Yesterday I went night canoeing along the canals of Utrecht and had a great time. I've only canoed once before when I was 11, but thankfully we were in twin canoes, so a big thankyou to Pete for providing the actual paddling while I just made it look like I knew what I was doing. We set off just before sundown and canoed from the University campus into the centre of town before stopping for a drink and then going on in a big loop around the city. Eventually we headed into some really narrow canals, and one wrong turn into a sewerage outlet later, we found ourselves going under some incredibly low bridges, some no more than 40-50 cm above the water. Considering I had to go lower than shown, this rather manic looking picture of me might give you an impression of what I mean:
Still, great fun and an ideal activity should anyone visit.
Last night also gave me a great opportunity to try out my new bike, and it's not as bad as I feared. When I point left it goes left and the gears actually work. The lights don't, and the brakes are slightly worse than I thought, but I was pleasantly surprised.
In other news, I fear I may have just signed my Utrecht life away. I've signed up to take part in the Philip C Jessup Moot Course, an international mooting competition based on International Law. Apparently, I can expect to spend two days a week on it until November when that'll increase before the Dutch national round in February. If we win this we have to do it all again for the final in Washington DC. Annoyingly I didn't bring any of my International books that I didn't sell, but the course does give me 7.5 ECTS credits, which means I'm well on course to not needing to study the whole year!
Aside from that, not much else is happening. I've had lectures in all of my subjects now, but it's going to take a while to get used to the Dutch way of doing things. They have a break in the middle of the lecture and the level of participation is slightly too high for my liking. Luckily, one of the courses is covering some familiar topics so that's lightened the workload a bit. I'm also in the awkward phase where I don't know which way to look when crossing the road. When I got here, I always looked right and consequently had a few near misses. Now sometimes I don't even look, so hopefully in another week I'll naturally be looking left, all ready to be run down as soon as I come back to England on the 20th October.
I'm off to Amsterdam tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to that, it'll be good to get to know a little bit more of Holland beyond my doorstep. Well that was long, rambling and not terribly well connected. Thanks to everyone who has emailed, it's been great to hear from you all :).
No comments:
Post a Comment