Wushu in Blue

I should totally be in bed, since I have to get up for class at 8am.  But I want to write.  Today just feels so good.  It started out sort of difficult, however.  I realized just how behind I am in Egyptian.  First of all, I read the syllabus wrong, and found out that I had to translate 18 pages of Egyptian by tomorrow!! (And not in two weeks, like I thought.)  So I tried to translate, and instantly ran into trouble.  I haven't looked at Egyptian in almost two years!  I have forgotten so much!  And there's much I never learned at all.  So, I freaked out.  Because I have another 9 page translation for Thursday, that I've already tried to work on, and failed.  (It's in Old Egyptian, and much much harder.)  So, freak out.  I e-mailed the professor and he told me to just chill, and we'll meet tomorrow to discuss it.  I'm not worried about it now, but I know I have a really tough road ahead of me.  Fortunately, my Coptic class and my Mastaba class don't meet this week, so I have even more time to dedicate to refreshing my Egyptian.  :-)

I also had a great chat with Tyler about the nature of things.  :-)  Thanks man!

Julia always complains that she never gets any mail, so today I slipped a note with some chocolate into her mail box.  So she, in return, slipped a note with chocolate covered Kruidnoten (which are like little crunchy balls of Christmas...they taste like gingerbread and chocolate.  YUM.)  :-D

I spent most of my day in the Common Room hanging out with Grace, Joanjo, and a sort of crazy Italian guy named Giovanni (so far EVERY Italian boy I've met has been either a Giovanni or a Matteo.)  I can't describe how much I love the CR.  So many people coming in and out.  And since I'm in charge of answering the e-mails, I often get to meet people I've already been helping out.  :-)

Then I went to Tai Chi.  As expected it was quite amazing.  The movements are just so beautiful, and they feel so natural and pleasant.  The music was also very calming, and the teacher was awesome.  At some point she asked me "You do Wushu, don't you?"  which is as close as I've ever come to having someone say "Ahhhh, I see you know Kung-Fu!"  It's only a matter of time, really, before I meet some worthy opponent who will say these words I so long to hear.  :-P  

Wushu itself was also pretty great, but mostly because there were so many beginners this week that I actually had a chance to chat with some of the people in the class.  There's Vincent who studies Chinese, and Martin who studies medicine, and Jonathan, who was once in a Japanese boyband.  They're all Dutch, and we spoke this fabulous mixture of Dutch, English, and sometimes German.  Jansen, one of the Wushu guys I met in the early days, wants to practice his German, so he spoke German to me the whole time.  I also briefly met Valerie (though I could have sworn she said her name was Felony) who is another Chinese-Dutch student.  Vincent says he'll only speak Dutch to me.  Martin flips back and forth.  Jonathan prefers English.  So very beautifully complicated.  No one ever really knows what language we're speaking.  But I guess it doesn't matter.

After Wushu I came home for dinner, watched a bit of Pushing Daisies (BEST SHOW EVER) and then met up with Joanjo.  He lives upstairs and wanted me to proofread an English paper for him.  Afterwards we went to Proost, a student bar that offers 1€ beers on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  This is where the International kids go on these nights (Wednesday is Einstein night.)  I met up with Paul, an American guy who helps with ISN, and I also met another Matteo, another Italian guy whose name sounded like, but probably wasn't Frangipani, and Bertrand, from France.  There was also an Elena from France, who lives just down the hall from me.  We had a pretty great time chatting and laughing and such.  The romance language speakers had a pretty great time comparing their langauges (Spanish, Italian and French) though the music was a little too loud for me to understand anything they were saying.  Too bad.  

It was so very nice to be surrounded by interesting people again.  I get so much energy from meeting new people.  I'm glad so many are pouring into my life these days.  :-)