Heyy, here I am again! And you too! I feel great this week and I hope it shows in these weekly diaries. Spread the love! The past week I visited Facilicom in Schiedam, Wok to Go in Enschede and watched some Harry Potter movies! Want to read along? Here’s weekly diary #31!
Thursday
Today school started at 9:15 AM. That’s amazing, this means I can sleep till 7:15 AM. This semester I stay at school after classes to do homework. I do this so that when I am at home, I feel entirely free (and I am). I usually end up watching tv for the rest of the day at home but I love it. There is always something on my to-do list but I am trying to take it easy. Taking care of myself is important. At night I went to handball practice again.
Friday
It has been a while since I was at school on a Friday. This semester I will be there every Friday. It takes a little effort to get back into that rhythm and so I feel tired. Luckily, I had a date with my boyfriend after school and we got to enjoy the first few sunshines on the terrace of this year. I can’t wait to spend days in summer in my bathing suit at Het Rutbeek (the lake in Enschede). I don’t enjoy cold days, maybe I should emigrate someday. While we sat at the terrace I got served a lot of waste with my fries. It feels so stupid. I eat in, why can’t they use reusables? At to-go food I get it, but this is just nonsense. We’ll look for another terrace next time. Once back home I went to the gym. Yes, on a Friday night. I felt really proud because I usually don’t exercise in the gym at night, I am only motivated in the mornings haha.
Saturday
At 6:15 AM my alarm rings. I had to work from 7 AM till 5PM. After work I ate tacos with dad for dinner. Did you know that such a dish is easily made vegan? You just use vegan meat instead of dead animals. Quite simple! The rest of the filling we use are vegan already. After dinner I went to a party! It was a lot of fun and we went out into the city center to dance too. I usually forget to order drinks because I am way to busy dancing. But today I did order something, also for friends. I was in a little dilemma. Do I order drinks without straws for them too? I don’t need one but can I decide for them too? In the end I just let it go and we got served straws. I don’t really know what I’ll do next time. After going out we also went to eat at Ji-Nos. They serve the fries in plastic there, but I know a place which serves it in paper. Next time I’ll go there. It just takes a little bit of practice to implement these habits. I share my successes but also my fails. It’s important to be honest. Our society isn’t built for a zero waste lifestyle yet. I went to bed at 5:45 AM after being awake for almost 24 hours!
Sunday
At 9:30 AM I woke up and I couldn’t sleep longer. Not even 4 hours of sleep! Anyhow, I decided to do some blogging and wait till it was noon. At noon I had a handball game. And amazing news! We won! Yaaaaay. Once back at home the tiredness did kick in. Dad had made a lovely vegan quiche and we also watched the Olympic Wintergames. The recipe of the quiche can be found here. Albert Heijn has a lot of vegan recipes on their website. I went to bed at 9 PM today, I was so tired.
Monday
Today we visited a company with school, Facilicom in Schiedam. I study Facility Management and Facilicom is a good facility services company. It took me 3,5 hours to get there with public transportation, but it was worth it. I really found it interesting and fun to learn from one of the best. And also great: Facilicom wants to be climate neutral by 2030. They already heat and cool the building with earth warmth and so they’re well on their way. But on the subject of waste I wasn’t so impressed. They served straws at lunch and plastic bottles when we left (which I obviously both refused). When I didn’t have a straw a classmate followed me. Oh Romee, you forgot your straw! Well, thanks, but I don’t use those. She then even said it was weird to drink without a straw. I mean, are we getting crazy? I know the straws are a tiny part of the whole picture but still. Once back in Enschede my boyfriend and I wanted to go for dinner at Happy Italy. But I have found out that their pasta isn’t vegan (which I always thought and claimed on here too, sorry) and so they only have one vegan option. A pizza with only grilled vegetables. I don’t like it. I should have asked earlier. No more Happy Italy pastas for me. Update in 2020: they do have a special vegan menu now. And so we went to somewhere else. Wok to Go. They serve single-use dishes when you eat in and so I didn’t like that. But I did bring my own cutlery and so I was able to refuse as least that. I saw one option on the menu of which I thought it could be vegan. So I asked the staff but their Dutch was really bad. I thought they understood me but when I opened my dish there was egg in it. Ugh, another big fail. I won’t be coming back there. But I did manage to buy one thing which was for sure vegan today! Vegan Ben & Jerry ice-cream we bought at Albert Heijn. The flavor Chunky Monkey for 5,99 euros. Quite expensive, but vegan, fair trade and delicious!
Tuesday
Today I had to wake up at 6:15 AM again, but it wasn’t as tough as Saturday. They say February is the most depressive months of the year, but I feel really good lately. If I even don’t get grumpy by getting up early, I am in a really good place. I went to school today. Once back home I watched Happy Potter part 5. Every Friday and Saturday they display a Harry Potter movie on television. I had seen all movies, but not in chronological order. And so these weeks I am watching all the movies in the right order. I also got all my marks back from school today. Fortunately, I passed almost all tests, except for one. I got a 5/10 but I can’t have feedback. I find that ridiculous! How am I supposed to improve without feedback? Ugh, I’ll just try again in 10 weeks. The handball training today only was 30 minutes unfortunately.
Wednesday
There was a lot of confusion about whether class today was still on or not. Yesterday they said no and today (while I am home) I heard a yes. Next time I’ll just go to school anyway because this sucks. But because I didn’t go I did enjoy a good day off. I went to the library to read some magazines. I love that!
Yours sincerely,
Romee
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