:'(

Today is a bad bad day.. I only want to cry and go home.. I don't know why (besides the obvious..).
This morning I moved my stuff to my new place (of which I'm not sure it is so nice..) and the rest of the morning we build the screen.. The idea is seriously that tomorrow we will execute some kind of experiment (so tomorrow morning we decide on the design and I programm something very quickly, like I am capable of that..) How am I supposed to learn anything, when I am not even capable of understanding what is being said?
But well, as I said, today is just a bad day, surely tomorrow will look better, so I will stop writing..

good things

Yesterday I was so happy when I found out that the shops are open untill 20.00h on saterday evening! (instead of 17.00h in our little country) Everbody was walking in the streets, so I joined them, hurrying off to the bookstore I discovered on friday with some english books! Because I already realised that the one book I took with me would be finished by the night (and so it was) I quickly needed a replacement.. How else could I survive the sunday? So I found a suitable book between all the crimenovels and to my delight I found another bookstore a little later, where I asked whether they had any english books. And so they did! An even better and more elaborate (than the 10 books before) collection of english books :). They btw have a lot of bookstores here in Pisa! :) My goal is to buy and read at some point in time an italian book :) And when I walked a bit further I found (yes girls you are not going to believe this :P) a Zara! (reminded me of the one in Rome hihi). So then I felt totally happy :P I even had a semi-decent meal with sandwiches with tomatoes, mozzarella, basilicum and olives.. Much better than bread with nutella :D That's what happens when you don't have a kitchen :S
I have also talked with Francesco about the possibility to stay here some months and then work in Maastricht for some months.. It is ofcourse possible to work something out, but what, where, when is still very unclear (so don't all get your hopes up ;))
Oh and I really have had the most weird dreams friday..a lot of them.. I dreamt that Floor and I were trying on some very cool clothes (I should have remembered them and then designed them) and (weirdly enough) Robbie Williams was a friend of us and we were showing the clothes to him and then I made out with him hahaha (and I don't even like the guy haha) . And I also dreamt that Joanneke (my sis) was was hinding my ring (the one I always wear on my middle finger) in food, for some kind of reason, but I don't remember what it was (what was the reason Lammie? :)) And I dreamt lot's of other absurdities hahaha..
Maybe it is the house... However, I quite like it with the nuns, they are not from italy btw, because amongst themselves they speak some kind of arabic language.. I think one woman who talked to them was from Libanon. But the whole place kind of reminds me of grandmothers and grandfathers, it has that smell in the house and the towels also. Haha now it sounds bad, but it actually is quite nice :)
Ok this was an update with all the nonsense.. Today and yesterday I missed home so much, especcially all my friends and family, because here it is so quiet still.. Tonight I am going to have pizza with Lucia and here friends, so that will be a nice experience I think :)
Enjoy the carnaval everyone in Maastricht and around :) And the rest, have a nice week!
xxx

address

I think I should have seperate section on this site where everyone can tell me their stories! The comments only have so little space.. :)
Well if anyone wants to send me postcards, I have an address from next monday:
via Ugone Visconti nr. 3
56122 Pisa, Italy
If anyone wants to look it up, you can see that it is not really in the centre hehe. However, the hospital is quite left in the "centre" (they don't even call it centre anymore, but it is still inside the old walls) So still quite ok for me :)
xxx

strange things

Wow I didn't post for one whole day! That must mean that I'm starting to do better! Or.... that I did absolutely nothing interesting yesterdag :) I am afraid the last is true.. I only worked, so I don't think a nice story about which articles I found and which I didn't and about what things for the design of the study I thought are very interesting. However, there were a few things I noticed yesterday. For example, in the supermarket they don't have applejuice, but they do have a lot of different brands of pearjuice. Weird no? Hahaha.. And also, I expected the coffee to be very strong, but in fact it isn't so much.. A cup of normal espresso tastes exactly like a cup of coffee of my mom and dad, only a smaller quantity hahaha.. After all the whining about the coffee in the mensa (which is indeed less strong) I thought that it must be coffee heaven here, but I guess it is not really true :P And still I don't think coffee is that great for your body, so I am trying not to get addicted again :) Also, I thought that most people here have dark eyes, but (maybe it is a coincidence) both Ilaria and the electronic engineer guy have very light eyes. I remember in Mexico that it was really unique when someone had blue eyes (remember this friend of Bernardo, Anne? The one who gave us the mexican candy? He really had the blue-est eyes) But maybe here there is more mixture with the rest of Europe :) Although the dark hair remains intact.. Let me think.. Other curiousities..? Not so much right now, maybe later :D
I haven't taken a single picture yet! I also want to put in a colour film, because now I have still a few black and white pictures left (which I saved, but then ofcourse forgot to take..) . So I hope I will have some time soon to walk around and make some pictures! Today it is grey and I have no time, but maybe on sunday.. Otherwise I will abuse Lauran's camera when he comes on thursday ;)
If anyone wants to skype or webcam with me, let me know.. Sofar I can't webcam over MSN because the network here is very secure, so somehow it doesn't work (or maybe it has other reasons I don't know). Well, I have to go now, going to the bank to pay for the room with the nuns for one more week. But I will be moving on monday or tuesday, so then I really have my own place (where I don't have to be back at 22.30 hehehe) :)
Ah! Some people have to tell me about the party yesterday! Pictures... I want pictures (and Chun I know you have them :P)
Till later!

