In My Room At Last

After three very, very, long days, I am finally in my room. I will post later more detail about orientation, but right now I am just so wiped out that I don't have the energy to give a full report.

In the meantime, my room is decent. I have a single with my own bathroom and kitchen (aka, an electric stove, and a non-functional microwave). The interesting part of that, is that I am living in a shipping container. Yep, I said it. A shipping container. My dorm, Stavangerweg (don't ask me to pronounce it, I can't), is made up of shipping containers stacked on top of each other. My "dorm" consists of blocks of these shipping containers, stacked three tall. Luckily I'm on the first floor, so I didn't have to lug my suitcases up stairs. My room is probably three times the size of my single in haines, which is pretty nice, but the downside is that my dorm (so far at least) doesn't appear to be super social, so it feels a bit isolating. Also, most of the Americans on my program are living in other dorms, with only ten of us here...which eventually shouldn't be a huge deal since this international student housing, but right now until I meet other people it feels a bit isolating.

Stavangerweg is also pretty far from the rest of the dorms, though I'll admit far is relative in Amsterdam. Situated to the north-west of Amsterdam, the houthavens dorms are located on the water, of what turns into the North Sea. Supposedly we have our own pub, that has 1 euro beer on Wednesdays, but I can't even think about leaving my room right now. More on orientation, beer, and my first terrifying bike ride next time!