People

I've finally met up with cool people! (Molly, thanks for the cool vocabulary!) Oh I have been looking forward to this since NOISE! Wonderful people were at NOISE, and now many of them are here in Utrecht! Before I left Berlin, I emailed Katha and Stephanie, and I heard back from them right away! When I got to Utrecht Sunday night, it was an amazing feeling to know that I was in the same town as lovely people!--I am a little starved for stress-free companionship at this point.
Then on Monday morning, I was eating breakfast when I heard someone call my name, and Elaine is standing at the front door of the hostel, just having got in from her flight from the U.S., here to spend a day with the program. A nice person! The world was made right when Iris (van der Tuin) and Marta (Zarzycka) walked into our room at Drift 23. Next Domitilla and two other Utrecht gender studies students talked with us about their experiences as Utrecht gender studies students and their involvement with the student organization Ask Annabel. Then we had a lecture by the one and only Rosi (Braidotti) on her article "Identity, Subjectivity, and Difference." I never thought I could actually understand psychoanalysis, and apply it to issues of class! Rosi just talked, and knowledge flowed out of her very being, infecting us like wonderful feminist viruses (seriously, that is a legitimate simile from NOISE).
Then on Tuesday we met Gloria Wekker, who gave us an amazing lecture on the construction of Dutch identity and multiculturalism, followed by the always lovely Rosemarie (Buikema) who gave us an amazing and incredibly enlightening lecture about Dutch migrant art during the 20th century.
Wednesday evening, I was in the grocery store, trying to figure out how to weigh my carrots on the scales, when I was going to stop and watch a girl weigh her produce on the scale. She turned around, and it was Katha! I just had this feeling that I would meet up with her at some random place rather than the two of us planning on getting together! So we had this giant hugging scene in the middle of the produce section at the Plus store and we talked in English probably too loudly for too long, but neither one of us cared. And she did show me how to weigh my carrots on the scale, and we made plans for this Saturday night.
Then on Thursday, Iveta tells us that we are required to go to two of the three Bienalle lecture focusing on Dutch identity while we are here. So Martha, Ashley, Leah and I go, and while we are waiting in line to get in, we see Katha, along with Somaye from NOISE and several other MA students. It was so lovely to see them once again, and be with nice, "cool" people.