Weekly diary #22: shopping in Utrecht

Hi, lovely that you’re here! Christmas is coming up and the past week I went shopping in Utrecht, went to the 3FM Serious Request house and I accidentally ate meat, jikes! Want to read along? Here’s weekly diary #22.

Thursday

After a short day of school the weekend started already! I wanted to watch a handball game I had missed yesterday, but our TV acted strange and so I couldn’t watch it. However, I did found out that The Netherlands won the game against Czech Republic. I had ignored Whatsapp all day for nothing haha. I had also had handball training myself today and it was a special one, we trained for 2,5 hours!

Friday

Today my boyfriend and I went to Utrecht for a day. Since we’re both students we can travel for free in The Netherlands on weekdays. It’s a great opportunity to discover new places. We first had lunch. I had a sandwich with hummus and grilled vegetables. Then we went by Lush! I bought some zero waste, vegan and cruelty free soaps. I bought a little more because we don’t have a Lush shop in Enschede and so it’s useful to stock up. We also visited a lot of secondhand clothing shops that day. I bough sunglasses, two pairs of earrings and two t-shirts. The sunglasses are a bit weird maybe in winter, but I needed them for in summer. The ones I have now are just ugly. I bought the t-shirts and sunglasses at Episode and the earrings at Sister 2hands. I brought my own bags and so I don’t accept plastic bags when I shop. The t-shirts are both made out of polyester (plastic) but I liked them too much to not buy them. Sometimes I make tiny mistakes, that’s okay. Speaking about tiny mistakes, we also went to McDonalds. I had the McVeggie, which is 100% vegan, but it’s not a good company to support. But at least it gives them a signal: vegan food is the way to go! Later that day we also bought some organic fries at a local shop, that is more the way I like it haha. They fried the potatoes with the skin and so there’s no waste either. It was a fun day! The only plastic waste I had that day were from the tags of the shirts I bought, but I guess I couldn’t avoid those. On my way home someone had committed suicide again (by jumping in front of the train). This happens so much lately. Today there was also another game of handball which I missed, but I saw the end score by accident on my Whatsapp. They lost…

Saturday

I got a text message from work asking if I could work until 5 PM today. To be honest, I didn’t want to. But sometimes you just help out your colleagues and so I worked from 7 AM till 5 PM today. For the rest of the day I sat on the couch like I always do on days where I work for 10 hours. It’s just exhausting. Oh! And I forgot to mention it. Yesterday I also bought a Humble Brush, a toothbrush made out of bamboo.

Sunday

If you follow these weekly diaries on a weekly base, you are probably hoping for good news today. But no, I lost another handball game. Since it is almost Christmas we have a little winter stop and I hope it will do some good. We lose all games since we went up a class. After handball I went to my grandma to celebrate her birthday. It seems that the older people get the less they want to celebrate their own birthdays. I like birthdays and I hope I always will. And that night I watched another handball game. The match where The Netherlands played for the 3rd or 4th place. They won and are 3rd in the World Championship handball. I feel so proud!

Monday

Even though school started late, I got up early. I went by grandma this morning. Work gifted me a Christmas package full of goodies. I decided to give it to someone else, grandma. We unboxed it together and we had a lot of fun. I went to school afterwards and got home around 7 PM (another delay, pfff). At night I Skyped with friends. As I told you before, two of my friends are not in The Netherlands right now and so we Skype. It was loads of fun and we started planning our summer holiday. We always go on holidays with a group of friends every year. We’re thinking of Crete for the next holiday.

Tuesday

Getting up early for the course qualitative research at school. It’s not my favorite thing to do, I think it’s quite boring. But it’s almost holiday time! I was home at 2 PM, that didn’t happen before this period. My motivation to do homework was nowhere to be found and so I watched 16 and Pregnant all day. At night I had handball training, the last one of this year. Time flies!

Wednesday

Today we had a guest lecture at school. But the person in question didn’t show up and so school was sort of cancelled (it was the only class). Since I already was in Apeldoorn (at school) I decided to go to 3FM Serious Request with some classmates. It’s a yearly fundraiser where DJ’s spend an entire week in isolation. At the events there was a stand where they sold spring rolls. Somehow I just assumed that these were vegan (my vegan bubble?) and I ordered some. When I took a bite I immediately knew: meat. I gave those to my boyfriend and ordered new vegan ones. I don’t get angry or sad when these things happen, it’s very unusual. Mistakes can happen. It did feel very weird since I hadn’t eaten meat in two years. After that I went into the city center with my boyfriend to do some Christmas shopping. I am celebrating it this year with family and we work with wishlists. I am going to buy everybody exactly what they want this way. We also went to lunch at a sandwichbar in Apeldoorn, where they had vegan zero waste soup! That makes me happy.

Yours sincerely,
Romee