathroom looks like! As you can see, so far is not going brilliant. However, I do have a Skype viewing of a property this afternoon. Its 700 pounds (yikes!) but it does come with its own en-suite, has a large sitting area, is very VERY close to the lab, and I share it with only one other person. Which is a boy. Which didn’t make my dad very happy. Hence the Skype chat to see if he’s not a total pervert.  Wish me luck!

Hope you’re having a nice weekend! ;)

p.s. It’s been two+ weeks since I handed in my first draft version of my thesis, but I haven’t heard back from my supervisor since… I hope this is not turning out to be the same kind of fiasco as my previous internship…