Natuurlijk

Alhamduillah, today was beautiful!  Another gorgeous day!  Argh!  :-D

I met up with Judy, the Sri-Lankan-Italian I met yesterday, and we went to the market.  Yay market day!  I bought some serious veggies, including sweet potatoes!  Yum! (Yam!)  We then went up to her apartment and made some amazing pasta.  I'm generally a pretty simple pasta person. 

 A little tomato sauce, toss in some pesto, maybe a mushroom or two.  Basta.  Not that Judy made anything complicated, it was just much more...sophisticated.  It was just pasta, cream and bacon, but it was super tasty.  Like, restaurant-style good.  She also made this veggie mix of zucchini, eggplant and onions that was out of this world.  So impressed.  :-)  (Note to readers: 95% of the time I'm a vegetarian, but now and then, like when someone cooks for me, a little meat is simply necessary.)

I then went back home and decided not to do any work.  I'm SO stressed out about my class work, that I've created a sort of mental block.  Which is unhelpful, and completely unnecessary.  I'm blowing it all out of proportion.  So I said, nope, no work, just fun.  So I watched a bunch of the Nickelodeon show Avatar.  If you've never heard of this show, you should probably go watch it.  (Yahoo Video, man.)  It's a beautiful crossroads of Eastern and Western culture.  There is much wisdom to be gained from this show.  :-)

Later on, Julia and Judy came over and I made some rockin' curried veggies.  Haha, take that kitchen!  :-)  We chatted and ate, and snacked on some gingerbread squares, and life was good.  Then we met up with Mona (Germany), and Bas (Netherlands!), two people from Julia's program.  We went to a very nice (gezellig) little bar across the street called De Bonte Kou (The Colorful Cow) and chatted for a few hours.

Lolpod:  Leaving the bar we noticed that there were flashing multi-colored lights and thumping music coming from the nearby church.  By "church" I mean what most Americans would think of as a "cathedral."  We checked it out.  It was a wedding, complete with security guards, and a fire-lit path to the entrance.  Just as we were taking pictures, the church doors opened, and a Rolls Royce drove OUT of the church!!  :-o

In other news:  I got an e-mail from George.  George is a dancer from New York who stayed with me during a dance weekend a while ago.  He's so amazingly cool.  Like, awesome.  Times a lot.  I haven't talked to him since the dance weekend, which has been a year and a half or more ago.  Naturally, (because this is just the way my life works) he now lives in Amsterdam and is trying to set up a weekly swing dance!  :-D  

Thank you, Universe.