On Saturday, we went on a trip with the Navigators to St. Augustine, a very beautiful place as you will see in the pictures. Since it is/was a harbor, we also made use of the beach at the ocean (for me the first time since I’ve been in Florida). It was fun to meet other people from the Navigators and we visited little shops in St. Augustine.

Fun facts

• Amount of guys I’ve seen with a tank-top: 5 per week en moyenne (I expected this to be a lot higher)
• Amount of people that have complimented my Puma shoes: 9 so far
• Amount of times I had to resort to Pepsi because Coca-Cola is almost never served at bars/campus 😥 : 19
• Amount of times my semi-fake-mentor Kristen has quoted “The Office”: too many to count 😅😅

Another thing I love about UF, how lively everything is at night (since it is such a nice climate at night still). Wednesday we were asked by a tattooed guy with a hat if we wanted to do magic tricks with cards. The first trick I saw, but the rest of them really left me flabbergasted…

For Engineering Innovation, I had to come up with a need statement, for something that could be improved in society. For this I chose the fact that too many dogs are being bred instead of adopted from shelters. However, this meant that I had to put up questionnaires and interview people about this matter, I have to do something for which I hated other people in the past..

Finally, I got to try something that I really always wanted to do since I’d seen it on the amazing show: “The Good Place” (here they interpreted heaven as a place that also has a FROYO(!!) on every corner. Really, it’s amazing). For the first time in my life I tried frozen yoghurt, and it was setup in a such a way that you can choose your own flavors.

On Friday we first went to GatorNights (if you go to almost all of them, you’ll get a prize). The highlight of this night was the Oxygen bar, something which apparently was also in the Netherlands. However, just as with froyo and goat yoga, I didn’t know we had this in my own country. The oxygen bar was a sketchy experience and a bit of a let down, but fun nonetheless. Talking about goat yoga, I might sign up for a class since they offer it at campus as well (as long as the goats decide not to shit on me, that is.)

It’s Saturday, and it’s the day of the first football game at campus. It’s the Gators against UT Martin. What to do on this day? First I will need to buy an orange shirt that will combine well with the blue bandana that my mentor gave me for the game. I already have an orange shirt, with UF ’23 however, which essentially screams ‘Freshman’, so that’s not an option. So I went to the thrift shop, and bought this beautiful shirt with “I-L-L I-N-I” on it, it was either this or the blood donor shirt so the decision was easy. After thrift-shopping, I joined my friends at the tailgating of the surf club. Which was a bit too fun, because I found myself hurrying towards Weaver to meet with a friend to get to the game in time. Something which apparently was not meant to be, since I had to login, already being in the application, to get the QR code. The correct password was not in my key-library and none of my own passwords worked, so I did a hail mary with resetting the password and hoping for a quick e-mail. This resulted in us being 6 minutes late for the game, which was not a big problem at all looking back. The game was fun, even though only 1 hour of the 3.15 hours was filled with the actual game. A lot of nice chants I could sing along (although they said gator bait at some point, which I really understood as Gatorade, confusing me a bit).

September the 8th, a special day for me, finally turning 21 in the USA. This day I had a pita gyros from the local Greek, which made me very happy. And don’t tell this to my parents, but I bought rum and vodka to celebrate with shots/mixed drinks with friends that evening. Gina gave me special color changing bike lights (for the spokes) as a present, a very cool gift!

On Wednesday, Gina decided to join Dennis, Kristen (my fake mentor) and me to the Grogs. A club that has free drinks and you only have to pay 5/3 dollars depending on you being 21+ or not. A very special night because Gina turns 20 at midnight!

A story about my fake mentor…

Before I actually was assigned to a mentor with the Navigators, it had been a couple of days since I applied and a lot of friends already were coupled with mentors. So at the Young Life BBQ event (a Christian organization that does extra non-religious activities), Dennis and I met Kristen. Kristen is a Young Life member who also really wanted to be in the Navigators, but thought she was too late to apply. Since we hadn’t heard anything from the Navigators we just created our own “fake” navigators mentor/mentees group. Later on, Dennis got paired with Sydney, and I with Gina. We asked our mentors if we could merge our two groups into one and apparently they already were best friends, what a coincidence! After this, we asked them to add Kristen as well, and with her and Gina talking in the: “The More the Merrier” group, they found out they were talking to someone they already knew, while walking out a meeting together of a club they are both in. That’s how, strangely, we all were connected somehow!

Surviving at UF is no easy task. For groceries, I’ve tried going to Aldi by bus, which takes very long. I also tried going to the same Aldi by bike, which is perfectly doable, except for the way back… All food turns brown really quickly because of the humidity (bananas turn from green to brown in 4 days). At least shopping at Amazon has been made more easy, since there is a 6-month prime trial for students. The easiness of shopping at amazon is something I miss at Walmart/Target, these places are so big that even the employees have to use an app to find the right division where the products are. For now I think my best bet is to go beg to people with cars to take me with them when they go grocery shopping. 😅
The biggest difference that I notice now, is the luxury of eating whatever, and whenever you want. Daily egg/midnight yoghurt is no problem. I’ve also noticed that I have more time on my hands, since the academic level here is somewhat lower than I’m used to at TUDelft.

It’s the fourth week, and I haven’t found a single alligator. Even though everyone tells me they are everywhere. At least I have taken revenge on this matter, by eating an alligator tail (!!!) burrito at Boca Fiesta, downtown. It tastes like sea chicken. I also tried the Boba Mango milk tea, at Bento, an Americanized Asiatic restaurant. Which had gummy-like “fish eggs”, as a friend put it.

Dayglow Paint Party!! We decided to go since it is free entrance (in heart and kidneys I stay Dutch) and because it sounded promising. And it was! The only worry I had was that it would not be easily washable, so I brought my most expendable clothes and hoped for the best (it turned out to be washable of course).

Tuesday, all classes are canceled because of the hurricane Dorian, as well as the next day. Little did we know that Dorian decided to alter its course and not bother us at all. However, a hurricane goes hand in hand with a hurricane party of course! This party was not cancelled naturally. At my Weaver Hall, on the first floor, a party was organized with different drinking games (BYOB for legal reasons). And here I met the first American with the claim of having Dutch roots, who actually could speak Dutch as well. It is common to hear Americans talking about also being of another nationality but not being able to speak a word in that language.

On Thursday, I had the luxury of being able to hitchhike with a friend to the Aldi, this friend couldn’t stop making fun of the fact that I actually was willing to buy meat etc. at the Aldi, making claims as “are you actually gonna eat that??” or “Ohh that’s gross!”. She, and some other random person at the Aldi, recommended me to go to the Publix supermarket after, so we did. Where I also got to try a Pub Sub. Being back at 7.15PM, we tried to get free shirts before the volleyball game of UF-Stanford. Unsuccessfully, since they came 4 shirts short for us to obtain one. It is a nice feature that all games (except for football, for which I got the season ticket), are free for students at UF.

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for: Gatornights! This day we decided to stand early in the line (more than an hour before it starts) to get a stuffed gator. After standing in several lines we finally got one! Well, half of us did. On this event they had also a mechanical gator for us to try out, this is the first time that I get why you have to sign a waiver before such an event since I arrived to the States (ouch!).