10.55 am
The bedroom looks like Halloween exploded into it at some point in the wee hours of the morning. Costumes scattered across the couch at the foot of the bed, keys and ID's and credit cards and makeup scattered across my desk. As the boy put it, I stayed out way past my bedtime last night. I'll blame some of that on BART (running one train an hour isn't really all-night service - have you people ever been to New York) but mostly it was because we were having a good time.

He bought tickets to an event at the Glas Kat, but we never made it that far. Instead we met up with friend, and friends of friend, and a random airport security agent ("I don't care about the drugs you're carrying. I'm looking for the person who wants to die today." Nice to know our government has its priorities straight.) who spent the night on a bar stool warming our coats. Sometime after midnight the boy and I ended up at a little taqueria, where I got nachos that probably wouldn't have been as fantastic if I had been sober.

10.55 am
Finished with my read through of the morning paper and ready to start the day. I'm torn between whether I should consider the paper a necessity or a luxury. Necessity because knowing what's going on in the world - whether you world consists of the small rural town you live in or the affairs of political leaders across the globe - is an essential part of being a citizen. A luxury, partly because I must confess that at times I'm more likely to read 'human interest' stories than hard news and partly because my days always flash by much too quickly.

Today I shall mostly spend writing, I think. Having finished a first draft of my writing requirement, I've been rewarded with suggestions for the next draft an an imperative to get that next draft done quickly. I shall also, if I can convince myself it won't take to long, go down to the new library and, for the first time in over a month, get new books!

3.58 pm
Back from new library, which is rather spiffy. There's an automatic book return - you put your book in the slot, barcode facing up, and it goes onto a conveyor belt that then deposits the book in the right bin. The librarians love this because it takes away most of the hassle of returns. I love this becuase I am naturally suspicious and paranoid and can now get a receipt verifying that I did, in fact, return my books on time.

The downside of getting new books is, of course, that I would rather be reading than doing homework. So instead I shall procrastinate by blogging. A happy solution for all.

10.30 am
Curled up on the futon with my blanket wrapped around me and the front door wide open. A delicate compromise between warmth and fresh air. On the agenda today we have corporations (it would be rather nice, for once, to have an actual reading assignment rather than guessing), reading through precis' for my writing seminar (although I claim hall pass on reading them if they come it at 9 pm on Sunday night again) and reading for my development seminar (which, because I am writing a paper, I view as somewhat optional). Then there's the MPRE, and I will know whether or not I should be worried about it after I do some practice questions this afternoon.

10.53 am
(I began a long diatribe on the CA bar charging outrageous fees, but it ended up on Nuts & Boalts instead)

Having now spent 23 minutes typing instead of reading, I shall now be a good sheeple and go do my homework.

9.08 am

When the phone rings before 9 am, it's usually because one of the boy's cooks has failed to show. He was tugging on his chef's pants and stuffing clothes for tonight in his bag almost before he had hung up the phone, then rushing out the door. I somewhat like when he leaves early because it gives me more time to get work done during the day, but the house is rather empty when it's only me here all day.

10.43 am

I am armed with a cup of green tea and ready to face the day. The boy left at 9 am this morning to go to work. It has taken me nearly two hours of newspaper reading, email and facebook checking, and showering to accept the fact that it is morning and I am awake.

On the to do list for today:

• Homework. About 65 pages of reading for crim pro - we're doing Miranda this week. Plus the articles for my international development and law class, which I pretty much skim through anyway. And papers/precis for the writing workshop. Ditto on the skimming.
• Webpage editing. The boalt.org server is finally cooperating. Agenda for today is getting the articles archive straightened out and putting up blurbs about the articles for the next edition.
• Brower. I didn't realize how much work was going to go into editing that thing. At this rate, I'll still be working on it next year. Which is bad, because it probably needs to be ready for the printer by December. Eeek!
• An hour of noveling. This is a must. Nathan Bransford's Stupendously Ultimate First paragraph Challenge had caused me to realize that: 1) there's no point in winning an agent critique if you don't have a manuscript ready and 2) manuscripts don't write themselves while they're stuck in the proverbial desk drawer. Although they may get up to other sorts of mischief, which is neither here nor there.
• I'm sure there's something else I'm forgetting. There usually is.
  

11.55 am

A word cloud of the blog, powered by wordle.net

5.13 pm

The alarm went off at 3 am this morning and boy rolled out of bed and turned on the computer. I stayed in bed for about half an hour before giving in to the inevitable and moving to the couch, where I wrapped myself in a blanket and dozed off to the sound of NASA geeks. One of them, after informing us that the bombing of the moon was dedicated to Walter Cronkite, said he hoped that this mission would inspire a new generation of kids to grow up excited about exploring space.

Seems to me that people landing on the moon is a somewhat more exciting than a rocket detonation that fails to produce the expected "cloud." On the other hand, perhaps we're getting that much closer to Luna Colony. Cue catapults, lunies, and Revolt in 2100. I've already told my parents that when they become aged, I'm shipping them off to the moon. One sixth gravity makes it a lot easier to get around with those hip replacements and bad knees.

liveblogging my corporations reading

4.28 pm

Home from a nice bike ride up Redwood (hills are friends, not food) and showered, so that I am no longer a sweaty, grimy mess. My reward: settling in to read Corporations. Joy.

4.34 pm

I am currently feeling a bit like Emma: if I were to make time for all the things I ought to do, I would be quite accomplished by now. Sadly, learning Spanish and writing a novel and working my way through cookbooks seem to be somewhat incompatible with law school. Bike riding is easier for some reason. Perhaps it's because conjugating Spanish verbs doesn't quite give the same adrenaline rush that racing down a hill at way too fast does.

5.37 pm

I've closed the front door - too much wind and not enough sunshine coming in. Curled up under the boy's Snoopy blanket and wishing we had a fireplace. Homework reads quicker when there's fire nearby.

5.57 pm

So far, the most exciting case was from the 1930s and involved night games at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

6.19 pm

Seven pages to go. If I put dinner in the oven now, will it be ready when I'm finished? Ah, the existential thoughts of a hungry law student.

6.48 pm

Dinner: three cheese tortellini with truffle salt, oregano, and parmesan. Desert: editing.

Peter at 32

2 am – the after
after party – and he’s down
in the Village
with a smile
and a corporate expense account, still dressed
in standard office-wear:
trousers and a Eurotrash
button-down;

“Darling!”
he says
to a girl in a
mini-skirt, air kisses
above
her cheeks, putting
a hand on her ass
and guiding her out to
a cab. He blanks on the directions to his loft
a moment – third

street to the left? – but the cabbie
has a GPS on the dash.
She will leave before
he wakes up,
and he, head pounding, will lie
back against the pillows
and clap.

11.02 pm

Opera high is quite unlike any other. It puts you in a quieter sort of place. Not the wild bursts of energy that come from the staying up too late high, or the sustaining, could do this for miles that comes with runner's high. The mellow, contented feeling from sushi high comes close, but it doesn't quite get there.

Jodi wears a hat although it hasn't rained for six days. She says a girl needs a gun these days, hey, on account of those rattlesnakes.

