Ok, updating for yesterday.  I met Susanne, one of the German girls from my Dutch class, at the train station and we went to Den Haag and met up with Vanessa, another of my Dutch learning Germans.  The three of us went to the beach.  It was a much different experience than the beach at Katwijk.  This was due, mostly to the lack of wind.  It was beautiful!  Real beachy weather!  Not hot though, which really just made it better because you could actually walk on the sand barefoot.  It was perfect.  The water was freezing though.  I wouldn't have gotten in even if it had been 115ºF outside.  BRRR!  I bought the sunglasses you see at left.  I needed some, and I loved the little mouths.  They open when you fold up the glasses!  Hee hee hee!

After walking through the waves, and eating ice cream, and shopping for sunglasses, it started to rain, so we went shopping.  We all needed notebooks for class, so we went on a major expedition.  Vanessa is awesome.  She wanted a very specific kind of notebook.  Preferably pink.  And/or shiny.  She reminds me of Mike the Girl in this way.  She is very aware of the way things look.  She wants to surround herself with beautiful things.  But she's still very grounded and extremely intelligent.  She is not the clothes she wears, but if she's going to wear them they might as well look great!  :-)  Vanessa's dad has some job that makes him travel, so she grew up in Thailand.  She went to German schools, so she was around Germans, but still in Thailand.  So she's a bit different.  So much fun!  Susanne is also really awesome, just in a quieter way.  It'll take longer to get to know her, because she doesn't tell you the quirky little things about her.  Vanessa does. 

After a bunch of shopping we drank some coffee and watched people.  Then back to Leiden for me and Susanne.  I got soaking wet on the bike ride back to my apartment.  Which was rather refreshing, really.  Then I bummed around here until Rob and Yohann came by, and we all hung out in Yohann's room.  We were joined by Fabio, an Italian who also lives here, and watched music videos with our own music over them.  The best was some random video where everybody was break dancing with Benny Benassi's satisfaction.  You can look it up on YouTube.  The video is a bunch of chicks in bikinis sexily using power tools.  The song is much better with break dancers, in my opinion.  After a few hours of that, I went to bed.

I'm thinking about getting a tv.  TV is included in my rent, I just need to buy the set.  I wouldn't do this except a) it's good to hear Dutch spoken, but mostly because b) they have like 5 Arabic stations, a Spanish station and 4 or 5 German stations....  I could listen to the WORLD!  I must do it!  So, now I have to find a cheap tv.  And a small one.

Today has been slow, but productive.  I cleaned the heck out of my apartment.  We're talking some serious 409-type action.  I also did laundry, which literally took 6 hours.  The other tenants here had told me that the washer takes 2 hours, but I thought it was just hyperbole.  Nope, it's true.  Two hours per load.  And then the dryer.  Good lord.  But my clothes are washed and dried.  Not put away though.  Darn.

In other news, Fabio introduced me to jumpstyle.  It is, as far as I can tell, a Europeanized Charleston.  And I must learn it!

Check it out:  Type in www.jumpstyle-germany.eu in youtube.