So, it's really hot. Not really. I think it got up to 75F today. I walked to the new apartment to get my key in that heat. It's a 40-45 minute walk, I was baking. When I came home I put on a dress, but I have to change back into my jeans to go to a movie tonight because I don't have any shoes to go with a dress… It's just that, I was trying to pack and stuff and it was impossible to do that while sweating in my clothing. You probably think I'm crazy, and exaggerating a lot. I'm just really not used to it being so humid and so warm at the same time. Plus, I think I was built for cold weather. It agrees with me.
Anyway, I'm kind of proud. I haven't gone food shopping since the beginning of the month, partly because I wanted to save money for London (leaving in five days, yay!) and partly because I didn't want to have to haul a bunch of food to my new apartment. The fridge is almost empty, it shouldn't be too bad.
Oh, yeah. I remembered that I was supposed to tell you about that grill-your-own barbecue thing we did. It's kind of a funny story, really. First they brought us the grill, which was this cute little table barbecue. I assumed it would be charcoal but it looked like there was wood in there as well… I said before that I wouldn't be able to tell you what kind of meats they had because we were going to be getting the vegetarian meal. Well, we told them a million times that we want the vegetarian version (including in the reservation email) but they still brought out a tray that was… well… Not vegetarian. It had these two sausages (one for each of us), two ground beef patties, two skewers of chicken, and two whole shrimps (legs, tails and heads included). Oh, and maybe 4 or 5 little chunks of bell pepper.
Jenn told them we had asked for the vegetarian meal and they tried to argue with us that we were supposed to have told them before, etc. But we did, so they have no excuse. They brought back the proper tray, which honestly would have looked a lot tastier even if I were still eating meat. It had two pumpkin burgers (they had onions and walnuts and maybe chickpeas in them? I don't know, delicious), two halves of corn, two giant portabellas with a spinach blue cheese mixture in them, a huge pile of eggplant, bell pepper and zucchini slices, and two tomatoes stuffed full of olive tapenade. Since Jenn and I are silly people, instead of separately cooking each of the things and eating our own, we split everything in half. And I guess Jennifer is even sillier because she wouldn't handle the tongs on the grill, she let me do all that. They also brought us some garlic in oil, with a grill brush. After the first portabello mushroom, we decided that the blue cheese was entirely unnecessary and got rid of it. Besides, we couldn't cook it on both sides when it had that stuff in it. I still don't like eggplant, but luckily we got an unfair share of eggplant (there was only one little slice) in comparison to the amount of peppers and zucchini. We did cook and taste the eggplant but neither of us cared for it… Everything else on that tray was delicious. Including the cole slaw that I forgot to mention. I always have hated cole slaw. This cole slaw was tolerable though.
That was our grill-your-own barbecue experience. It was pretty fun, and really good, but if it hadn't been for that special deal we got it would have been expensive (the menu said €19.90 for one person. We got it for €12.50 for two. Good deal).
Yesterday Jenn and I went to a movie, and after the movie we wandered around town a little. There is this kind of park called Lange Voorhout, and they tend to have exhibitions and host parties there. My school's start of the year party was there. Anyway, this week they are doing some kind of art exhibition, they have all of these sculptures that were done by Russian artists. We walked through and looked at everything, there were some that were very cool. I didn't get a lot of pictures but I did get a few. Sorry, I don't know the names of the artists or the pieces.
Okay. There were two gates and two arches by this guy. I don't remember exactly what it said, but it was something about how the artist likes to make gates and arches that aren't connected to a fence, just a gate that leads from nothing, to nothing, through nothing. It had something to do with the unknown. That was a very obscure description, sorry. In the background, you can barely see a big ball of what looks like paper scraps. They're strips of metal that are woven around to look like a giant senseless mess. They have words written on them, but since they're cut in strips you can't read any of them. The description said something about how the artist was criticizing the way people talk about art.
This artist apparently makes a lot of statues of people, animals and objects breaking through walls. I don't know why. It was the first one we looked at, I read a lot of descriptions after that.
My favorite was one I didn't get a picture of. It had a bunch of empty oil barrels stacked on top of each other. When you looked at it from the front, you could see that the five in the middle had no top or bottom, and they were the colors of the Olympic rings. Behind them, there was a really pretty landscape. It was meant to make a statement about the 1980 Olympics, which were hosted in Moscow. During those Olympics, the city looked beautiful. But as soon as all the foreign athletes and spectators left, the city fell back into its state of despair.
Anyway, I just looked it up and this website says the sculptures will be up in the park until September, and then they will go to the museum in Scheveningen (the beach section of The Hague) that is hosting the whole thing, until October. I'll have time to get more pictures later.
This is long, so let's just call it quits.
Can you turn in your keys and be done with the old place? That way Alicia can be responsible for her own mess :-)
ReplyDeleteThought about it. But I want to be able to check my mail for a week or two after I move.
ReplyDelete