I walked home past the Somerset House, which I've glanced at in passing a few times, and realized that what I thought was the entrance was really a giant courtyard that leads down to the Embankment. I saw water splashing around inside and went for a closer look. One of those fountains set into the cobblestones of the courtyard, a square of about 7 jets on either side. Each had its own, different coloured light at the bottom, and the size of the jets changed heights. I briefly considered dropping my bag and playing tag with the fountain, but the water never quite went all the way down entirely. Most likely to keep people from myself from doing silly things.

She looks like Eve Marie Saint in on the waterfront. She reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance.

I think the thing about the opera - really, the thing about any kind of performance - is that it allows you to step into that state known in the creative writing universe as the willing suspension of disbelief. That is, for the span of a three hour performance, we all agree to pretend that what is happening on the stage is real. Perhaps you take this as a given. Isn't that the point of going to shows, to escape reality for a bit?

Sure. But this collective ability to ignore the real world takes on a different sort of meaning when you're sitting in Trefalgar Square in a crowd of about 10,000 people, and you've all agreed to share the same collective fantasy.

She's less than sure if her heart has come to stay in San Jose, and her neverborn child haunts her now, as she speeds down the freeway. As she tries her luck with the traffic police, out of boredom more than spite, she never finds no trouble, she tries too hard, she's oblivious despite herself.

The Royal Opera House had run a contest for amateur opera singers, the grand prize being the privilege of singing in Trafalgar Square during the intermission. They looked so young, both of them, and the expressions on their faces as they finished singing and heard the crowd begin to applaud were a combination of shock and amazement and pure joy.

Jodi never sleeps 'cause there are always needles in the hay. She says a girl needs a gun these days on account of those rattlesnakes.
Opera high is restlessness. It is wanting to walk the streets of London until the sun rises. It is wanting to sit down at the piano by St. Paul's and play Beethoven's moonlight sonata under the stars. It is wanting to hold onto that feeling of being completely alive.

4.00 pm

I could be in any park, in any country. The open stretch of lawn is surrounded by trees, their broad leaves providing a welcome canopy of shade. I hear half a dozen languages around me. Italian. French. Indian, I think, and something that might be Russian. I’m not in any park, in some far off and exotic country. I’m in London, in England, sitting in St. James Park with a laptop, a guidebook for London, and a book I bought this morning by an up and coming young novelist.

The reason I am in the park, instead of out in Brighton or Oxford or pub-crawling with my mates from the office is that I’m starting to realize that I am losing myself working at this law firm. One of the others summers told me the other day that I don’t really seem like a Berkeley person. That I don’t really seem like a hippie. I can understand why he would get that idea, of course. I come into the office in a suit most days. Largely because if I don’t wear a jacket, I sit and shiver in the extreme air conditioned refrigerator that is my office. I work mostly with the arbitration and litigation teams, defending corporations facing white collar crime investigations and the big energy and oil companies investing in foreign countries.

There was an incident at the office yesterday involving a very, very unhappy woman who had worked there about five years ago. It was clear that she was rather upset, and while I won’t presume to know what was going on with her, I’m fairly sure that it wasn’t just working at the office that had gotten her so ticked off. Still, it’s things like that which make you question your own choices. Will I end up that miserable in five years? I certainly hope not.

4.10 pm

Rather depressing thoughts for what is, on the whole, a glorious Saturday afternoon. I think I shall go find an ice cream stand and see if I can get through the whole thing without dripping on myself. I fear the chances of that actually happening are rather slim, though.

6.29 pm

Went on for a walk in the park. Saw a girl in a gold-coloured polyester princess dress and a tiara, which made me smile. And a creep who tried to hit on me, which didn’t. Then I ambled over to Hyde park, where I caught the opening bit of what I think was the Neil Young concert before the sky began to make threatening rumbles.

I made it to the Tube station before the rain and found myself in a sweaty mass of over-stimulated tourists. Transferred to another line immediately. Reached St. Paul’s as the sky really began to open. Big, fat drops of rain that left splotches the size of quarters on the pavement. Am now sitting in my living room with the windows wide open, letting the fresh rain scent blow in.

7.46 pm

And, I should add, a hauntingly beautiful tribute to Michael Jackson in black sharpie on a wall of the National Gallery.

8.47 pm

I've been debating whether or not to post this. After all, some of you might go see the movie, and I wouldn't want to ruin it or anything. On the other hand, very rarely do I have a book experience that leaves me feeling so incredibly used.

I went into the bookstore the other night on my way to yoga, and picked up a book. It was a rather innocuous looking paperback, and I flipped through it and read a bit. It seemed interesting, largely because the bits I'd read made it seem as though the substance of the book revolved around some pretty thorny ethical dilemmas. The owning-the-rights-to-your-own-body-kind, and the when-do-parents-stop-having-the-ability-to-make-good-decisions-for-their-children kind. So I downloaded the audio version to take with me on the plane.

It started out great. It was the kind of book you can't put down. In fact, after I got off the plane Saturday, I kept listening. I put my headphones in when I walked around the city Sunday. I probably walked more than I would have otherwise. I raced home to finish listening to it Monday. Then, Tuesday morning I think it was, I read a review in the New York Times about this particular book. Which was being made into a movie. Which was not, as I was beginning to suspect, about thorny ethical issues at all. Instead, it was simply one in a line of books by the same author all dealing with the same exact subject: dying children.

I kept reading the book, mostly wanting to prove the Times article (which took a rather dim view of both the author, the genre, and the novel) wrong. A book this good couldn't be that bad, could it? Oh yes. Those wonderfully tricky questions about morals and ethics and black and white lines got lost in the melodrama and pathos of the novel's end. It's not very often that I finish a book and wish I could take those 13 hours of my life back.

8.05 pm

Right. It's not yet ten o'clock in the evening and already I've had too much to drink. I blame the litigators. If the one hadn't sent out the email saying that we were congregating in the pub downstairs to celebrate a day without rain (which really, given the week we've had, is a remarkable achievement) and then the other buying me drinks in said pub ... well, I would have been home, and sober, and packing for London several hours ago. On the other hand, it was rather nice to hear the one say, in puppy dog sort of tones, "It's fine, go to London, I'll just work on this chart without you, and I won't miss you at all" and the other say "But if you're in London who's going to deflate my ego with sarcastic and cruel remarks?"

I hadn't quite realized how well I was fitting in with the litigators until it struck me that several of them were rather going to miss me. Somewhat strange, because I'd thought of myself as an arbitration sort of girl. And I've gotten along famously with the arbitrators I've had a chance to work with, but it's been mostly litigation assignments.

8.26 pm

Pizza in the oven and clothes in the laundry. Now I need to figure out a) what I'm packing to take to London and b) what suitcase(s) I'm putting it in. Did I mention I'm leaving for London at about 5 am tomorrow? The idea was to leave work early, around 5ish, because my assignments have dried up over the past week and I didn't have anything urgent to take care of, and pack. Then I would go to bed early, and get in a good night of sleep before getting on a plane to fly across several thousand mile of ocean. And because I have really not had enough to drink that the idea of packing suits with hand covered in pizza sauce sounds like a good idea, I'm queuing up Dexter on Netflix to watch while I eat. Because nothing is better with a few beers and pizza than a serial killer who uses his power for good. Mostly.

10.03 pm

Munchkin runs up the stairs from the basement, for all the world like there's an army of ghouls behind him, shouting "Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow there's an ANIMAL in the washer." I'm in the guest room (because both of the bedrooms I occupied in this house have since been taken over by various brothers) changing, so I put my jeans back on because if there is some sort of large animal I'll feel much better prepared to deal with it if I am wearing jeans and not pink tiger striped pajama pants.

