Friday 16.January.2009

I got in late last night, and I didn't have internet, so I didn't update.  Now, I will.

I talked to my faculty in the morning.  They said they could shuffle my classes around a bit, but that it would add another year on.  I'm just not sure.

After working in Coffee Star with Irene all day (every now and then she'll whimper in despair, but I'm feeling much better about the exam) I went to Café 't Keizertje with my buds.  It was Walter's birthday, so we met with Jan, Kia, Cindy, Fika, Annalies, a friend of Walters, a friend of Fika's.  We stayed at Keizertje for a while, and then went on a quest for a bar showing a particular football game.  Another girl and I had walked, so we had to jump on the back of bikes.  I love riding on the back, holding on for dear life, watching the world fly by, hoping like heck when Jan falls he falls to the left, and not to the right (which would plunge me backwards into the icy canal!)  He didn't fall.

We spent the next few hours in a rather smoky sports bar.  The team we were cheering for, the Green Guys, I believe, lost.  We broke off into groups.  Kia says the girls always tend to hang together.  I was in the middle of telling him that, for some reason, I always ended up with the men in the group, but I was very much distracted by the ice hockey highlights on the screen behind his head.  He laughed at me.  

Jan and Walter and I got into a few deep conversations about Israel, and about the Pope.  It expanded to Kia, eventually, and it was a grand time.  Lots of views, Pro-Israel, Pro-Palestine, everyone Anti-War.  The conversation broke up when the girls left and the boys and I got a table.  I drank cinnamon tea and Jan burned Kia's cherry tea tea bags, and Walter played with the sugar packets.  Jan and I decided to leave at midnight, and at 2am we were taking pictures of ourselves beside a sign that read "Nobody's Ugly after 2am."  

Lolpods:  Three of them: (1) A little black duck chased another little black (lady?) duck across the canal.  She flew, but the pursuer decided it would be better to run, so he quacked and quacked and ran over the water.

(2) Walking to 't Keizertje, the streets were dark and empty, the air frozen.  In the orangey lamplight, the people looked unreal, distant, dark.  I turned to look behind me and saw a man standing on the bridge in the dusky light.  Suddenly, he began to whistle, the song echoing eerily along the frozen water, the silent building.  The theme from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.  Complete with "Wa wa wa"'s.

(3) Waiting to cross the street, the car alarm of the car next to me suddenly went off.  (I was three feet away or so, but I must have shifted my weight toward the car.)  I sort of started, and a man walking by whispered to me, "Snel weglopen!" "Quick, run away!" I looked at him and he was smiling at me, a mischievous, goofy smile.