Room for rent in The Hague

Hi everyone!
I wanted to let all you readers who are thinking about studying in The Hague know that I am renting my room out. It's in Valkenboskwartier, which is a calm area located between the Scheveningen beach and The Hague University. It's about 10 minutes biking to the city centre and 15 minutes to the university. It's also right next to the shopping street Weimarstraat.

The room is very nice and airy, and has a high ceiling with one wall almost covered in windows, which makes it extremely light. The apartment is located on the first floor, and is shared with one girl who is really nice. Rent is 480€ per month inclusive. If you want some more information, please comment here or send me an email to aliceinthehague@hotmail.com

I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Living room

Other side of the living room

The room comes with a built-in closet in the living room

Windows in the room

New beauty blog

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that I started a new blog community about beauty. The adress is beautydevotion.wordpress.com if you want to check it out. For my female readers this might be something for you :)

A temporary goodbye

As you might have noticed, I have been very bad at updating this blog regularly lately. This is partly because of lack of time (school is extremely intense this year) but also because of lack of motivation. I have simply lost my enthusiasm about blogging.

With this said, I am going to take a break from blogging. I am not quitting completely, but I need to wait for the motivation to come back (and maybe get through my courses). Anyway, my email adress will still be active ( aliceinthehague@hotmail.com ) so feel free to email me if you have any questions about ICM, The Hague, or the Netherlands in general. See you later!

xoxo,
Alice

In a snowy Sweden

The social media master class turned out to be pretty bad and pointless, so I booked a last-minute ticket to Sweden and went home earlier together with my boyfriend. Today I've been baking christmas pastries and just enjoyed the feeling of being home in a wintery Sweden, while my boyfriend and my brother have been playing Fifa 13 non-stop. We also went to the city to buy a christmas tree, and we found a really nice one. That's all I had to say today!

Social media master class

I guess this blog will have to be a "couple of times per week" thing from now on. I simply don't have the time nor energy to update constantly. Last week we finished our last regular classes at ICM, meaning we will have only minors and internship in the future. This week, however, they have crammed in an intensive course on social media. I say intensive, because that's really what it is. We have 4 ECTS to cover in a week (excluding an individual assignment that is due in April). So, yeah, pretty intense.

I have my flight booked for Sweden on Thursday, thank God. I can't wait to go home and relax. Or at least relax for a couple of days before I have to start studying for exams that are directly after the holidays. Life of an ICM student.

Visit at the ICC

Yesterday me and my friends were at the International Criminal Court, which was very interesting. We booked the tour about two months ago, since it takes some time to get an appointment. The only downside was that we ended up in the same group as some International Law students from our uni, who had a teacher with them that used to work at the ICC. Ugh, he was so full of himself and just went on and on about how he knew everyone etc. Anyway, we got to talk to one of the judges, and due to lack of time (because we had a lecture and the teacher wouldn't stop talking) we had to leave early and didn't get to see the court room. Anyway, apparently we can always go there whenever they have a hearing.

Christmas decorations

I'm at my boyfriend's place tonight and we did the christmas decorations in the house while drinking Glühwein and eating gingerbread cookies. I'm really starting to get in the christmas mood, especially with all the cosy lights inside and when I see pictures of snowy Sweden.

School is starting to round up. As you might have noticed, I haven't really had time to update the blog regularly, which is mainly because of the heavy workload at uni. Tomorrow I have a presentation of a groupwork that we met up yesterday to do. Basically, as the pressure goes up, the ambition level goes down. On Tuesday I have another presentation of a speech, and on Wednesday me and my friends have a booked tour at the ICC (International Criminal Court) since a few months ago.

Thank God I can shop most of my christmas presents online, otherwise I wouldn't have managed!

Meeting at Europol

 Today I'm going to Europol to have a meeting with the Head of Communication. As I've written before, me and a friend of mine are doing an internal communication project there. It's very interesting, and right now we're in the process of designing a questionnaire.

The weekend is over

Tomorrow it's Monday again, which means working. Last week I got sent home almost every day I worked because there weren't any numbers to call in Sweden. This weekend I've been at two different parties, chilled a lot at home, and watched a lot of Breaking Bad episodes. Now I'm back home and have to study; too much to do, and too little time.

Communication, you said?

I apologise for the poor updating but I've had a lot on my plate lately. I've attended only one lecture this week, which must be some kind of personal record in skipping classes, but I've been working so I guess that compensates for it. There is so extremely much we have to do this term that I don't even know where to begin. Also, ICM has shown its incompetent communication skills once again.

I emailed a teacher that I had last term because I still didn't get the grades for that course (which was about a month ago) and recieved the answer that I have to do a compensation assignment because I missed 2 classes.

...?

I did not miss 2 classes, but there must have been some mistake with the attendance list. Anyway, I don't even know what this compensation assignment is, and I'm still waiting for a reply from this teacher.

You have to just love ICM.

Back in NL

I had a truly great time in Sweden, and now that I'm in the Hague again I feel like I just want to book a ticket and go back. It was a way too short visit, with only two full days. After my flight arrived at Schiphol last night, we went out for dinner with two Norwegians who are friends of my boyfriend's family. It was very nice, but got quite late. Needless to say, I'm pretty exhausted after this weekend. I don't even want to think about how much I have to do in school.

Tomorrow: Sweden

This week is going by so extremely slowly, but tomorrow I'm finally going to go back to Sweden for the weekend! I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone again, and of course to introduce my boyfriend to them. My sister turned 30 on Monday, so on Saturday she's going to host a big party in Stockholm. Oh, I can't wait until tomorrow evening!

