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Well, I’m getting old today. 22nd Birthday, woo. What have I done for it? Got onto a plane seriously hungover/still a bit drunk, slept through the flight (that was fantastic) and then spent 3 hours on a train from Amsterdam to Groningen.
Unfortunately my plan for today was dashed by the late plane and missing a train as it meant I couldn’t attend the workshops on Internet Privacy. That disappointed me. However there is one good thing about today, I got the results from my first assessment at Groningen, after 2 months.
The only assessment I’ve had so far is for Anthropology of Law, a horrible subject about ‘informal’ laws and legal pluralism. Essentially it consisted about reading anthropologists looking at how other cultures and even individual groups of westerners form their own laws within their own social groups.
It’s all theory, of no real relevance and the most boring topic I have ever studied, it made me miss Tort law, for crying out loud.
I wrote the exam in around 5 hours, convinced I would fail because I wasn’t very good at it and didn’t understand the subject and what I wrote was a lot of random… well, to put it franky, rubbish. Yet I have managed to get 7/10 in the exam and 1 extra credit for my presentation, so my overall grade is 8/10. Now in a normal exam this might be understandable but it was a take home open book exam, which they gave us no less than 10 days to complete. Its truly absurd. Not that I’m complaining to be honest. That’s 10% of my credits for this year with a good average percentage, so I’m happy.

I am growing used to Groningen. The lack of bacon, the way the pedestrians seem to try to walk in front of your bikes, the fact there is not a metal pub or club for a few hundred miles. It isn’t my favourite location but it is okay. I can live here. The fact that shops close at about 9PM on Saturday night and usually don’t open again until 1PM Monday afternoon is somewhat irritating still though.  But I’m even getting used to that.
I still haven’t got a back wheel for my bicycle, which was broken a little while  ago.

I am also doing a lot of sports, which so far doesn’t seem to have remedied my horrible diet for the past few years but I’m seeing an improvement. And I can bake and cook fantastically :D Though only at Harry’s because I need an oven usually, a luxury not afforded to students in the lowly building of Kornoeljestraat 2.

My Dutch is still terrible and I’ve forgotten most of it because whenever I try to speak it the Dutch switch to English  because their English is significantly better than my Dutch.

I’m going to try to upload some of the photos from Amsterdam now and also upload some from Groningen tomorrow.

I might also write a bit more about my course and the sports I’m doing but at the moment I have Energy Law coursework to write and an application for the Vis Moot to apply for.