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A Whirlwind Graduation Weekend

Last weekend I took my quickest trip to Europe ever. In less than 110 hours I made the round trip to Utrecht for my graduation. It was so great to be back in good ol' Nederland. It partly felt like I had never left, and partly like a million things were different.

I arrived Saturday morning, and the afternoon was spent playing a bit of tour guide and window shopping. And also grocery shopping. I obviously had to stock up on all the Dutch goodies I missed. Now I have enough pepernoten, stroopwafels, speculaas, and hagelslag to last me until the end of this week. Nah, I'm kidding. Maybe the end of the month if I can exhibit any sort of self control. Maybe... That evening I got to meet up with some classmates for dinner. It's always nice to catch up with fat friends (this is a Dutch phrase, I promise, of course they're all rather fit from all that biking) in person instead of over WhatsApp. Unfortunately, I was sorely jetlagged and had to cut the evening short before passing out in the middle of a restaurant.

A sight for sore eyes
Sunday I finally got to climb the Dom Tower! Why did it take me so long to do the arguably one touristy thing in the city? Well, I had planned on going one day soon after arriving 2+ years ago, but tickets were sold out for the day, and then I later learned that climbing the tower is bad luck and prevents you from graduation. This was a good enough reason for me to postpone it until I had a visitor (especially one who would pay for me). It was pretty cool to see the city from above and be able to spot some landmarks and the general area of all of my houses. We then spent the afternoon doing some more meandering around the city, and that night was the rijsttafel. An Indonesia meal comprised of 24 different dishes, each somehow more delicious than the last. I rolled back to the apartment.
From the top of the tower!
Now Monday is when all the festivities happened - Graduation! It was definitely different than the American version. My class was separated into two sessions for some reason we haven't been able to figure out yet. I was assigned to the second, but also crashed the first, so I got to see what to expect before my own. What happened was basically that each student gave a short presentation about their thesis work, signed their diploma (yup, I had to do that, and I kind of messed up my own signature a little bit), and then listened to their supervisor read a "laudatio," or a speech about the student and the work they did. Overall, it was a pretty nice setup. Much more personal than throwing funny shaped hats into the air. 
Teaching some fools* about the potential relationship between the rhythmic properties of a bilingual's languages and their development of discriminating particular sounds in each of their languages. Yeah...
Trying not to mess up my signature, but doing it anyway
2 years of work done!! #proudofmyself
The next morning was traveling back to real life, which is always difficult. I'm so glad I was able to attend my graduation and get away for the weekend. Now I have to plan my next excuse to go visit

* I meant this completely as joke, mostly to highlight that absurd specificity of my thesis and how I would never expect anyone to know about this topic. Let's just say I'm glad I'm keeping my day job
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