NWL

Hello everybody,

It has been a while since my last blog, but this should be a good one. I promised a big news item about baseball in my last blog and here it is: I am going to play in the Northwoods League 2015 next Summer! With help from the Collegiate Baseball League Europe where I played last two summers, I have been selected for the team: the Rochester Honkers. The Northwoods League is one of the biggest summer leagues in the United States. Last season, they were the first summer league to draw one million fans in a single season! It could be explained by the huge amount of games that the NWL has. We, the Rochester Honkers, will play more than 70 games in about two and a half months. They are all going to take place in Minnesota and surrounding states. If you'd like to read more about the NWL or CBLE, then click these links.

On the 10th of November I went to the NHL game Boston Bruins vs. New Jersey Devils. It was really awesome to experience this and see the Bruins win 4 - 2. I had a pretty cool spot, all the way in the top of the full packed stadium:

As you can see from the flags, this stadium (called TD Garden) is home to both the Boston Bruins and the Boston Celtics. You may have seen in one of my earlier blogs that I have also witnessed a Celtics game! They were quite different experiences, but definitely both great.

Last Tuesday, November 18th, I had a great time at the Around the World event. It was an event hosted by Wentworth to provide international students a chance to showcase their country. Together with Mark (who is actually from Romania, but he wanted to help me because he studied in Groningen for a long time), I set up a nice Dutch stand.

Mark and me at our stand. We also had the Dutch flag hanging on the left side and a table in front of us.  We presented a couple of Dutch food items such as stroopwafels, pepernoten, chocolate letters and drop. Ask me if you'd like to know what these foods are.

On Sunday November 2nd (just after I posted my last blog) Alex and I went to the Open House of the Boston Athenæum. It is a sort of beautiful library for members only. To become a member you have to pay about $200 a year. But they open to the public once a year. It was really nice to see such a quiet place full of history and knowledge right in the centre of Boston.

The beautiful Boston Athenæum.

They even had a couple (very old) imported books from the Netherlands!

Other things I have done in the past couple weeks are: checking for new contact lenses, taking exams and presenting my paper. 

In the Netherlands, I used to wear contacts in my eyes while I sleep. They formed my eyes the right way so that I could see perfectly during the day. I haven't found that in the US yet (for the same price as in the Netherlands...). So lately I have just not been wearing them and sitting more in the front of the class to still be able to read the board.

The exams I had went pretty good! That's all I have to say I guess.

And my paper about the Fibonacci sequence is finally done. I even received the honor to present what I had written, at the Math Club meeting last Monday. The president of the Math Club told me he was fascinated by my explanation.

Oh by the way, I had a great time celebrating my first Thanksgiving with the Wentworth Baseball team last Sunday. We had some great food and some great stories. ;) But the real Thanksgiving is always celebrated on the last Thursday of November, which is tomorrow! So, tomorrow morning Alex and I will jump on the train to New Jersey to celebrate it at his home. I'm really looking forward to it! Maybe we'll even visit New York.

The semester is coming to an end real fast. It's only two weeks left until the final exams start! Right after the finals I will fly back home and arrive on December 18th. I won't be home for long, since the Spring semester classes start on January 7th.

See you all soon,

Bram

Halloween

Hello everybody,

This Friday night was a pretty awesome one. My suite mate Alex and I went on the Boston Halloween Bike Ride, dressed as superheroes. I can proudly say that our costumes were pretty cool. Over our warm sweaters we wore a superman shirt (or supervillain in his case). Then we had a towel as our cape, attached with safety pins. To top it all off, we found our most colorful underwear and wore it over our pants.
The bike ride started at Copley Square, where about 700 people gathered to leave at 8pm. Imagine that, a group of 700 dressed up bikers riding through the centre of Boston and Cambridge. We sure messed up the traffic at some times, but mostly people were enjoying it.
After the solid 10 miles bike ride, which is about 16 km, we all parked our bike near the Brighton Music Hall. When we walked in, the band Ripe was about to start playing. All seven of them were dressed as pikachu. They played really awesome live music with three guitars, two trumpets, a drummer and a lead singer. After dancing for an hour or something, Alex and I were pretty hungry, so we got a pizza two doors to the left. We checked if the next band was cool too, but we didn't like 'm that much and drove home.

I made some video's during the ride. As you can see, there are a lot of people participating. And what is visible on this video is not even half of our parade, I think.

School is going pretty good. We received our midterms grades last week and I am proud to tell you that I have all A's! (and one A-). Now, that doesn't mean I did everything perfect. It means I'm in the 85-100 percentages on average. It also doesn't mean that my study is too easy, as my parents immediately thought. I am really learning a lot of new, interesting and difficult material. This week I have another two exams coming up.

What I like about Wentworth, is that they are truly helpful in finding a job. Even in your freshman year, they already encourage you to make a resume and search for a good job/internship this summer. I already had a Dutch resume, so I'm translating it to English. Also, I'm writing it in LaTeX instead of Word, which will make it look quite professional. :)

Baseball is going good. We're still working out a lot of course. And since a couple weeks ago we started to go hit in our indoor cage regularly. I already used this facility a lot, I love that we're able to hit whenever we want.

I enjoyed watching the World Series by the way! It was really exciting until the very last pitch of Game 7. 

Another baseball-related thing is that I finally put a layer of oil on my gloves. I love the smell when I'm 'nursing' my glove. 

There is another big news item from me about baseball coming up, but it's not certain yet. I will tell more about it in my next blog!

Now I'm going to hit some baseballs in the cage! Oh, by the way, the first snow here in Boston is already falling as I speak.

All the best,

Bram