The animal turns out to be a mouse. I learn this from my mother, who is having trouble talking because she's laughing so hard. My father, it seems, has gone down to the basement to deal with said mouse, Munchkin being incapable of doing so at the moment. Dad comes up the stairs and starts lecturing Munchkin on why you don't run up the stairs as though there were an army of ghouls behind you yelling "ow ow ow ow ow" if your only problem is a mouse in the washer. As my father talks, he waves his hands around. He doesn't appear to notice that one of the hands is holding a plastic container, like the kind you get at the deli when you order a pasta salad, with a very wet, small mouse in it.

"Is that the mouse?" I ask. "Is it dead?"

My father shakes the container a few times. The mouse moves. "No," he says. "It's rather wet and unhappy though."

And really, this is a fairly typical evening in my parents house.

3.18 pm

I have gone to five yoga classes in the past eleven days. Two in the past two days. I don't yet have that "hurting in muscles I didn't even knew existed" feeling that I did when I first started yoga a few years ago, but it's close. The kind of weird thing is that I actually enjoy that sort of pain. I used to feel like this after really good dance classes or really hard lacrosse workouts. I'm also starting to feel less painfully stiff and sore in the morning, which is a definite bonus. Part of that is the fact that I'm sleeping on a pull-out sofa in which, until I put a foam eggshell thing down a few days ago, I could feel every mattress spring when I lay down. Most of it is that I'm totally losing the flexibility I had when I was younger.

The other night I was at a bar with one of the girls from work, and we got onto the topic of dance and acro and all that, and she mentioned that there's adult gymnastics at the Chelsea pier. It sounds like you pay your $20 and they let you at all the equipment for a few hours on a Friday night. I'm wicked excited to go do it, but I'm also wondering if a) my body will still remember what to do and b) if my body will actually move and bend that way again. I know what it feels like to do a back handspring. You have to bend your knees and jump, straight up, while bending your head back and trusting that your arms will catch you. That's the hard part. After your arms hit the ground your feet will follow, at which point you have to stay on them and not wobble around as you stand up. What I wonder, though, is if my arms will support me, if my back will arch the way it needs to, if I can still jump straight up into the air as though I were never planning on coming back down.

All of which is to say that I find myself upping the personal ante for my yoga classes. I signed up because I knew I'd be eating ridiculous lunches all summer and I wanted something to keep off the "summer fifteen". And because after watching the contortionists at Cirque, I really wanted to be able to bend down and touch my toes again. Now, my goal is to be able to get flexible enough to do a back handspring this summer.

On keys, and why I shouldn't leave the house without them

5.36 pm

You would think that after the incident in The Hague where I locked myself out of the building at 1 am and had to wake up my next door neighbor to actually get in, I would be absolutely fanatical about making sure I had my keys with me whenever I left my apartment. You would be wrong.

In my defense, when I left the apartment I was with my roommate who did have keys. We were going downstairs to put my suitcase in the storage unit. I failed to realize, however, that the fact that she was leaving to go to the gym right away meant she would not be coming upstairs with me. So I asked the doorman if she could let me in, at which point she told me she didn't have keys, and in any case the super couldn't open the apartment without permission from Christine. Whose phone number I did not have.

I shrugged and went upstairs, figuring that at worst I would be waiting in the hall for about two hours and maybe that would teach me to bring my keys everywhere. Then I realized I had pasta cooking in the oven and that if I waited two or more hours for Christine to come home it would burn to a crisp, possibly taking the apartment with it. I jiggled the door handle for a bit, and when that didn't work I went back downstairs and explained to the doorman that even if the super couldn't let me in maybe he could go in himself and turn off the oven and that really would be better than things burning and setting off smoke alarms and so forth.

The moral of the story, therefore, is not "don't leave home without your keys" but rather, "if you do leave home without your keys, leave the oven on."

5.51 pm

Right. I've survived the first two weeks in New York. I have not yet been mugged, nor threatened, nor even looked at in a hostile manner. My apartment might be in East Harlem, but it is definitely not the worst neighborhood I've lived in. Nobody seems to believe me though, when I tell them that it's really ok for me to walk from the subway to my building in the evening. Don't get me wrong - if it's midnight, I'll be taking a cab home. But there are a ton of people still out and walking around, and regular patrols of both the actual police and the church brothers up the block. Oddly enough, I feel safer around the church guys.

You probably want to know if the law firm is wining and dining us extensively. Not so much. That's not to say that they haven't taken care of us. We went to Cirque d'Soleil the first week (it was totally fabulous) and had cocktails and hors d'hourves at the SoHo Grand this week. Plus there was a wine tasting at a partner's house and lunch with our office mates. But that's pretty much it for the official events. The theme around the office seems to be that if associates want to take summers out for lunch, they should. But I'm rather glad to find that I can bring food into the office or grab a quick bit to eat at one of the restaurants downstairs.

Everyone at the office is super friendly so far. A bunch of us went out for drinks and then dinner last night to say goodbye to two of the summers who will be in the Hong Kong office the next ten weeks. The associates got word that we were all going to be hanging out after work and invited us to Papillion. Papillion, so far as I can tell, is a French restaurant run by a couple Irish guys. They've got Leffe beer on tap, along with a ton of other imports, but there's a full wine list as well. It was packed Friday night, mostly with the law firm/midtown types.

6.10 pm
I'm trying to motivate myself to do a few hours of reading. I don't know that I really have to - certainly nobody will be giving me a pop quiz on Monday morning. If I get through it all, however, that will make my life the rest of next week that much easier, since I'll be able to go straight into the research. And while I suspect this case will take up most of my week, I'd really like to get time in on the two pro bono cases I have, both of which are absolutely great cases.

3.02 pm

New York! Strangely enough, it seems like any other major American city. Worlds away from The Hague, of course. For one thing, the streets here are paved, not cobblestone or brick. For another, as I walk around the city I hear English and Spanish, not Dutch and English. My new apartment is 30-40 minutes from work. Probably closer to the 30 side once I actually know where I'm going and have the subway route down. The room I'm in has a desk and a pull-out sofa to sleep on, and once the sofa is pulled out it becomes rather small. Still, I've got full access to the kitchen and living room, and really, I'd be plain silly to expect a large room in this city.

3.18 pm

Done arranging furniture for the nonce. The couch is now turned 90 degrees so that I can pull the bed out all the way and still sit down at the desk to type. Because I think that making the bed into a couch every day and/or having to scramble over the bed to get to the other side of the room would get old rather quickly.

Work starts tomorrow at 9:30 am with breakfast, followed by orientation-type stuff I think, lunch with my new office mate, and then afternoon "meet the firm" drinks. I'm rather excited to be starting work again. I spend much too much money when I have days off. Besides, you can only sit around doing nothing for so many afternoons before it starts to get old.

9.47 am

We went out for breakfast this morning, to one of our favorite little places in town. We call it the "pirate place" because the old menus had something vaguely pirate-like about them. Not the best food in town, but friendly service, and quick, and the hot chocolate always comes with a mountain of whipped cream and chocolate syrup on top. We got there around 7:15ish - well ahead of the Mother's Day rush - found a table, and then sat and watched the two waitresses make eye contact with us multiple times as they washed their hands, brought a coffee pot around for refills, and chatted with the manager. In short, they did just a about everything they could to kill time without actually taking our order.