normal workday

It starts to feel a bit like a normal workday today.. This morning we arranged my ip-address for my laptop and we will get a password (and an emailaddress also I think) to have access to internet.. I also went to the bank to get my salary which the university deposited on the bank of pisa (Francesco G. knows all about it haha). It took them a while before they found my money haha.. But then I realised that the money came from the neuroscienze department so we figured out together where my money was.. So now I'm walking around with a lot of money :S But I will get rid of some this afternoon when I will pay the deposit for my room. So this morning was mostly about arranging this.. Now I have been looking for articles for a while.. Oh and there is one not so handy thing: there is only one Brainvoyager dongle.. Hehe I am used to having all the computers nicely fixed to a network with a network license.. but I guess I'm not in the Brainvoyager-heaven anymore :D So Lucia is doing a lot of ICA and preprocessing of her and Ilaria's data so hehe I don't know yet how we will do that in the future.. Maybe I can look very nicely at someone from brainvoyager.. or maybe (even better hehe) I should send Marin downstairs :P Just kidding..
It takes me a little while to figure out which articles I can get where.. every faculty has it's own library or something, and we can also access the Napoli library so that's nice..
Ah what else... ah yes, yesterday I was very frustrated about staying in the office till late to try and talk (msn/skype) to my parents and the Gilmore girls groep ;), because things didn't go as smoothly as I wanted, and I was wondering whether I should take the room or not. But eventually I watched a bit of blurry Gilmore girls hahaha which was fantastic ofcourse, i felt still part of the Gilmore girls night haha or at least a little.. And talked with my parents and Lauran about the room.. So I have taken the room for now, I can always look for something better later on. I must say that I feel a lot better now that I have a place where I can stay (from March the first). Then I can make this town a little bit my home.. (really in my head I am speaking italian english! The way Lucia and the rest talk to me, with the accent and all! I mean, take the last sentence, that's no normal english! hehe sorry.. :) it's just a very strange sensation hihi)
So I have money and a room, things start to look better. Ah and I forgot to tell about yesterday! Francesco and I had a little talk about what we were going to do, and I think he wants to start measuring very very soon! And I have to prepare everything! And they are placing a projector and a screen downstairs at the scanner now specially because I am here! Hehe I felt slightly stressed about that too.. The pressure to perform.. I know so little!
However today I am quite relaxed and trying to arrange that I can stay with the sisters for one more week, so I don't have to look for a more expensive hostel..
Anyhow I have to get to work, please keep me updated about everything in the Netherlands!

