Maarten visits Me  

Posted by Nicole in ,


Hello everyone,
Time for an update! It’s been a while. The last few days my boyfriend Maarten was here. It was so nice and it felt a bit like a holiday for me. I picked him up from the airport and we were both so happy, haha. It was so early we hurried home to rest, we both had only a few hours of sleep. After meeting my flatmates we took a quick nap because it was also the birthday of my flatmate Kim and we would go out that night.
Kim asked us to meet in a cocktail bar with her friends. The bar was nice (good cocktails!) and even for a Sunday evening it was very full. Later that week I noticed that every night is a night to go out, not like in Holland where Thursday of Friday night is THE night to go out, here is it every night. After the cocktail bar we huried to another night club. While waitingin the que Maart noticed that they were checking everyone’s ID and he left his in the flat. So he couldn’t go inside and Maarten and me left to go home. On the way home we discoverd a nice delicacies shop selling a lot of different beers and some dutch food like stroopwafels and peperkoek. That made me happy. I often feel happy now when I see or hear something dutch haha.
The next days we went shopping. I didn’t buy anything but Maart was happy because he found some cheap games for his new xbox hahaha. Wednesday we both made a Dutch dinner for everyone, boerenkool met rookworst. Yubing helped us and she made the dessert which was jelly of turtleshell powder. It’s quite nice, it tastes kinda like herb tea. People liked boerenkool and especially the rookworst.
The next day we tried visiting the zoo but when we arrived there was a loooong que! We guessed that the children have vacation now and if we wanted to go inside we had to wait for hours. So we left and went back to the city and visited the castle instead. It was so much fun! We laughed a lot and had a great time there.
We spent the last days working for school. Maart had a lot to do and we hadn’t got any time to visit the zoo again so we are going the next time (the zoo is open every day of the year!). We also went out for dinner a lot of times.
The day he had to leave was horrible. It was very early and saying goodbye was hard. After a few hours I got a text message that he was already home, haha so the distant isn’t that big really. He will visit me in December again *yay*!


School is nice now. I had a long talk with my teachers yesterday about my project. They had a lot of usefull comments and now I have a lot to do again haha. They also told us that they know Michael Dudok de Wit (a famous dutch animator and one of my favourites) and that they are thinking of asking him to help us or let him give a lecture. I really hope so! I’m also reading a few books about children and television and child psychology for my project. It’s very interesting. I also had a lecture about animpro, an animator program. So finaly everything is starting (although I started already).

Today I’ve cleaned my room, did a huge laundry, made some brownies with nuts and went shopping for groceries in the storm. I feel good now :p It’s storming for a few days now and it’s really horrible. The wind is blowing so hard, you see big tree branches lying on the ground and sometimes you can’t breath because the wind is blowing so hard. But nobody seems to mind, in Holland the trains and busses wouldn’t leave with this weather. Here however they are still working on those big building cranes haha crazy!


I’ll end this with some short comments
-Jetske, we (maarten and me) send you a card. I hope it will arrive and I wish you lots of strength!
-I’m wearing my glasses full time now. My lenses were hurting my eyes.
-Thank you Ineke for my Dutch package hahaha. That was really nice and everything is already finished.
-I’m looking forward to the visit of Bram and Lisa!
-Thanx Manon for your letter haha. I’m also too busy to write back :p

MA project  

Posted by Nicole in

Hello everyone! I started working on my animation project for this year. Check www.improvelilly.blogspot.com. A lot of things need to be done and you really could help me a lot by giving me some feedback once in a while. Just let me know what you think. Thanx!

I'm quite busy now with a lot of things. I've had some lectures at school now and I still had to arrange some things. This week was pretty though but I'm so happy that Maart comes to visit me this Sunday! I miss him a lot.

Well I'm back to work.

First Schoolweek  

Posted by Nicole in

I had to get up early for the first time since I’ve been to Schotland. The three weeks before I had created an awefull rhythm of going to bed at 3am and getting up at 1pm. So the first schoolday was though for me hehe. I timed my walk to school the day before and it’s 15 minutes so I knew how much time I had.
That Monday I was in time but I didn’t know where to go :s There were some people with the same problem however and together we found the lecture room.We had to listen to a fire safety talk. It turns out that if there’s a fire in school we’re pretty much screwed if you don’t know what to do. Looks like they’re more affaid of a fire than anywhere else. However it’s kinda understandable if you hear the story about a university that’s already burned down for three times now. The story goes now that the building has a voodoo curse hehe. Anyways back to my first schoolday :p We also had to watch a security video from the 80’s hahaha. A guy with one huge earring told us how a day in his life as a thief looks like. It supposed to be an instruction video how you can look after your stuff however it learned us more about how to steal stuff XD

Tuesday was my matriculation and there was a long que and I didn’t really know how it worked -_-‘ When it was my turn I told them my name and the woman said ‘aaah you are Nicole Volbeda!’ and then turned to someone else ‘she got that award from school you know’ :s I was so confused, I didn’t hear anything about that award after the phonecall of the principal. There was a hall and they’d made different offices there for everyone to sign up. I just sat down somewhere and checked the form that was given to me. And from here on there was no system anymore :s Everyone stood up random when they thought it was their turn. Some offices further I found out what my tuition fee was and that I did got an award from school. Got my student card, a lot of info for international students and when I was finished I went home quick, confused and tired.

Wednesday was a tour through Edinburgh and although I knew the city fine by now I went anyways (to make some friends). I met a Student from Spain and one from Sweden. It was fun and I was glad I went to the tour. That day was also my first dancelesson. I’m glad I’m taking dancelessons again, I love to dance.

Thursday was my day off and I felt sick that day :p I’ve got almost the Scottisch cold (but I’m feeling fine now).

Friday was a lecture for all MA students. I sat alone behind the teachers and a woman turned to me and asked; Nicole Volbeda? (Everyone seems to know me somehow :s Although that isn’t very difficult being the only one with pink hair.) She told me that there were some animation students sitting a few rows behind me and that I should join them. So I did haha. She was really nice and it seems that she knows almost everyone at the academy. After the lecture my classmates showed me the studio. It looks like an attic and it’s a nice place to work. Everyone have their own desk. I'll put some photos online. After that I went to the international student party with free wine and food *yay*. Also did meet some new people there.
That evening I went with my flatmate Julia to another party. After getting lost we finaly found it and a Dutch person opened the door! Finaly that’s the first one I meet here. I couldn’t talk Dutch though :s that was weird. I’m so used to English now. After that party I moved on to the next one at school. That one was empty though and we descided with a group that we would go out in the city. But after walking for a long time I was tired and I had to get up early Saturday so I went home.

Saturday was my Tribal dance workshop (early!) It was a lot of fun and I signed up for more lessons. The rest of the weekend was lazy *yay*.

Random things:
- I'm so happy with my all stars dvd's! My flatmates are curious about the series and it's too bad that the dvd has no subtitles option.
- I'm lazy lately although I do a lot of preparation work for my project.
- At the moment I still haven't got a schedule for school. I think everyone is very busy and I'm going to school anyway.
- Thanx mum and dad and sis for the card :p