We were so frustrated that we walked out. I'm not sure if it even registered to the waitstaff that we were leaving because they hadn't even bothered to say hello. It's one thing if the restaurant is busy. We both understand how that goes, and we've got a ton more patience than most diners, I'd imagine. But to sit at a table, while the waitresses are finding things to do because they're not busy, while they seem to be deliberately ignoring us was a bit much. So we went over to Doug's, which is fantastic, where our favorite waiter was over in less than a minute.

9.53 am

The task for the day: to make a cake with an oven that tends to shut off in the middle of the bake cycle and refuses to turn back on. It will be a yellow cake, with slices of strawberries in it, with vanilla butter cream frosting with chocolate covered strawberries on top. If I can get it to cook, it should be a great cake.

1.55 pm

Cake baked. In a friend's oven. Strawberries simmering on the stove with a bit of Madeira and sugar, to make a strawberry-jammy-type filling. Butter on the counter getting soft for use in butter cream frosting. Strawberries dipped in chocolate and cooling. I'd forgotten how much fun baking is.

If it's Saturday, I must be in SF

5.30 am

After four months in the Netherlands and two weeks of city-hopping through France and Spain, I finally get the "If it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium" thing. We had a most wonderful trip - I'll be posting pictures on facebook once I get them downloaded from the cameras. Not too jet lagged (although I am up at 5 am, but that's mostly because I fell asleep around 5 pm last night)

A few highlights from the trip:

-- The catacombs in Paris, where the bones are stacked to make patterns in the wall - thigh bones resting on each other make the basic background, and skulls are used to make hearts, crosses, and other interesting shapes.

-- Opera in Lyon - Lulu - a story in which, if I understood correctly, everyone ends up dead except the lesbian, who vows to study the law so that she can work for women's rights.

-- Watching the Arsenal/Manchester United soccer match at the only British pub in Alocossebre, a little tourist/retirement town about 2 and a half hours south of Barcelona.

9.14 am

We arrived in Paris under a gray sky threatening rain. The train ride took about 6 hours - 3 on the slow train from Amsterdam to Brussels, and 2 on the super fast train from Brussels to Paris. Looking out through the window on the high speed train is interesting. You see something kind of interesting in the distance - maybe a church or a monastery, maybe a clump of cows/sheep/horses - and by the time you've figured out what it is it's already five minutes behind you. Adam took some video from the train, which we may try to edit and post if it's not all a complete blur.

The metro system in Paris was easy enough to navigate - very well laid out, and everything more or less labeled, with large maps of the whole metro system everywhere. Plus, my wonderful boyfriend had already looked up all the stops we needed, so it was painless. Getting to the hotel, on the other hand... The metro stop where we are lets out into a 6 or 7 street roundabout/intersection. The street signs are little plaques on the sides of buildings that you can't really make out from across the street. Which meant we ended up going in a rather large circle before we figured out where we needed to be.

9.20 am

When we left the hotel for dinner and a bit of evening sightseeing, the threatened rain had arrived. Paris in the rain is not so much fun. It blows every which way, and we only had one umbrella between the two of us. Which means that if he holds it I tend to get wet because it's too high, and if I hold it he can't see because it covers his line of vision. Even so, we both wanted to see the Tour Eiffel at night, so we hopped on the metro and, after a little misstep, found our way easily enough. When we got off the metro though, it wasn't dark enough for the tower to be lit, so we found a little bistro for dinner. It was fantastic. He got this smoked duck breast/goat cheese/poached apple on baguette thing, and I had the French onion soup. By the time we left the tower was all lit and sparkling with disco lights. Kind of like a fairy tower.

9.23 am

It is still gray and threatening rain today, so we've compiled lists of indoor and outdoor things. I am determined not to let a little rain ruin Paris for me. First up, a tour of the catacombs, and we both want to see Sacre Cour. He wants to walk on the cobblestones on the Champs d'Elysses where the Tour de France riders go through, and I want to see all the haute couture fashion shops. With perhaps a museum or two thrown in if the rain starts.

2.21 pm

Sitting in a food court in Brussels Zuid/Midi, surrounded by piles of luggage. We grabbed the earlier train from Amsterdam, so we’ve got almost an hour before the train for Paris leaves. Which is good, since our train was running 25 minutes late – so if the train we’d meant to take is late as well, we would have missed the connection.

I could have spend another week in Amsterdam. There were a ton of things we wanted to do and didn’t get a chance to – the Van Gogh museum, the Rijksmuseum, the Amsterdam dungeon. And I would happily have gone back to Kuekenhof to see the flowers a week later, and the windmills at Kinder-something, and the city in a city at Madurodam….

8.29 am

Adam arrived safe and sound yesterday, although it took him forever to get out of the baggage claim area because the airline didn't post what carousel their baggage would be on. We hopped in a taxi to go to the little Bed and Breakfast, since we weren't entirely sure which tram stop it was on. The B&B turned out to be an apartment in the city - I think these guys probably rent out their second home to guests. Which means that for the same price as a teeny tiny hotel room, we have our own bedroom, kitchen, bath, and garden/patio area (currently not so useful because it's drizzling). Total score!

8.33 am

Off to find breakfast, and then we're planning to go see the Diamond museum, and maybe the Van Gogh if there's time. I wouldn't mind getting to actually see the paintings upstairs - last time I did the "colors of the night" exhibit and that was about all I could handle for an afternoon. There's also the vodka museum, where for the price of a cocktail you get to learn about vodka and get a free drink. And of course Grasshopper, the (in)famous club/restaurant/bar). Then to Den Haag this afternoon, to meet up with some of my coworkers for a drink and maybe some kite time.

8.41 pm

My last night in Den Haag. Although I am ecstatically happy to be leaving this apartment (and the world's worst shower, and the party-till-6am-and-skip-class-the-next-day-neighbors), I'm not so thrilled about going. The thing is, I'm just starting to get to know the city. It stays light out until 9:30 at night, and all the plazas are filled to bursting with people having a drink or some dinner. Over the past few days, the last of the buds on the trees have unfurled into shiny green leaves. The garden outside my window, winter-bare when I arrived, is now in full bloom, white, pink, purple, and yellow blossoms. It's warm out now, 22 degrees some days, and I can walk home from work without a jacket.

The past few days, I've been finding new little restaurants that I'd like to eat at and remembering that I won't have time. It's strange - when I got here I kept telling myself that it would pass quickly, but the first month dragged. Now, it's not so much that it feels like its flown by as that I never had enough time in the first place.

8.46 pm

And yet I'm also excited to be moving forward. Almost two full weeks of vacation with my duckie - we've never had more than a few days before. Paris and Lyon, a country I've never been too, and then Barcelona and a country I've wanted to go back to since I left it eight years ago. I remember sitting on a bridge in Granada (I think it was Granada, but perhaps it was Seville) looking out over the water and thinking how wonderful it would be to be able to come back when I was all grown up. I remember taking the train through the Spanish countryside, the carriage rocking back and forth on the rickety tracks, looking out the window and wanting to backpack through the hills.

Then to New York, where I plan on seeing my first Broadway show, and eating good sushi again, and getting my hair and my nails done because for once in my life I'll be able to afford it.

