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.