way to go

The blogging is going goooood, I start to look like Floor, well almost, because my posts aren't that long :P (+ an extra :P @ Floor). So this afternoon Francesco, Lucia and I went to the scanner (which was actually not in Livorno hehe but I forgot in which town it was) . The institute is called Stella Maris and they do a lot of different kinds of research. Technical aspects, language research, clinical research etc... Being there was really different from the hospital.. This place reminded me vaguely of the FC Donders and also of the UM (although this place is really small), don't know the atmosphere was kind of the same. I felt a lot more "at home" there, then in the hospital, which is really different. So now I found the kind of researchers I was looking for haha.. Too bad that I can't go there easily by myself, because I have no car and there is no other easy way to get there. But maybe I can go there sometimes with Lucia, we'll see. There, they are trying to combine EEG and fMRI and solve the problems with artifacts in the EEG signal because of the RF pulses. So today I watched them putting a special EEG cap on and you can connect it to the computer directly to look whether the resistance at the electrodes is ok yet or not. Which I thought was very nice, better then to check one by one with the crappy machine.. But they only have one cap, for children, so the volunteer researcher, well I think he got an headache. :) It was a lot of waiting today, but nice to see how they work there.. They wanted to see the signal during sleep, so the guy first slept and they measured the EEG and then went into the scanner with the EEG cap and tried to sleep again. Hahaha, but how can you sleep when functional images are acquired?? The noise! (although a certain someone might be able to do it :P) So I think he didn't fell asleep, at least not while we were still there.. Then we went to meet the owner of a house with a possible room for me.. It was not bad. The room was not too small (don't know maybe 12 or 14m2?) and there was a little bathroom for myself (very little though hahaha, one person just fits into the shower haha). The walls were a bit ugly with ehm a bit of schimmel on it, but not tooo bad hehe.. Only the neighbourhood, or at least the way I should walk to the hospital and home is not too great.. I would not see myself walking there at night when I am finished here. Maybe I should get a bike (that they actually do use here!!). I will have a look tomorrow maybe if there is a good way to get there (that seems reasonably safe).
Actually today I start to feel a little bit more at ease here.. but maybe it is gone tomorrow hahaha let's see.. I tried my best to follow some of the discussions today, but it is really hard to learn something, let alone contribute something when you only understand a little part of what is being said.. Haha and at one point Lucia, another girl and me were sitting somewhere and they were discussing something about the artifacts and Francesco came by and said: please speak english! So the poor girl tried for two sentences and became totally red haha and then we gave up again and Lucia (she is becoming my personal translater hahaha) translated now and then what they were saying and what I didn't understand (which was most hehe) . By the way, it is really remarkable (to me) that most researchers I have seen untill now are women.. But maybe the guys are hiding somewhere haha :P
Now that I have found the way to the emergency entrance (which is always open) I feel free to stay a little bit longer here at the hospital. Since I have not much to do at night, I can better spend my evenings here.. I wish I could find a room with internet, but that is really impossible I think..
Well that's it for now...
Ohh it is so annoying.. internet requires a certain password here, but every..20? minutes it signs out automatically, so I never know whether I am still online with MSN or not... Maybe half of the time my or other peoples messages don't arrive, so be aware of that!
xx

the italian way

Sooo time for a quick post.. I am nicely alone in the office, so I can do some blogging.. I just went to the international office to pay for the room they have arranged for me for a week.. (i got an email that said, just come by the office to pay and other info). I go together with the person who arranged it to the economical office, they start an enormous discussion.. After a while we go down and then again there is another large discussion together with someone else.. ending with mr. mazzotta and me walking to the bank (and wait there for a long time) so I can pay there and they put it on the bank account.. Apparently it was not possible yet to pay in the office.. Well, Mr. Mazzotta did think I could, but I think that the others didn't really agree hahaha.. So an hour later i was outside again hehehe.. I guess this is the way it always goes here hihi, it's no problem for me so far..
This afternoon I will go with Francesco and Lucia to a scanner in Livorno (very close to Pisa) and in the evening Lucia and I will probably go look at a room.. I am really hoping that it is a nice room, and that maybe one of the students living there can speak a little bit of english :) so communication will be easier.. Too bad you can't learn a language in four days.. I really want to understand more and be able to speak more (or at all hahahaha) but hopefully I will learn over time..
I think now I will finally start doing something university-related like looking for articles..
Ciao!

nice weekend

This weekend was nice.. Yesterday I did a lot of skyping and stuff and in the evening I had dinner with Lucia and Letterio (i think his name was) (Lucia's boyfriend). Apparently everyone here has a friend with a restaurant, because this night we went to the restaurant of a friend of theirs, Fabio (i think) and we had a really nice dinner.. All sorts of ehh voorgerechten.. and a nice dessert.. Poeh, I was really stuffed! Haha Lucia's boyfriend is really nice and he is trying to learn english, because he is an electronic engineer and needs it for his job.. So a lot of times he asked Lucia, how do you say this in english and that was quite usefull for me, because then I also heard first the italian word and then the english word.. So we had many funny conversations..
Today I got up at 7.50u to catch the train of 9.12u to go to Follonica together with Lucia and Letterio. It was a nice trip by train and we walked around a bit in Follonica and we went to the sea! So I was very happy about that.. We also visited Lucia's parents and we had a great lunch, finishing with a very nice tiramisu.. mjam mjam... Then we went to the carnaval.. Yes, yes I don't have to miss the carnaval after all hahaha.. It's not quite the same... Mostly for childeren, like I was used at home... Before I came to maastricht :)
Well, I'm going to quit here because I don't know how long I can stay in the hospital before it closes.. I was very happy that Lucia took me along this weekend, so I have less time to think :)
I hope you are all well..

