This.

You can't see them very well, because they were off in the distance and I couldn't get close enough to get a good picture, but I really want to go kiteboarding. Effective immediately.  Hey one of you out there in the water, your turn is up! Hand it over. Please.

I went to the beach today. All by myself, because Sara thought it was cold out so I didn't even invite her. Plus, she got a travel card yesterday but she didn't put much money on it so I don't think she has enough to travel to the beach and back. I don't figure a lot of people like to go to the beach when it's cold and super windy. I loved it though, and hey, I learned something new today. That when it's windy and not rainy, the beach is full of kiteboarders.  I'm sure it's very difficult, but it's still something I'd like to do some day.

I also kind of discovered a quicker way to get to Den Haag Centraal station from my apartment today.  I had to go to the station twice today, the first time because I really wanted Starbucks and the second time because I got my personal ov-chipkaart in the mail today so I had to go to the ticket counter and activate it.  Oh that's right, my mailbox key. It turns out that Sara's mailbox key works. Mine is obviously a completely different key. It's even shorter. I don't know how that happened but I guess when the guy comes to fix the mailbox tomorrow, I'll show him that one key works, and my key is too small.  I wonder if maybe the previous owner of that set of keys lost their mailbox key and didn't want to pay DUWO for a replacement, so they just put another key in its place. I don't know, but it's annoying.  Good thing hers worked.

Yesterday, Sara told me she was going to visit another Italian friend across town, then an hour later she came back with said friend, introduced as Giovanni, and they told me that they were bringing me back to his place to eat.  I agreed, and we went to his place, where I met his roommate. His roommate's name is Angelo, and he is from the island of Sint Maarten, which is part of the Netherlands Antilles, a group of islands in the Caribbean that is under Dutch rule.  The first learned language on his island is English (Dutch being secondary and not very well known by most of the people there) so unlike my two new Italian friends, I don't have to speak very slowly and use simple words. What a relief. He is also in the 4-year European Studies program so he will be in my classes. He told me how nice it is to meet someone who speaks fluent English.  He's been here since the end of July, I guess he missed being able to talk to people in English.

Still no sign of roommate number two, the one with whom I actually share my room.  I hope it's not rude to say so, but I really hope that this one will be from a French- or English-speaking country. Or at least that they are fairly fluent in either of those languages.  It's overwhelming, trying to talk to Sara. She doesn't understand much, and it makes me feel bad to see her get sad because she's trying so hard to understand. It really makes me wonder about my teachers in France, and my French host family. I don't think they spoke any slower to me than they did with each other or their own children. If they did, then I guess I probably frustrated them from time to time too. I think I had a better understanding of the language than Sara or Giovanni though, I didn't always get so confused when they were talking to me, and I understood more words than I didn't.

I do still firmly believe though, that by the time she leaves she will be much better at English. She does try very hard. She likes to speak English, I can tell.  Giovanni seems to avoid it as much as possible. That's okay though, their classes will probably be in English. She told me that when they learn English back in Italy, they just learn grammar and repeat things a lot. They never actually practice speaking.  I guess I can relate to that, that's mostly how my language classes in high school were too.  The teachers always told us that we weren't allowed to speak English in class at the beginning of the year, but throughout the year it always became evident that they weren't going to enforce that. That's really too bad, I learned so much more French in France where we all had to speak French in class, mostly because it was the only common language between us all. Sara and Giovanni will be in Erasmus classes with other European exchange students, so I'm sure English will probably be the only common language between all of them there as well.

I think half of my blog posts are finished with "I had more to say but I can't remember it."  This time I don't think I had anything more to say. Actually, I said more than I even intended to say. When I made the decision to post today, the only thing I wanted to say was that I want to go kiteboarding. So can I call this post a success?  Maybe.