Swinging in the Rain

I don't even know how to begin to express my exhaustion.  I suppose I can point out that I've literally gotten less than 24 hours of sleep in the past 7 days.  That might give you a hint.  But there's more.  I'll give you the highlights.

Thursday, to start.  Thursday was a day of firsts for me.  My first first was cricket.  Walter explained the rules of cricket to me a while back.  Cricket has always seemed like a very mystical version of baseball where someone throws a ball at a guy with a bat, who swings the bat, and then everyone runs around for NO apparent reason, and the ball flies off in random directions and the score ends up looking like 235-4, which meant  nothing to me, and seemed rather high.  But Koos and I watched the first game of the test match between South Africa and Australia.  And I realized that cricket is actually a surprisingly entertaining sport.  It's subtle, but I like subtlety in sports.  It takes a WEEK to play ONE MATCH, but I find that kind of interesting too.  I thought I'd probably enjoy it, because I just generally like sports, but I didn't think I'd actually LIKE it.  

Don't even get me started on their adorable little cricket hats!

During tea break (cricket has a lunch break, and a tea time!) Koos and I went geocaching around town.  It was really a rather intense experience.  The site gave us a list of sound clips of people saying a certain phrase in different languages.  We had to find out what language each of the clips (numbered 1-9) was in.  Leiden has a project called Muurgedichten (Wall Poems) where poems are written on buildings all over town in various languages.  So, we had to identify the language, then find the address of the building where the poem was located.  Then, we had to find clues to determine the co-ordinates of the buried treasure.  So, one was "Find the first three digits of the fax number on the fence." or "How many poles are there in the parking lot?"  Crazy fun.  And then we had to put the co-ordinates into Koos' GPS and follow the arrow to find the hidden treasure.  We finally found it, and we wrote in the little book, and saw who else had been there recently.  Then he even let me search out one on my own!  Entirely too much fun!  :-D

The rest of my exhaustion came from this weekend.  On Friday I went to Liege, Belgium with George (US), Praveen (India), Sangbreeta (India), and Kyrian (Holland) for a dance weekend.  Friday night we danced all night.  Saturday we danced all day and played ping pong at the hostel.  We danced all night again.  Sunday was danced and came home.  I had dinner with Koos and we watched Pushing Daisies.

Life is good, hoor.  I'm exhausted beyond imagining, but I'm so amazingly happy.  The winter is slowly sliding out of my life, and this amazing, nameless spring is beginning to bloom.  This is a metaphor, and it isn't.  This is happening inside my head and outside of it too.  

And the soul is up on the roof

In her nightdress, straddling the ridge,

Singing a song about the wildness of the sea

Until the first rip of pink appears in the sky.

--from "The Night House" by Billy Collins