12.58 pm

About to bite into the third of the twelve chocolates I brought home from Belgium. The first was from Neuhaus, where I asked the lady behind the counter to pick four of her favorites. It was a dark chocolate shell with a creamy dark chocolate filling. Absolute divinity. The second was from Pierre Marcolini. I had picked those out - a violet, a cassis, an earl gray, and a something. I ate the something. Much to my disappointment, it wasn't very good - almost sour and sweet at the same time. Not what I look for in a chocolate. This, the third, is another of the Neuhaus. It smells dark, and has Neuhaus imprinted on the top, with a little crown. Here's hoping for another sublime chocolate moment.

10.17 pm

Just home from a day of sightseeing with the family. The Kuekenhof in the morning - truly gorgeous and worth seeing, but a but much to take in all at once. It's set up so that you wind your way through beds of tulips and narcissus and hyacinths. In the gardens are sculptures made of bronze and glass and steel and even plywood. Then in the afternoon we went back to Amsterdam and did the Anne Frank house. Which, quite frankly, makes me feel angry and upset the way I always do when exposed to any sort of holocaust memorabilia. Not for what happened to the Jews and the others in the death camps. But for the fact that human nature hasn't changed at all in fifty years - that we're torturing people and then telling the torturers that they won't be pardoned, that the right wing hardliners will be in charge of the next Israeli government not because they won the most votes but because they put together the best coalition, and that these people deny the Palestinians a right to exist - even as Hamas works in Palestine to gain legitimacy with the people by giving them food and healthcare and guns in order to claim that Israel has no right to exist. I wonder sometimes if we've learned anything at all since coming down out of the trees.

10.23 pm

I plan to spend tomorrow packing. The idea is for my parents to take two of my suitcases back to the States with them, and then mom will come down to New York or at least send the suitcase with all my work clothes. Which means, I suppose, that I'm going to be sans blow-dryer, and keyboard, and all the other things that won't fit into my itty bitty carry on suitcase.

I'm of mixed minds about leaving. On the one hand, I love this internship. Even the days when it drags are still more exciting than days of listening to lecture and taking notes on readings. On the other hand, I want to be back in a country where I understand the culture and I understand the language. Where I know all the little social cues. And where I can buy Annie's mac and cheese in the grocery store.

2.37 pm

My office is a cozy 26 degrees, according to the thermometer in here. What that translates into is that between the heat and the brilliant sunshiney day outside, I’m having difficulty getting off vacation mode and into work mode. Waking up this morning hurt, even though my alarm didn’t go off that much earlier that I was waking up over the long weekend. It’s something about having to get up and get ready, rather than choosing to do so.

2.42 pm

Thank god for Google. I’m currently looking through a UNC handout on the passive voice, since I’m rather certain that most of the sentences my boss has flagged in my current project as “passive” aren’t. Still, my mother always says that discretion is the better part of valor, which I will take in this case to mean that I should be sure about my grammar before I leap. Or something to that effect, anyway.

3.20 pm

Microsoft Word, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways…

The thing that really gets me is that even when I know exactly what I want to do, Word is sure it knows better. Especially when what I want to do is in any way remotely connected to pagination or section breaks. On the other hand, maybe it’s just a PIBCAK issue…

4.03 pm

Back from my whirl-wind, not quite 48 hour tour of Brussels. All in all, I'm glad that I went - but at the same time, I'm absurdly glad to be back home.

The trip got off to a rather rocky start when the conductor on the train to Brussels informed me that my ticket was no good for the train I was on and I would have to pay her 80 euros. I was furious, mostly because the website I'd bought the ticket from had been mostly in Dutch and the ticket itself said it was good for travel on any train. It didn't help the conductor didn't speak very good English and I don't speak any French. In the end, she only charged me 18 euros - and I still didn't know what was wrong with my ticket!

The train station in Brussels was ridiculously confusing. I had expected to arrive in Brussels Central and ended up in Brussels Zuid, possibly because I had, in fact, been on the wrong train. The guy at the information desk helped with the ticket situation - apparantly, even though I'd bought the ticket through what looked like a Thalys website, it was only good on intercity (IC) trains. He wasn't so good with getting me to Central. He told me to go buy a ticket at the window, so I waited in a room packed with sweaty, smelly people for about 20 minutes - only to learn that the ticket I had used to get to Brussels was good for travel between the train stations too, and I just needed to go upstairs and hop on the next train.

The best part about the whole thing is that they didn't even check my ticket on the way home!

4.25 pm

The city herself more than made up for my travel difficulties. Although I spend the better part of the two days with my head in the guidebook, trying to figure out exactly where I was, I did manage to figure out the layout of the city by the time I left. My directional sense being what it is, I didn't realize that all the mini maps in my guidebook were oriented in different directions, which made for some interesting times.

I did not try either the mussels or the fries. I did, however, have a Belgium waffle (hot off the grill, with little bits of caramel in the dough and powdered sugar on top, like a little bit of heaven on a paper plate) and lobster (with champagne and truffle sauce, although I was reminded that lobster ends up being a great deal of work for very little meat). I'm not a big beer drinker, but I did have a raspberry lambic (delicious!) and Jupiler (went well with my fried scrimps, but not my favorite).

I also have chocolates from three gourmet chocolatiers (Pierre Marcolini, Neuhaus, and Wittamer) that I intend to savor slowly over the next two weeks.

1.45 pm

I'm sitting in the square outside my apartment building, the one with all the bars and restaurants that's filled with tables in the middle, sitting at a table in this square, looking through the Brussels guidebook I just bought, eating a sandwich and drinking a glass of white wine, when it hits me: I'm in Europe. And I realize how quickly indeed places become familiar, so that this is no longer Den Haag, in The Netherlands, thousands of miles from where I live. This is home.

11.37 am

Still waiting on the wind. Windfinder says it's blowing about 5 knots right now on the beach. I am pondering whether tossing a nickel into the water would encourage the wind gods to produce a stiff breeze.

It's been a remarkably good weekend. Friday I had the day off, so I rode my bike up to the beach with my kite. There wasn't any wind when I got there, so I settled for a beer and a chicken sandwich, then sat on the sand and listened to my ipod speak French at me. Friday night I saw "The Reader" - excellent film, although rather cynical in a thought-provoking sort of way. I'm still not sure if I liked it. And last night was dormapalooza, which was simply much too much fun, especially after we started roasting marshmallows over tiki-torches.

11.49 am

My shopping list for today: strippenkarten, guidebook for Brussels, something for breakfast for the next few days, kleenex, and garbage bags. I'm at that strange not here for very much longer but still need food and other stuff in the house point. Which means, I suspect, that once I cook most of the food in my fridge I'll either be living on pasta and cheese and sandwich meat or getting lots of take-out.

11.58

Blow, wind, blow.

8.48 pm

So exhausted I can barely keep my eyes open and so wired I can barely sit still. I feel as though I haven't stopped moving since Tuesday? Wednesday? last week when I got pulled to be on the team working the Secretary of State's visit. This past week has been a frantic rush to check out the site of the Afghanistan conference, hammer out the details, and get all that info back to Washington. Not an easy task. Every step of every movement needs to be discussed, walked through, written up, in triplicate, sent to the processing department, lost in the mail, resent, and rubber stamped. The upside about 12 or 13 or 14 hour days is that if you're busy enough to be working that much, you're busy enough that it flies by.

