Pour another round
The world in a sip of rum
Let's dance until dawn
Friday night was Cocktail Night in the ISN common room. Couldn't have come at a better time. Next week is basically my Spring Break, and there has been entirely too much stress! Had an amazing time drinking cocktails (Cuba Libre for me) with tons of International students. I didn't know a lot of the people there, but by the end of the evening, I knew most of them. There was dancing, of course, since the new common room has a great dance floor. Mostly Latin, Indian and hip-hop music, so just about perfect for me. Met some pretty awesome people from Turkey, Morocco, Italy, China, Croatia, India, Suriname, Afghanistan, St. Martin, and even from Holland! :-p
After the common room closed, we went to the Town Hall for more dancing. Literally, Leiden's city hall becomes a dance club on weekends. I am not making this up. The music was a bit more techno than I tend to enjoy but the (very cute) DJ was good, so the music was decidedly danceable, even for my non-techno body. And we danced and danced. Me and my new friends.
There was more rain than we thought
Watched the boats instead
A big group of us had decided to go to the beach today to celebrate the coming of Spring. It didn't work out. In fact, today was probably the wettest, rainiest day Leiden has seen this year so far. :-P VERY soggy. Fortunately, my book club (consisting of Andrea and Bogdan of Romania, Anna of the UK, Mia from Croatia, Alexandra from Russia, and a Finnish girl whose name I have totally forgotten) met at noon at the public library, so I had a posse to hang out with even though the beach trip got moved to tomorrow.
Mia (Croatia) and Anna (UK) and I decided to check out a little festival happening in the middle of town. Turned out to be a boat and waterway festival. They had a lot of tents set up showing off old ways of making the riggings and the nets and such for old fishing boats. They had an old sailing ship, and men dressed in period (though I admit I have no clue WHICH period) costumes working on it. There was also a stage with the very strangest of performances. When we arrived there was a group of children doing acrobatics, and there was naturally a group of sailors singing sea shanties (one song was an old Southern (as in American South) song about picking cotton and it rather unexpectedly included the 'n' word, and made me blush. The Dutch didn't bat an eye. I was shocked.) but there was also a guy dancing with a watering can over his head, and a few juggling teenagers from the Youth Circus, and women dressed all in green singing about love and the sea.
There was also a free canal tour of Leiden, so we happily jumped on board, and sloshed through the waterways of our cute little town. Very nice day. Got rained on a LOT, but ate a bunch of kibbeling, and watched the shows and learned about boats, and had a grand time.
We sat in De Catwalk and drank coffee, and talked about books some more. Then had dinner at Eazie, and talked even more about books. :-)
I don't mind the rain
If the night is warm enough
I'm so glad it's Spring!
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