Leaving on a jet plane. Across the Atlantic.

I guess this would be site news. Maybe news about me, but news of some sort. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to change this site, again. Not because I want to, I rather enjoy posting photos. No, because I’m leaving for the Netherlands at the end of August. I’m going on an exchange trip and spending the Fall 2004 semester at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

My plan is to change this site into some sort of travel log. I guess it will be a way for friends to know what life is like in the Netherlands. I rather like the idea, kind of like A Year in Kansas, the adventures of a Brit living in Kansas. Culture’s are different. I guess I’m in for some kind of culture shock, moving from sleepy Wyoming to a densely populated country with a language I don’t speak. I don’t even know a single word in Dutch. Good thing my classes will be in English.

So what will I be doing at Utrecht? Well, I’ll be going to school for one thing. I’ve signed up for the equivalent of 12 credits hours, taking some interesting math courses. Nerdy as it is, I’m rather exciting for the master’s course Algebraic Number Theory at Amsterdam University. With 12 credits, I won’t be doing the school thing much, however. I hope to travel around Europe as much as my wallet permits, hitting up key destinations such as Oktoberfest. More, I’d just like to absorb another culture. America is not the world, and I’d like to experience that from another country.

And so back to learn ignorance. I’ll post stories, misadventures and pot-induced hallucinations here. One thing I’m not likely to post is photos. I’ll be taking plenty. I did, after all, buy $75 worth of film for the trip already. The problem lies in the matter of digitalizing those photos. I scan my photos with a scanner at the University; and unless Utrecht University happens to have a slide scanner students can use, I won’t be able to get photos on the web. I might not even develop any film before heading back to the States. It’s a matter of quality and pricing. This could, of course, change radically, but I’m not planning on posting photos for my tenure at Utrecht.

And now, I’ll get back to regularly scheduled content. With the stockpile of photos I’ve built up, I should be able to intermix photos and words for at least a month. Possibly two.