And fly it does. Here I am on a Tuesday night, a week after we began to pull the visit together, and I can say that I witnessed diplomacy in action, took notes for the Secretary, and had a chance to shake her hand. I am keeping my fingers and toes crossed that our official photographer got a wide angle shot of the meeting where I took notes, so that there's a photo with me and the Secretary at the same table. Perhaps a little silly or celebrity struck - but you already know that I'm a geek like that.

*edit* There is such a picture, although I found it on the Hillary Clinton Blog. All credit to the anonymous photographer.

2:00 pm

I have a theory that the Dutch are always cheerful and good-natured because they spend so little time in their cars. Think about it. It’s a Saturday afternoon, warm out, so you load up the car for a trip to the beach. Of course, once you get on the road you realize that everyone else had the same idea . You end up sitting in traffic for an hour, the beach a ten minute walk away, all the while getting angrier and angrier that you’re in your car instead of on the sand. The Dutch neatly avoid this problem by bicycling or using public transportation to get everywhere.

This theory occurred to me as I was bicycling home from the beach yesterday afternoon. I went down to fly my kite (because truly, nothing gives you wings like watching that frail nylon bird sailing across the sky) on a beach that wasn’t quite jam packed but was still pretty crowded. By the time I left, almost everyone else was leaving for the day. I zipped out of there in five minutes, as the line of cars waiting to exit got longer and longer. I rode home with the wind at my back, enjoying the fresh air and the feeling of being alive!, aside from one brief bit across the cobblestones that rattled all my bones against each other.

Try it, if you don’t believe me. The next time you plan on taking a little trip, see if you can ride your bike or take the BART. And tell me if you don’t have a much nicer time without the hassle of road stress and idiot drivers.

10.18 am

A hazy sky spread outside the office window, sun fighting its way through the clouds and losing. The light filters through the two small glass jars with water on my desk. One holds an avocado seed, propped up with toothpicks. There is a small protrusion in the bottom that was not there yesterday. The other holds a hyacinth, inherited from the former inhabitant of this office. The water in this jar is cloudy, almost obscuring the white roots that look like the arms of a sea anemone. The hyacinth has been taking its time in the blooming. When I came into the office yesterday, the tight green leaves had opened a little further, almost enough to reveal the tightly concealed flower.

4.32 pm

A whirlwind day of Court hearings and briefing papers, interspersed with discussions of legal nuances. I’m happiest when I’m struggling to understand what these Courts have decided and why. It’s more than simply the intellectual exercise. These courts are so new, their jurisprudence still so unsettled, that there’s much more room for legitimate disagreement than with the U.S. courts. The Supreme Court has to stick with the precedent it created 200 years ago. These courts struggle to find a balance between following good precedent and disregarding bad. It’s the struggle that makes it so interesting.

9.38 am
The rain streaking down my windows has turned the outside world into an Escher-like blur of mis-matched corners and impossible angles. I sit in front of the glowing monitor, hands cupped around a steaming mug of tea, watching the raindrops hurl themselves violently against the glass. Days like this it is almost impossible to believe in the crocuses and daffodils pushing up out of the soft spring soil.

11.12 am
My days fall into a pattern. I get into the office and spend the first hour checking websites, news articles, correspondence from Washington for anything relevant. A few hours of work and then my hour in the gym. Lunch. A few more hours of work in the afternoon, sometimes broken by a conference call or a meeting. It surprises me how tightly I cling to this pattern, how I feel as though I am unraveling when part of it falls out of place. Mornings especially – days when the computer system is down I am uncertain how to start my day without having first checked the news.

4.07 pm
Tuesdays pass so slowly, the ticking of the second hand scarcely muffled by the documents piled around my desk.

4.34 pm

I should be doing my research paper. Instead, I am blogging. This is getting to be a theme. As is not blogging during the week (perhaps it would be best if I resigned myself to the fact that this will continue to happen).

I braved the Dutch stores on a Sunday for the first time today. This probably doesn't seem like a big deal. But combine stores that close early every other day of the week with gigantic sales with people speaking a language I don't understand and you get a ton of Dutch people, pushing and shoving and crowding, and all of it incomprehensible. Thus far, I have gone into the drugstore, the grocery store, and the kind of like Ikea but not store, and that only on a need-to-go basis.

Despite everything in the above paragraph, it was pretty much like being in a crowded mall in America on a weekend. The brands were the same - Tommy Hillfiger, Ralph Lauren, that crocodile shirt brand - and the styles really weren't any different. I picked up a long sleeve T for Adam and a sweater for me. I hadn't planned on buying any clothes here, but I'm getting tired of wearing the same things to work every day. Plus, I figure that since there's an APO at work, I can ship home my sweaters and flannel sheets. Which leaves me lots of space in my bags, which means I can buy things.

5.09 pm

In taking the things I bought today out of shopping bags, I discovered that my Turkish pizza (which tastes rather like a quesadilla) had leaked all over the outside of my shopping bag and onto my blanket. Easy fix - there's laundry in the building and it's free. Except that one of the machines appears to not be working, and the other was full of clothing. Very wet clothing that apparently hadn't gone through a spin cycle. I was about to start the machine to spin, when the owner of the clothing appeared, taking it out and putting it straight into the dryer, creating large puddles of water on the floor. And I thought to myself, so this is why this floor is always soaked.

I cannot wait to get out of student housing.

1.31 pm

So much for updates every day. My only excuse is that it seems like my free time is all but non-existent.

I should be concentrating on researching for my writing requirement, especially since it's going to come due very, very quickly. Even though I tell everyone that it's on the most boring topic ever (the differences between the two major systems of investment arbitration), I actually find it pretty interesting. Even so, I've been hard at work all week, and the sun is trying to break through the clouds, and I'd much rather be walking around the city than in front of my computer. Adam sent me a kite, and I'm dying to find a field where I can fly it. It's a little stunt kite, and it says that it can handle pretty strong winds. Which is good, because it gets very windy here.

1.42 pm

The Dutch have rules about almost everything, but I constantly find myself questioning the point.

Take bicycle rules, for example. It's illegal to ride a bike with a dim headlight or no headlight at all. A policeman will stop you and give you a ticket on the spot if you don't comply. Same for riding the wrong way on a bike lane, or riding on the sidewalk. But there's no law requiring helmets. And I constantly see people sitting on the rear bike rack, precariously hanging onto the rider, while the police look on. It seems to me, ignorant American that I am, that making helmets mandatory and not allowing "passengers" would do a better job of promoting safety than headlights.

Then there's the trash. You have to separate your glass out. If you don't, the garbage collectors will open your trash, go through until they find a reciept with your name and/or address, and send you a steep fine. But there's no recycling for plastic, and paper recycling seems to be sporadic. Quite frankly, this one simply baffles me. Why not just send the fine to the house that the garbage is in front of and leave it at that? For that matter, why not provide people with recycling bins and public places to recycle to make it easier?

Then again, the American bureaucracy is just as bad.

4.43 pm

I am sitting at my desk with a stack of law review articles in front of me, waiting for the water on the stove to boil so that I can make a cup of tea. I now have twelve weeks in which to research and write a forty page paper suitable for publication in a law review. Despite the fact that I am supposedly writing this under the guidance of a faculty member, the fact that I'm in the Netherlands makes it difficult to have conversations of any sort about the paper. I think I've got the skeletal form worked out - now all I need is to decide what I want to say. The course is two credits, which means about eight hours a week of work, although I'm not sure if that will be enough to actually write the darn thing.

