Focusing on What's Important

I completely forgot to mention the lolpod from yesterday. So, Lolpod: Biking home from Wushu, I was really getting in to the wind.  Riding along the Rapenburg, looking for the moon behind the clouds, and suddenly, a balloon flies out of the canal, and crosses the street right in front of my face.  I almost got beaned by a canal balloon!  What?

I spent all of today in the library.  Working hard, and it's all starting to come together.  I'm still a bit lost, but I'm still working.  It rained and rained today.  Hard and cold.  And I watched it, warm and studious from the huge library windows.  Funny how wonderful rain is when you don't have to bike through it.  :-)  

Tai Chi and Wushu were both rather intense tonight.  There's a competition coming up soon.  In Tai Chi everybody worked on a more advanced form, and the beginners just had to follow as best they could.  I'm beginning to completely adore Tai Chi.  Almost as much as Wushu.  Wushu was hard because there weren't as many of us as normal, so the lines moved much much faster, and you had to do more.

Lolpod: A woman on a bike with an umbrella rode past me struggling against the wind.  Her poor umbrella was bent and tattered and almost not strong enough to protect her.  This wasn't funny, and I actually felt rather sorry for the woman because she didn't look too happy.  The funny thing was there was NO wind where I was, just a few meters away on the sidewalk.  None.  My hair, which flies after the tiniest of wind gusts, was unmoving.  It was sort of surreal to be walking along in calmness, and watch a wind blown woman struggling just a few feet away. 

In other news: I bought a book at the library the other day about Archaeology and Architectural History of Leiden!  It has pretty pictures of artifacts, histories (and artifacts) of cool places (like my Burcht!) and, my favorite part, archaeological foundation drawings over maps of the city!  I can't wait to play with my new toy!  I'm going to try to find a few playmates to check this out.  I bet Jan Claus would do it.  He agrees with me that you know nothing about a place until you know its history.

Sometimes I miss Berlin, (and Germany, Germans, and especially speaking German) so much it hurts.  I'm going to live there again someday.  Maybe soon.