Sinterklaas/Antwerp

Hi everyone,

It's been a while and I have been very very busy lately so I will just give a quick update.  First of all, Sinterklaas arrived in Amsterdam on Nov. 16th and I went to see the parade with one of my friends here in Amsterdam.  The Zwarte Pieten throw "pepernoten" gingerbread like cookies into the crowd and Sinterklaas rides by on his white horse.  It is a huge event here and parents often dress their children up as "black petes" as well.  It is shocking to see for Americans most often.  White people paint their faces with black paint, make their lips bigger and red, wear black curly wigs, etc.  They are basically the equivalent of Santa's elves.  You can read more about it by typing in Sinterklaas on wikipedia, for some reason it won't let me paste the link here.  If I had more time to give a better description I would, but Wikipedia's information is actually pretty extensive and correct.  The video below you can hear the children yelling "Piet" they want their pepernoten!

I also went to Antwerp to have the meeting I mentioned earlier with the researcher who I have been using for my thesis quite regularly.  The meeting went very well I would say.  He is actually an Indian doctor, turned healthcare researcher.  He offered to be my local supervisor while in India since I am doing research that would compliment his and also I like to think, because he thought I was on my way to doing a good research :).  If I moved it to his area in Bangalore it would allow me to research CHI (community health insurance) which I wanted to add to my topic, but this doesn't exist in the Mumbai area, meaning if I want to research it I would have to relocate.  He offered to help with all of the logistics, finding a place to live and a translator, as well as connecting me with the NGOs in the area that would facilitate my research with people and communities using community health insurance.  He also said he would be willing to collaborate with my current supevisor's project in India since I am the first one to be researching health for her project and all that this new department I have linked up with does is health research.  It might be a good connection for them to have.  I will need to talk to my supervisor here in the Netherlands and see what we can work out.

While we were in Antwerp we also had the pleasure of trying the very rare, hard to get Trappist Monastery beers.  They are brewed by monks and very difficult to get in the United States, and supposedly some of the best beers in the world.  One of them is called "Westvleteren".  They were very good (and expensive) but very heavy.  Definitely not something you should drink a lot of.  Still it was interesting and cool that the owner said out of the 750 beers they had available, we were drinking the best.

That's basically all I have been doing except school lately.  I have about 30 pages to research and write in the next week and a half so it's going to suck until about the middle of Dec when my classes finally finish for winter break.  Hope everyone is doing well. Love you all.