4.52 pm

Work is going smoothly. I'm going to a fair number of trials, and finding that I really enjoy watching and then reporting on them. Perhaps because it contains a bit of story telling. I'm also doing some policy-type work that I find really interesting. I met up with one of the other girls from Boalt last night, and we had a fun dinner at this Italian place in Centrum. They hand you a card when you walk in - like a credit card, or hotel room key. Then you go to the various stations - pizza, salad, pasta, bar, etc - and order your food. The people you order from either make it there or give you a restaurant beeper for when it's ready. You don't pay until right before you leave. It was lots of fun - communal tables, and a bunch of different languages spoken.

As much fun as the kids in my apartment building are, i'm really glad there are other Boalties here this semester. I work in an office with only four people, including myself, and they're all much older than I am, with families. So socializing after work is probably not going to happen. I tried to get some of the girls in the apartment to come out to dinner with me last weekend, but they were all studying for exams or had already eaten. So last night was the first time I've really gone out since I got here, and it was lots of fun.

5.01 pm

Things that I have found in The Hague:

a tailor (who hemmed my pants for a very reasonable price and got them back to me the same day)
stroopwafels
where to buy tram tickets
bad Thai food
really yummy Chinese food

7.05 pm

The highlight of the last two days has most definitely been going to the Lubanga trial. I promise I won't go into the boring details, for all the non-lawyers reading. The important thing is that this trial is going to set the stage for the future of international criminal trials in many ways. The international community is really still in the baby-steps phase of this whole thing, so it will be interesting to see what lessons from the previous tribunals have (and have not) been learned. Other than that work is going well - they're keeping me on my toes. I'm learning that government lawyers tend to work the same sorts of hours as BigLaw lawyers - long! They're good about letting me keep to an eight hour day. Which is nice, because I need to start working on my writing requirement soon. And of course, I'd like to pretend that I can have a life and be in law school at the same time.

7.11 pm

In non-law news, I went to my second pancake dinner with the kids here. It seems to be the meal of choice - I think because it's easy to make, and sweet. The don't actually make pancakes, it's more like crepes. Tonight the choice of toppings was chocolate, white chocolate, bananas, syrup, and some sort of cherry jelly thing that was gone before I got there. When I got home, there was a note that one of the Spanish boys had slipped under my door, saying that since he always invited me to breakfast and never made it, he was inviting me to a dinner he was making tonight. So I thanked him for the pancakes when I sat down - and everyone started laughing, because one of the girls had made them. His punishment for claiming credit for the dinner? Washing all the dishes.

6.39 pm

The kids in my building partied hard last night, and set off the smoke detector around three in the morning. Which proceeded to go off about every five minutes for the next hour. When I went next door to ask if they could please put out the cigarettes so at least the smoke alarm would stop going off, they told me that once it triggered, it kept going for the next hour or two.

"But," one of the guys told me, "it goes off, I push this button to stop it. See. How about I make you breakfast tomorrow? Yes? You like strawberries, cream? What's your favorite, I'll make it?"

I asked what the connection was between the alarm going off at three in the morning and breakfast. He shrugged. The girl next to him explained to me that he was Spanish, and the Spanish consider breakfast to be the most important meal of the day. So I went back to my room, and read a book until the alarm finally stopped going off.

Which may explain why, when I got up to go to the bathroom around six in the morning, I didn't really wake up all the way. Which shouldn't have been a problem, except that there is a door between my bedroom and the bathroom, which I keep closed because it cuts down on the noise from the kids next door. I also leave a night light on in the bathroom, so I can tell at a glance if the bedroom door is open or closed. But, as I said, I was still half asleep and rather confused. So when I got up and only saw black in front of me, it didn't immediately register that the door was closed and I needed to open it. Instead, I somehow decided this meant the door was open.

I walked into it full speed and promptly woke all the way up. The intense pain of smashing your nose into the door and the warm feeling of blood running down your face will do that.

Luckily, I had a bag of peas in the fridge (they're now in the freezer, in case of future emergencies) and so my nose is not nearly as bruised and swollen as I thought it would be.

On rain

7.42 pm

If this cold gets better, it will be despite the weather, not because of it. This morning began with a slow, misting sort of drizzle. The kind of weather where the air feels wet, but you're not quite sure if it's actually raining. From the window in my office I watched it progress to a steady rain with intermittent gusts of wind. By the time I got out of the building, the rain wasn't coming down so hard, but the wind was blowing in just about every direction simultaneously. My cute, red, 2 euro umbrella, which had looked so cheerful this morning, was quickly bent and warped. The wind would be blowing from behind me, then all of a sudden switch so that my umbrella was turned inside out. It seems that a good umbrella here is a must.

7.57 pm

Things that I have been unable to find in The Netherlands, so far:

Mint tea
Dryer sheets
over-the-counter drugs

10.13 pm

I started work yesterday. It seems like it's going to be a good semester. Everyone in the office is really friendly and helpful - I must have gotten half a dozen "and if you have any questions or need anything, come by anytime"'s from people I met. I'll be working mostly with the international courts - I get to go to the Lubanga trial next week, and report on the first day of trial. When I mentioned that I'll be doing my writing requirement this semester, on UNCITRAL and ICSID, my boss mentioned that they might have some UNCITRAL work I could do. So that would be great.

10.20 pm

I am getting used to the cold. It's the worst right after I go outside. Like being slapped across the face, repeatedly. And it hurts to breathe. Then after I've been walking for about five minutes I can pull my face up from where it's been hunched over my scarf. After about ten to fifteen minutes I'm usually warm enough to undo a button or two. Mornings tend to not be so bad, but for some reason the walk home from work is killer. Maybe it's that it's close to dark, or that there aren't that many people out, or maybe it's just colder. Everyone keeps telling me that this week is much, much warmer. Apparently it was about 6-8F, and all the canals froze over enough for ice-skating. In a way, I'm sorry I missed it. Ice skating is about the one winter sport that I really enjoy, and I don't get a chance to do it near often enough.

4.24 pm

My internet is back, after a brief hiatus where the modem was on "standby." I kept waiting for it to turn itself back on, tried resetting it a few times, and finally went into the rental company's office this morning to ask them to call for me since I don't have a phone. Turns out I'd accidentally hit the "standby" button on the top of the modem, and that was why my internet was out. Why there would be a standby button on a cable modem is beyond me, but the internet is back up and running again. Which is most wonderful, since that means I don't have to sit on the floor in the hallway to try and find a wireless signal.

I seem to be living in a party house. Meaning that there are loud parties in the common room, which shares a wall with my apartment, every night until 4, 5, 7 in the morning. On the upside, the building is dead quiet between 8am and about 11 pm. I'm rather curious as to how any of them actually manage to attend class. I asked the rental agency if they had any apartments in a quieter building that I could move to, but they said they're booked full and they'll send a letter to the other tenants reminding them that parties are not allowed in the building. I feel rather like Arthur Dent, at the moment the party smacked him in the back. As I recall, that party didn't go away, either. There's always the wear headphones all night and make sure they're connected to something with an alarm solution.

