Life in the Dorm

Now that we're not traveling as much, we thought we'd take a break and write a few posts about our life here in Maastricht. Please leave a comment so that we know you're reading!

The entrance to our building.

All of the buildings in the complex where our dorm is used to be part of a large hospital, and there are still many medical offices here. During the day, we have an interesting mix of college students from all over the world, patients, and medical professionals running in and out. Our room is in the P building, P2 wing, on the second floor. Our cafeteria, the computer lab we use, Baylor's classroom, and Dr. Rust's room are all in the M building, which adjoins the P building. We won't get wet in the rain, but it's still quite a trek!

Way down this corridor, to the left, and up a floor is our hall.
Blame Erik for the creepy art shot.

Our room. If you can figure out how to
keep our blanket covers from looking like
that, please let me know.

Please note the inflated exercise ball. I have been working out (well, only once so far). We have been walking several hours a day, too, to do all the shopping that we'll post about tomorrow, hopefully. We'll be needing this exercise, as you will see from the next few pictures!

Me cooking in the kitchen part of our room.
That tiny refrigerator holds a surprising amount of food.
Coca-Cola is normal here, but Dr. Pepper is way weird and bad.

About to eat vlaai (said like fly), a kind of sweet native to Limburg.
The one on the left is apricot, and the right one is rice pudding.
If the store that sold fresh vlaai was still open, I would be on my way right now.

Our main task the last few days has been to organize, catalog, and refurbish Baylor's European bicycle fleet. The task has been monumental. We spent maybe four hours yesterday pulling them all out of the cramped shed and doing a kind of triage on them. The total wrecks went in a pile. The ones that we might fix if we really need to got leaned to one side of the shed. The ones that are almost working got parked on racks opposite the maybies, and the good bikes rated the most accessible racks. We had to fix some brakes and a bike with a tire that was the wrong size. Hello! That's why the brakes don't work correctly! Fortunately, one of the chefs saw us working too hard and brought us tea. He also gave us some good tips about living in Maastricht.
Today we fixed up a bunch of the bikes with new lights or light batteries and pumped up all the tires on the working bikes. That in itself was quite a job, since we had to haul each bike out of its crowded rack. But we have about 20 bikes ready to go for Monday!

The shed of doom. Note all the non-Baylor crap stacked in there in the way.

Me not wanting to smile. I had just hit my head standing up
under some handlebars. My sense of humor had gone home for the day!

Just for fun, check out these pretty passion flowers from our parking lot.