Updates

Phew, updating gets so difficult when you have guests.  So, here's an update of the past few days!  I've actually been pretty lazy in the past days, so you haven't missed much.  But there have been some cool developments.  On Monday I had coffee with Julia and then had my interview with ISN-R.  Their socks were significantly rocked, I believe.  (Actually, I know they were rocked, because I found out today I got accepted to the board!)  After my interview, I went to the Colloquium for African Languages and Linguistics (CALL)  to sit through a talk on the impersonal third person plural construction used as a passive form in Coptic.  It sounds mind numbing, but I found it amazingly interesting!  That night I went along to the CALL dinner party at a nice restaurant in Leiden.  SO MUCH FOOD!  We got to the restaurant at 7pm and didn't leave until almost 11pm!  We had bread with homemade garlic butter, then a salad (I chose the one with mozzarella, pesto and cashews!) By this time I was pretty much full, but then the main course came!  And they sent out more salad AND french fries(!) to eat with dinner.  And then came dessert of tiramisu, strawberry ice cream, and fruit!  Good lord!

On Tuesday, I taught a Charleston class!  The ISN people found out that I taught dance before, so they begged me to help them out on Tuesday.  They had the introduction week for the international students, and their dance teacher had bailed on them. So I got to teach!  It was so much fun too!  They were all really really good at it, picked it up just entirely too quickly, and seemed to have a great time!  There was one guy I was a bit worried about at first, because he came in telling me he wasn't a dancer, and then he struggled a bit, and looked really frustrated.  But he was the very one to come up to me afterwards and ask where he could learn more!  He got it in the end!  :-D  I hope I'll be able to teach some more classes with ISN.  Though I'd love to have a partner so I could teach some Lindy....  Afterwards, Marieke and Laura and I went to the pizzaria, and then went home and watched NCIS and House.

Yesterday, Marieke and Laura held their presentations so I went to watch them.  There was also a REALLY cool presentation about documenting a dying sign language in Mali!  I mean, how cool is that?!  Documenting dying languages was a one time dream of mine, but sign language?  Serious cool points!  There was also a presentation on the grammar of Orungu proper names that was held entirely in French.  I was very proud of myself, because the bits that I didn't understand, I wouldn't have understood in English either!  :-)  Afterwards we went to the organizer's house for some rocking cheese and wine and conversation (he had Morroccan cheese with cumin!  Apparently you can buy it at the market here!) with a bunch of really fascinating researchers.  Then Marieke caught a train, and Laura and I went out to dinner, and then headed home to meet up with Julia for coffee.

Only it didn't work out that way.  The plan was to meet Julia and an Erasmus student named Sylvia for coffee.  Sylvia is an Italian student who studies Chinese, just like my neighbor, so I invited Laura and her boyfriend Matteo to come along.  Sylvia brought a friend, also named Sylvia.  Turns out Sylvia and Laura studied at the same university in Italy!  On the way there, I ran into Yohann and one of his colleagues, Luther.  Luther is from China originally, but has lived in the Netherlands forever.  He was sort of nuts.  In a great way!  Really outgoing, and funny, and just sort of weird.  Haha.  We all went to Café Einstein, which is sort of an international student hang out, and we sat around and laughed for a few hours.  Quite the unexpected party! :-)