First day of school

Lots has been going on the last few days, so our apologies for our delinquency on posting!

First off, on Monday we got our bikes!  We paid 50 Euros each and the place will buy them back when we're done with them!  Ron has a "cruiser" (1 speed) and mine is a 3 speed.  Our first trip on the bikes was to University of Maastricht (UM) for my first class!  We made it there with time to spare, so we had a quick lunch in the cafeteria.  We have decided that we'll probably eat lunch there every Monday and Thursday (school days) because everything was so cheap!  The total of our lunch came to 7 Euros...for both of us!  It reminded me of when my mom used to tell me when I was growing up about how when my parents lived in Miami and my mom worked at the hospital, my dad would come everyday to pick her up and eat at the cafeteria because it was cheaper than any restaurant.  I foresee the UM cafeteria will become our Miami hospital cafeteria.  At school, I ran into a girl, Ida, who was in a group project of mine last semester.  I had only seen her face once online, so I was surprise I recognized her, but it was nice to see a familiar face.  Soon, the other Canadians showed up and we made our way to class.  Holland's university system and learning style is quite different than I'm used to.  It's more like block learning than semesters: I take one class intensively for a month, then the next class for a month, etc.  I have a lecture every Monday and Thursday and a tutorial group on those days too.  The professor made it clear that there is no presentations and no papers for this class, just a lot of reading.  Basically, we get a few pages to read about a topic, then are given a number of scholarly articles or chapters in a book to read and we discuss them in our tutorial groups.  The funny thing is there is no participation marks or anything for the tutorial, so there's not a lot of incentive to do each and every reading...I anticipate reading about half of them so I have something to comment on, but not killing myself to do every single reading.  (Work smart, not hard.  Right, dad?)  We then have a test/exam at the end of January that will account for our mark.  

Ron came to pick me up at school and we rode our bikes home.  We have to climb a slow but long incline on the way to our apartment, and my bicycle just couldn't make it up the hill.  I felt so defeated because I know I'm not in the best shape of my life, but I'm not in terrible shape, and my asthma had been bad that evening because of the weather...anyways, the bike ride ended with a few tears from me.  I tend not to ride bikes, especially with Ron, for one reason only:  Those of you that know me know that I often like to be (one of) the best at whatever I do...and there is just no way I can be the best at biking when we're comparing Ron and I.  He's like Lance Armstrong!  Anyways, the next day Ron had a look at my bike and figured out it had been stuck in the hardest gear on the hill and that's why it was so hard for me.  He fixed it up for me, and we got the seats raised to the perfect height and yesterday I actually had a smile on my face while riding bikes!  Like I said, bikes are essential around here, so I'm glad this bike and I can now be friends instead of enemies.  

When I came home from school, Ron had a bouquet of flowers on the table waiting for me, and dinner was made!  I feel so blessed and loved by him every day.  We had a quiet night in with a few beers.  (Ron was thrilled to tell me about his big find at the grocery store: 2 for 1 packs of beer...he bought 12 tall cans of Grolsh for 4 Euros...essentially ending up to be $0.50 per beer.  He was quite proud.)  We found a good grocery store close to our apartment.  The food assortment is generally the same, except there's a lot less frozen things (most people, including ourselves, don't have a freezer) and more fresh items.  There seems to be much less processed food than at home.

We're still having trouble adjusting to the timezone and feel jet lagged and exhausted in the mornings, but this is slowly improving.  Today we're going to the market in the town square where they feature fresh produce, cheese, and meat.  It's about 6 degrees out today, but raining so we'll likely take the bus rather than walk or ride our bikes.  

We'll keep you posted on our adventures!

Love,

Robin and Ron

P.S. We welcome and encourage comments on our blog!

P.P.S. We attempted to post a video tour of our apartment, but it wouldn't upload correctly, so we'll post pictures soon.