Texellation

This will be neither long nor news-heavy, because I'm in the middle of studying for my first exam while writing a paper that I was sure would be quick and simple. Ten pages on the same type of subject I've already given three presentations on? I can whip that out in a couple of days.

But wait, that's ten pages, single spaced. A format I haven't written in since middle school, or possibly... ever. I found this out last Friday, less than two weeks before the paper is due, and on a day when the map library has closed for the weekend.


To fill those other ten pages for this paper (on the historical geography of the Dutch island Texel), I have to dig a lot deeper than I have been doing for the presentations, which means more time in the map library, and more consulting of heavy volumes on the history of archaeology in the Wadden Islands.

Half of my sources are in either Dutch or German.

This is both a) lucky, in that these are two of the three languages I can read more or less fluently; and b) and interesting twist on the "English-language master's program" I am enrolled in. Now is the time to ask me about all the different foreign names for mudflats, sea dikes, and sand dunes.

Other subjects to ask me about while they're fresh in my mind: a killer recipe for risotto (I made it two nights in a row, at the request of my roommate); the details of the sale going on at the better of the yarn stores in Amsterdam; my current, considerable internal conflict between appreciating the aesthetic appeal of brick or cobblestone streets and the immeasurably smoother ride provided by asphalt bike lanes.