The last days of 2015 & the start of the new year

DEC. 2015

The last week of school for Fall semester. It went so fast. I had all my finals and (still) didn’t get any of my grades back yet. I trust that I passed all my classes, so that is not a problem.

My coaches organized a Christmas Party for the team. We had dinner at Coach Munch’s house. There was one rule: you had to wear an ugly christmas sweater. We played maffia again, and they did the White Elephant Gift Exchange. Each person puts their present on the table takes a number. Number one can pick the first gift. Then number two can either choose to take another gift, or steal the gift of number one. In that case, number one is left without a present and takes a new one. Than number three can steal the present from either number one or two. This goes on and on. The present I took from the table: a glittery pink unicorn onesie. It was so cute! Unfortunately it was XS, no way I could fit it. Taylor stole it from me, so I picked another gift and that was stolen from me as well. There were only two gifts left on the table and I didn’t want to be stuck with a stupid gift, so I stole the onesie back. In the end Taylor got a blanket and after the game we traded them. It was a pretty fun night.

No Sinterklaas for me this year, but I could kind of recreate the tradition here in the US. My mom has sent me pepernoten and some packets I bought online on Black Friday arrived December 5th.

After my finals I spent not one, but two days in Disney ( <3 ). It’s so easy when you have a pass. Thursday I went with Nanami, the one of the Japanese girls I went with before. On Friday I went with Harumi, who is also Japanese but has a greencard, because her stepdad is American. She was in my group for presentations in my Business Class. Next semester I’m (most likely) going to join a club she founded.

Disney was great as ever, again. Space Mountain now had the special Star Wars theme. It was so awesome. I did the ride both days. Thursday we were too late for Fast Passes. Friday, Harumi and I got to Disney early and the first thing we did was get a Fast Pass. It was so great we did that. The waiting line was (at least) 90 minutes throughout the entire day, but we got in in less than ten minutes. Awesome!

After that I went to San Diego again; “Hotel Mastrocola”. Emy had invited me and Annieck for a Christmas show on Saturday. She originally bought my ticket for Marianna, but the show got cancelled and re-scheduled to another date, and she would already be back in Italy. Sad for her you might think? Nope. She was lucky. All four of us thought the show was awful. So incredibly boring (and absolutely no leg space). Later every one of us admitted to secretly looking for an escape plan, but there was no possibility to get away. We could finally leave during the break.

I found a store where I can buy all kinds of Dutch goodies!!! Hagelslag, drop, speculaas….. Pretty expensive, but knowing it’s there soothes my sudden addiction.

Jonas (Anniecks boyfriend) is here for two weeks. He and Annieck went on a road trip for the first week, and when they came back we celebrated Christmas all together. On Christmas day the three of us went on a hike on the Cowles Mountain. We reached the top, which is the highest point in San Diego.

We celebrated Christmas twice. One Italian Christmas and one ‘normal’ one. The Italian Christmas was with Cristina and her family (a good friend of Marcello). She made traditional Christmas food, including handmade tortellini’s, which took her six hours to prepare (!). On the ‘normal’ Christmas, Quirine cooked beautifully as well and we all unwrapped presents. My list:
>A Victoria Secret backpack;
>A Pink sweater (as in the brand Pink);
>A health care package: 2 boxes of ‘protein chips’ and protein bars;
>A Striiv Fusion watch;
>Starbucks Refresher package;
>Hair accessories

I was so spoiled! Especially when you come to think that my parents and Chelle went home early from their ski trip with the Grobbens, because there was no snow. They came home to a lonely Christmas tree without presents underneath and to a kitchen that didn’t have any food in it. Their Christmas meal was from a can.

Also, I passed my written test for my drivers license!!! Finally!

My New Years party was a bit boring. Emy, Marcello, Annieck and I went out for dinner and after that Annieck and I wanted to go to downtown. We didn't really have any plans, and because I’m underaged I couldn’t go in bars etc. We didn’t feel like walking around for hours in order to watch the fireworks, so we stayed at home and watched tv.

Now I’m back at Costa Mesa. I got my physical that says I’m healthy to play softball. It is an approval to play this season. Rules rules rules!

At this particular moment I am at Starbucks. I will tell you why specifically. Today (Jan 5th) there was a lot of wind and rain. Then all of a sudden the power went out. I believed it had something to do with the storm. I was gone for a while and when I came back (5 hours after power outage) it was already dark outside and I saw lights burning in the other apartments. Oh nice, I thought, so I walked in, noticed no one was home, put my bags down, turned the lights on aaaand …. Nothing. It was darker inside than outside. I went to the office to ask if they knew what was wrong. She asked me if we payed our electricity bill, so I called Sarah to check. Somehow the address on her name was changed, so technically we payed for electricity in someone else's apartment. The power will be turned on in a couple of hours. What an inconvenience! Especially for all the food in the fridge that has been out for so long! I’ve been saving my phone’s battery life all day! ;)

I'll add pictures later when I can acces the wifi at home and have enough battery life!! ( my laptop's brightness is so low, I'm primarily trusting my ability to type 'blind' right now)