Here

Why didn't anyone tell me to study harder on my italian?? :) Haha I remember that Francesco told me: no you don't have to learn any italian, we all speak english (at the university). Hehe well maybe everyone càn speak english, but no one does, because everyone is (naturally) italian :P So especcially the first day I felt really lost, and probably I will have many more moments like that, especcially at night when I miss my home a lot.. But I will try my best to learn as fast as possible.. The two other (kind of interns) girls that work with Francesco are really nice. Francesco and Lucia (one of the girls) came to pick me up at the airport and we went to the residence where I stay a week. It is indeed with the nuns! Hahaha but they are very friendly and speak (a bit) english! Even the very old, small head-sister spoke english! [is the word nun? or sister? in dutch: non] My room is about 8m2 and has a bed and a desk and a cupboard, so all I need.. Francesco asks everyone he knows whether they know a place to stay for me haha very funny, so we are looking hard to find me a new place to live for a longer period than a week :)
The place where we work is actually not at the university but at the hospital. Francesco has a room where the two girls also work and where I also will work.. All the size of a small AiO room in Maastricht and with two computers and two desks hahaha.. But I think they will expand.. Otherwise I don't know how Francesco can work :)
Lucia is helping me a lot with everything.. she is calling for me to some houses so that is very nice of her.. and we're going for some pizza tonight with her boyfriend and his brother I think.. And maybe tomorrow we go to Follonica, where I think her parents live..
Let me think.. what else is there to tell.. Well actually a lot, since I have had no time to access the internet untill now.. I've Skyped with Lauran for an hour which was ofcourse very nice.. It's better to talk like that, when you don't have to watch the time because of money.. If everything goes well an ip-address will be arranged for me, so I can connect my laptop to the internet, and then I will be a lot more online I think..
Well, I think I'm going to end here for now, because then I can do some emailing and such before the time = up..
Hope to see you all soon again!

[edit] Oh and yes my Skype name = alinedeborst for everyone who wants to add me [/edit]

Plots and twists

Time for the latest update.. as my friends are evilly plotting against me in Lauran's kitchen and I can't come in.. :)
Ofcourse I became ill on sunday (although I was very happy to see my family, who were all at home!), the most perfect timing, so I have still so much to do and so less time and energy.. But no need to think of that tonight, I think eventually i can come out of this room and we will eat and have fun (and watch the Gilmore girls ofcourse ;))

Can anyone help me and tell me what I should not forget to bring?? :)

However...

But on the bright side: I can take a train from Pisa airport to Pisa central! :D So at least one thing is certain :)
And I can go for 6 euros from Pisa to Florence by train :D

[edit] 11-02-2006 14.43 And also luckily I have a very friendly and helpfull supervisor :) [/edit]

minor setback..

And I thought that I almost had a room in Pisa.. But apparently I am capable of saying the wrong things to the first (well.. almost ;) ) Italian I make contact with, because at first it seemed that I could get a room for a longer period (but maybe this only seemed like it) and now it's for one week. This is arranged via the university by the way.. As long as Francesco (my supervisor) was emailing with him everything seemed ok, but as soon as I asked for some more information, things became vague, leading to the last proposal..
:( Maybe the week-thing was intented all the time (as they have not much available at the moment), but I was still slightly disappointed , because ofcourse I already had my hopes up :)
Well, anyhow, I've also contacted a girl who has a room for let (wíth a cable jack which would be perfect for all the MSN-ing, emailing, Skyping, webcamming I will be doing then :D..or...maybe that would be the television cable jack hehehe oh well.. According to Marije all PhD's post on blogs at work ;) ), so hopefully I will hear something..
Maybe I should have started looking a little bit sooner hehe but well as everything was uncertain for so long now I can really start..
It will be weird to leave everyone behind... I only slowly starting to realise that I am reálly going!

Het is zover...

Welkom allemaal op m'n mooie blogje..
Tijdens m'n verblijf in Pisa ga ik proberen jullie allemaal op de hoogte te houden van alle spannende (en saaie ;)) dingen die ik ga meemaken!
Maar eerst nog zo'n anderhalf weekje NL..
-x-

en deze blog nog een beetje opleuken ;)

Ok, ok and I will also write a bit in english now and then for the people who definitely have to start learning some DUTCH! :P
Or maybe I will change it all to english, or italian even in time hehehe who will tell..