Nederland!

Okay!  16 hours of planes and airports, and a day later, here I am!

I got in to Amsterdam yesterday around 13:30, Jennifer and Tessa and Simona came to pick me up.  So nice of them.  Too bad they had to stand around and wait for me while I tried to find my baggage, I have never seen that many people in the baggage claim area at that airport.  You know, in all the two times I've been there.  Well, it is the summer. I suppose it makes sense.

So, with it being the summer and all, the first day I was here, Friday, it was cold and rainy all day. Tessa cursed at the rain a lot but hey, I like rain. So it's fine by me.  We kind of just did a bit of running around on Friday, nothing horribly important.  They were going to just take me to my apartment that I am sub-renting but since it took so long to get my bags we were behind schedule a bit, and after driving around The Hague we made an about-face and accompanied Tessa to the place where she needed to teach children how to swim.  Yay, swimming lessons!  Eventually I did get to my apartment though, and everything seemed pretty straight-forward about that.  I have very good internet here, too.  This will definitely work well for the next few months.

I was so exhausted last night that I fell asleep at about 9:30, then woke at half past midnight, freaking out. I'm not sure why I was freaking out.  I can't remember. There is really something strange about taking off from Seattle at 4:30 in the afternoon and landing seven and a half hours later at 7:00 in the morning without the sun ever having gone down (I know this because I am pretty sure that the woman across from me on the plane was the only person in the entire plane to leave her window open for the entire flight, and the sun was shining bright and clear through it the entire way.)  Anyway, during those 16 hours of travel I got maybe 10 minutes of sleep, on the very last flight, and only because the cute little boy next to me put his head between his knees and fell asleep and I thought that it looked like it would be nice to sleep too, so I closed my windows for him and then tried to take a little nap myself, but then the flight attendant came over the speakers saying we would be landing in Amsterdam soon and that woke me up right away.  I couldn't help but smile so big as we were landing, I was so excited. I had been waiting patiently to return to Europe for six months!

So today the weather was much nicer, so Simona's boyfriend drove Jenn, Tess and Simona to pick me up, and then took us to Scheveningen, the beach.  And we had a great day!  We went to see 21 Jump Street, which was probably one of the stupidest movies I've seen in quite a while.  It was also enormously hilarious though, so it all paid out.  After that we walked on the beach trying to find somewhere to eat (which we eventually did), ate delicious food, watched Tess and Moon play a couple arcade games, and then we were picked up to go back home. A great day, really! I think in the future it would be useful to have days like this, but that don't involve spending a lot of money.

When I got back to my apartment, my roommates were having a little party.  Not a big deal there, they are a bit noisy but it's not like I'm sleeping at the moment. I can hear a million different languages out there, it's too bad I'm afraid of people or I'd go out there. They did all say hi to me when I came in.  It's okay, I don't want to interrupt their meal.  I think they are all saying goodbye, because the school year is almost over and they are all heading back to their home countries.

I am so happy to be back here. I think I will have a great summer.