I'm just glad I didn't get Powerhaus Germany as my minor

Today I've been home studying since we didn't have any lectures. I haven't had any problems keeping busy though. There is just so much to do right now, and so many different group works going on that I'm having a hard time remembering which group was in which course. Anyway, I'm trying to focus on the internal communication specialization project for Europol, since that is the only thing on my schedule that is interesting this term.

I chose the minors last night. Since we weren't exactly offered a wide variety of interesting minors, I finally went with American Business & Culture, and Political Communication in the 21st Century. Let me add here that I'm not all that interested in politics, but I'm crossing my fingers that the focus will be on the communication and campaign side of it. So, that's what my next semester will look like.

Complete, utter confusion.

Sitting in my boyfriend's room at the moment, listening to Arctic Monkeys. He's off playing football so I'm just chilling here and the plan is to start catching up on this week's reading soon. We have several articles on Blackboard that we have to read.

I've been pretty annoyed with the Hague University lately, or with ICM in particular actually. It's time for the people who aren't going on exchange to choose minors for the next semester, and we had an information session about the different options on Wednesday I think. It was, to say the least, more confusing than informative. I find it quite ironic that the staff at ICM are always teaching us how to communicate effectively to a avoid confusion, but they are basically doing everything wrong themselves.

I'm not going to go into detail about the issue, but there is complete confusion among the students and inconsistent messages being sent out to us. The worst thing is that on Monday 00.00 the registration starts and I have to choose between bad or worse minors. I really have no idea what to do. Shame on you, ICM.

Slow start

Sorry for the inconsistent updating lately, but I haven't had that much inspiration to blog. Anyway, yesterday me and my friend went to Europol to have a meeting with Mr. Hesztera about a school specialization project we're going to do there. It's really interesting and so nice that we get to do it there. The report that we're going to hand in at the end counts for three different courses, so it's basically around 15 credits. No pressure at all.

Apart from this internal communication project, I'm really not motivated for this term. It feels like we just ended the project and I would need at least a week to recharge my batteries. So, it's week one now and I've already skipped two classes. Good start. Anyway, in exactly a week me and my boyfriend will go to Sweden for the weekend and just relax. I feel like I really need that, I haven't seen my family in almost three months.

Start of Term 6

This weekend was so nice! I really needed the time to relax and not think about school for once. Friday night I went to Rotterdam to meet up with my boyfriend and do some evening shopping (it was koopavond). I found a lot of nice things there!

On Saturday we went to Amsterdam with his dad to check out the hogeschool there. He's thinking about studying there, so we visited the open day. Then there was a lot of driving (Amsterdam - Oegstgeest - Delft - Oegstgeest - Den Haag - Delft - Den Haag) and in the evening we went to my friend's birthday party. It was really nice, and later on we went to SuperMarkt and danced. Yesterday was really chill and we slept long, then me and my roomie cleaned our apartment. That was really necessary!

Today I had the most boring day ever though. We had the kick-off for term 6 at 9.30 this morning and it was such a waste of time. They really didn't tell us anything useful. When we were done around 10.15 me and my roomie went downtown and had some coffee and did some window shopping. At 13.00 we had a lecture in Monitoring. I can't really tell you what it was about since I paid attention for about 5 minutes; it was simply impossible to focus. This term is already overwhelming me.

Finally Friday!

In a few hours I have my last exam, an oral in Strategic Communication. Me and my roomie spent the whole evening preparing for it yesterday, because we are in one team and supposed to hold a press conference about KFC and then answer questions from the "journalists". I really don't feel like doing this exam, and I'm going to be so happy when it's over. Tonight I'm going to Rotterdam to shop a bit and then I can just relax in the weekend. Tomorrow I'm going to an open day at Hogeschool van Amsterdam with my boyfriend to check out a study programme for him. Then in the evening my friend is having a birthday party. I'm really looking forward to the weekend, and hopefully I'll have too much fun to update that often.

Yesterday we presented our project and they liked it a lot! That was really nice to hear actually, and so far the exam grades I've received have been pretty good. That helps a lot to keep the motivation up.

Now I'm going to prepare a bit more for the exam. Wish me luck!

Almost over...

Today we handed in the project report, a 50 pages long "book". I can't describe how nice it feels to have that over with! Tomorrow morning we have our presentation, and then the project is officially over. Then we can just cross our fingers and hope we'll pass. On Friday I have my last exam, an oral in Strategic Communication. Me and my roomie will start preparing for that tomorrow. I really can't wait for Friday afternoon.

Update: the project

I've been quite bad at updating lately, but in the weekend I just needed to relax after the intense exam week. I was feeling a bit weak (stress hangover?) so I spent the weekend at my boyfriend's place, just chilling. This week I'm really busy with the project that is due on Thursday. We have to make a Pecha Kucha presentation, which is a special way of presenting, using an autorun powerpoint with 20 slides that each are displayed for 20 seconds.

Here is an example of what it can look like:

Friday

Finally Friday, and I'm completely exhausted. Tonight I'm going to hang out at my boyfriend's place and just chill. This morning I went to school to finish the Expert Analysis report, and then I went home, had lunch, skyped with my mom, and then slept until 5 o'clock. I guess I really needed that. I really have the best roomie, because when I woke up she had cooked Indian food for me. So nice!

Have a great weekend!