It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...

or at least Sinterklaas.

The view from our apartment - don't think I will be venturing any father.

Maybe, if not a white Christmas, we will get a white Sinterklaas!

Snow!

the view from our balcony

Oh, Our Apartment!

We live in the Dutch equivalent of campus housing; there are no dorms here but the university provides housing through a contracted agency. Never has it been more apparent that TUDelft's student population is 80% male than today, when I tried to blow dry my hair in my apartment for the first time. (We can discuss later why I haven't blow dried my hair in over 2 and half months.)

There are no plugs in the bathroom. None. I am not saying there isn't enough plugs to plug in a hair dryer, a straightener, and the clock radio. I am saying that their are absolutely NO PLUGS in the bathroom. The second mirror in our apartment is glued to the wall in the "dining room" above the "table". No plugs there either. No plugs anywhere in the vicinity that I can see myself in the mirror while still holding onto the hair dryer that is still plugged into the wall. NONE!

So, I just spent the last half hour blowing drying my hair in front of Jack*, using the Photo Booth application as a mirror. I only wish I had recorded it, so you could watch it too!

*Jack is our iMac

dun dun dun

dun dun dun...that dreaded moment is here...the one every college student knows about...the moment that scares any adult child...

the moment that your realize your parents are showing up tomorrow.

you panic.

you wonder where you can stash the beer cans.

you wonder where to hide the dirty laundry.

you wonder how to get the unidentified gunk off the stove burner.

you wonder how many trips it will take you to take ALL the garbage out.

you wonder how long it is going to take you to clean your apartment to their standards.

and then I took a deep breathe and remembered we live in less than 300 square feet of space. we have no room for over flowing trash. we don't have stove burners. we don't have enough clothes for dirty laundry to build-up.

so I wiped off the counter and our apartment was spotless. everything was in perfect condition for my dad to arrive this weekend.okay, so maybe I still need to worry about the beer cans...someday we are going to figure out how to get our deposit back!

The Shower Head is Fixed!

We couldn't take it any longer. That stupid shower head was ruining our morning. Every. single. morning. Laura said, "Let's try something." We opened the shower head and there, glaring out at us, was a flow restrictor. We ripped it from its place and stomped on it, and with the next turn of the shower knobs, all was once again right with the world. This morning, at long last, I didn't have to go to work looking like this:


Kramer: If I don't have a good shower I am not myself. I feel weak and ineffectual. I'm not Kramer.

Our Little Piece of Holland

Ever wonder what 35 meters squared look like? Curious about what our apartment looks like? Interested in what an entire apartment furnished in IKEA cast-offs looks like?

Well ponder no more...

Moving In

We moved into our new apartment in Monday. I would like to point out that the number of the apartment has no relationship to its location in the building; we were expecting a leisurely climb up a few flights of stairs, but instead discovered we will be taking a 1/2 hour elevator ride every time we enter or exit our apartment.

Quite nervously, we opened the door to see what 35 m2 of temporary housing space would look like.

This is our "living room" (it shares the same room with the "office" and "dining room"). That big table is where Jack (our iMac) will go when he arrives. The chairs are quite comfortable and recline - Matt should enjoy it because it is the closest he will ever come to having a recliner in our house.

This is the "dining room" complete with 5 folding chairs from IKEA. Don't look too hard at the bookshelf - either it is crooked or the walls are seriously sloped. We are betting on the walls.Our kitchen area.
cooking rings = fancy hot plateOur bedroom. Apparently two person apartments are an afterthought, as we have two twin beds. (I guess the bright side is we have two instead of one!)

The bathroom may be my least favorite area of the apartment. We will save the discussion for how the toilet works until the bravest of you come to visit. There is a separate showering area, but the water pressure is non existent and the excess water leaks all over the bathroom floor. I think I will be looking forward to hostel showers on the weekends.

Overall, the apartment is much nicer than expected. Our view of the city from the back balcony is fantastic and I will try to post pictures of it when it stops raining here.

About Our Stay...

We will be living in Delft, The Netherlands. A small city between The Hague and Rotterdam. The city is the home of Delftware and  Johannes Vermeer. 

We will be living in the Roland Holstlaan building, in a 300 square foot, two-room apartment. From the best we can tell (our lease, myspace pages, other people's photo albums, etc.), we will have one larger bedroom and a very small kitchen area. The kitchen is lavishly equipped with cooking rings and a box of utensils for one. We are not sure if this means we will be sharing a fork or if there is a "clean" and a "dirty" fork. But don't worry Ikea and their "how to use your 300 square feet to the best advantage" are just around the corner.

Matthew will be conducting research at Delft University of Technology. He will be sharing more about his work later (once his proposal for his UF professor is complete).