Housing

My dorm building

We have our housing provide through a vendor that the school works with.  We had a few choices of apartments and dorms. I am living in dorms called Honingkamp.  I saw a few pictures of the dorms before I came from a girl who studied here last semester, but our room is a little different than the pictures. I thought that I would have a balcony, toliet and sink in my room but there is only a sink which I guess is still nice and it is a single room.  All the other floors have those things and are a little bigger. We did hear that we might be getting some money back because our rooms are smaller and dont have a toliet which would be nice.  There is a desk, a bed,  a closet and sink in our room.  We were suprised that there is not even a dresser.  There are two bathrooms on the floor.  Both guys and girls use the same bathroom which is a little strange, they are just split according to room numbers.  We have keys for everything here; I have six different keys.  One to get into the building, one for my room, one for bike locker and one for the kitchen.  We also have keys to the showers and a different one for the toliet.  It is weird having to bring your keys everytime you want to go to the bathroom.  Also, the door is supposed to be locked all the time so you have to knock before you unlock it because someone could be in there! The showeres are not too bad; at least there is hot water.  There are two kitchens on the floor. Each kitchen is shared by about 6 people. There are two mini fridges (which are full so there is no room for us to buy anything to put in there), a microwave (that is really dirty and disgushting) and a sink.  We assumed there would be a stove in there so last night we bought a frozen pizza make because we have no dishes yet, came back to make it and found out that there is no stove! I haven't really bought much for food.  I guess it is better to buy groceries everyday.  From home I brought a jar of peanut butter and two boxes of mac and cheese.  I also bought cheez-its for on the airplane that I never ate but thats what I had for supper last night.  There is no cafeteria at the school like we have so we have to make all of our food.  My room has a decent view, but it is very cold.  The windows are really old and let in a lot of cold air that the heater can not keep up.  The cold windows are nice for putting my bottles of water on to keep them cold.  I woke up twice last night because I was so cold.  I need to find a heavier blanket or a space heater. It was nice that I was able to buy a few things from a girl from whitewater ahead of time because we didn't have time yesterday to go and buy anything.  I bought bed sheets from her but I dont have a pillow yet besides this small inflatable one that is not comfortable.  I have not unpacked any of my cloths yet but hopefully I will do that tonight.  I did hang up my pictures that I had printed out and brought with to make the room look a little homier rather than four white walls.  There are 5 floors in our building and we (myself and the other two whitewater girls) are on the fifth floor which we heard was the party floor which we found out last night was correct. They like to party in the kitchens because they are kind of a lounge area too as in they have two picnik tables in them.  I went there only for a little while but went to bed early because I was tired from traveling and it was getting really crowded. I think there was at least 50 people there last night but it was nice because I did meet a lot of people though I dont remember many of their names because I have meet so many people.  A lot of people here smoke and they were smoking inside the kitchen which I did not really like.  I was glad that they have an elevator in the building because I would not have made it up the stairs with all my lugage! I think this dorm is just for internationl students; I have not meet any Dutch students yet.  Overall, the dorm is ok I just wish my room was warmer!!