4.31

It is another cold, rainy day. Despite my utter loathing for cold weather, it's not so bad as I thought it would be. I put on three layers of shirts, a coat, a scarf, a hat, and gloves. The cold isn't so bad if I walk fast, and once I warm up a little I stop feeling it so much. The hard part is after I come out of a store - and they turn the heat in the stores way up. It's only a fifteen minute walk to work, and there's a tram line on the way. Although unless the tram comes exactly as I'm passing the stop, it's quicker to go ahead and walk. The really nice thing about the tram is that it goes right by the embassy - so I can't get lost going to work if I follow the tracks. And for a girl who couldn't find her way out of a paper bag if there were glowing neon signs pointing the way, that's quite a relief.

7.21 pm

When I got dressed today, I put on one of the pairs of knee-high socks that Adam gave me, more because I missed him than anything else. Then I went outside to get some breakfast, and I was ridiculously glad I'd put those socks on after all. Cold, biting cold, with little drops of rain and wind that blew up, down, and sideways all at once. I'd planned on finding my way to work today, but I couldn't stand the thought of walking that far. I'll have to do it tomorrow though.

7.31 pm

Since leaving home, I have lost one stick of deodorant, two socks belonging to different pairs, and a right hand glove. Although I found the glove, so I'm not sure that it really counts as lost. I had taken it off this morning to eat my hand and cheese croissant. The lady at the bakery put it in the oven, and it was hot enough to keep my hand warm. Which is good, because trying to do anything with gloves on is ten times more difficult than it needs to be. So I had my left glove on, my right glove in my pocket, and my breakfast in my right hand.

I went into the same little home goods store as yesterday to pick up a towel and more bottled water (the internet says the tap water here is safe, but I know better than to trust the internet). Took my left glove off to pay, put that in my left pocket, bagged up my purchase, buttoned my coat, took my gloves back out, put the left glove back on, and did... something ...with the right glove. Because I still had half a croissant left, and I couldn't keep my glove on and eat, you see.

I then wandered across the street, to where a girl in the first store had told me there was a supermarket. Went down a flight of stairs to a level of shops below a street, threw out the empty croissant bag, and went into the grocery store. As I was getting ready to come out, I went through the button up the coat/put on my hat/pull my gloves out of my pockets to put them on ritual - except that the right glove was missing!

I checked my coat pockets - nothing. I checked my bags - nothing. I thought briefly about going home and writing an email to my mother, asking her to send several pairs of gloves, then figured it had to be at the first store. At this point, it had gotten decidedly colder and rainer, and my gloveless hand was getting quite cold. And I had another pair of gloves back at the apartment. Still, I figured it would be easy to check out the store, since it was on my way home, so I went in. After much pantomiming (point at hand with glove, point at hand without glove) the clerk figured out that I was missing a glove and they didn't have it.

My next thought was that I must have been holding onto it when I threw out the empty croissant bag and that it had gone into the trash. Yuck. Still, these gloves have seen worse than a little garbage, and I figured it would have to be near the top of the can, since it hadn't been that long. I went back to the grocery store and found the trashcan. I took a deep breath. And another. I'd never actually reached into a trashcan before. Then I stuck my arm in, gingerly, trying not to touch the sides of the can. It was one of the round ones, with a few cut outs near the top for garbage and a closed top, so I couldn't actually see inside. I felt the croissant bag and pulled it out. No glove. I felt around a little more - mostly paper trash - and pulled my hand back out, feeling totally gross.

At this point, I figured the glove was gone for good, and I had better go back home. I crossed the street, looking down to keep my face out of the wind and the rain, and there was my glove. Lying right on the street where I had walked by it twice already.

I'm thinking maybe I need some of those mitten clips that parents use to attach kids gloves to their jackets.

Arrival in Den Haag

6.41 pm

Mostly settled into my apartment in Den Haag. I'm right in the center of the city, about a fifteen minute walk from work. There's a big shopping area about five minutes from my apartment - everything from little food stands (I had lunch at the falafel place) to discount home good stores to designer clothing stores. I'm in a place with a bunch of other student interns, so even though I don't have a roommate, there will be lots of people around.

7.06 pm

Getting here was an adventure. People in the Netherlands are so, so, so much nicer than they are back home. There is no way I would have made it to my room in one piece if it wasn't for all the people who helped carry my massive suitcases and gave me directions. The next time I see someone wandering around looking confused, I'm going to stop and help them rather than just walking past.

I had to take the hotel shuttle back to the airport, get on a train, transfer at Leiden, then go to Den Haag HS. Traveling with two giant suitcases, one smaller one, and a backpack makes getting on and off trains difficult. I missed my stop the first time around, too. I got myself and all my luggage to the train doors as the train was rolling into the station - and the doors didn't open. There weren't instructions or anything, just two buttons - yellow and blue. I pushed the yellow button and nothing happens. I pushed the blue button and the doors made some noise, and then the train started moving away. Then, at the next station, I had to get all the way to the other end of the platform (luggage and all), down a set of stairs, and up another to get into the right place to catch the train. Luckily, a janitor stopped what he was doing and helped me get everything to the other platform. This time, the train I got into had instructions for opening the door. In pictures!

I made it to the rental office, even though the cab driver didn't really know where it was going. The lady gave me the keys and a map of the city, then told me to get on the tram outside the office to get to the apartment. The tram driver was really nice and told me which stop to get off at. I got directions from a girl in a clothing store. Then when I got to the street, I couldn't find my apartment building. I was looking for 257, and the only apartments were 3a all the way to 3m. After wandering around a minute and trying my key in all the doors, a girl came up to me and asked if she could help. She called the rental agency, but they said it was the right street, and they didn't know where the apartment was. So then we figured out that the street turned 90 degrees and continued, sans street signs, another two blocks. And there, at the very end, was my building. I could have hugged her.

So here I am, in a studio apartment with a bathroom and a tiny kitchen that's about 9 feet by 20 feet, not including the bathroom. And there's laundry machines in the building, no charge. So I figure, even though it's way more than I wanted to pay, it's a nice enough place, and no roommates is a bonus.

7:16 pm

Off to find some dinner, and somewhere I can buy tea. It's a balmy 37F here, warming up to 44F by Sunday. Brrr.

Amsterdam

8:22 pm, local time

I got into Amsterdam around 2 this afternoon. It's like the "royale with cheese" scene from Pulp Fiction - it really is the little things that are different. For instance, the bed in my hotel room doesn't have a comforter, and the bottom sheet is flat, not fitted. And the shrimp bisque I ordered for dinner tonight was pretty good, but it was not the type of cream based bisque I was expecting. Even so, I don't think it's quite hit me that I'm in another country for the next four months. I start work on Tuesday, since Monday is a holiday, which gives me a long weekend to get settled, figure out how to get to work, and all that.

Duckie and I had a wonderful fun time in Vegas. We didn't really do that much gambling - maybe only an hour or two at some low-stakes craps tables. Instead we spent most of the first day just wandering up and down the strip. The inside of Paris was way cute. I had expected it to be tacky, but the way it was decorated I felt like we were walking around outside instead of in a hotel. And the Bellagio was stunning, of course.

Maybe I've been in California too long, but I kept thinking, the whole time we were there, about the incredible amount of waste that goes into that city. The light on top of the Luxor, the golf courses, even the fountains at the Bellagio. All gorgeous in their own way, but completely unsustainable. Even Adam got a little upset when we went somewhere and the cups were all styrofoam. Methinks, however, that we will most definitely go back - and next time on a Friday/Saturday night trip.