Arrived safely, Day One.

The first flight was long. The seats were uncomfortable. I was in the second to last row of the plane, in front of (of course) a family of screaming kids. Actually, there were only two kids but I'm sure the parents were screaming on the inside. The kids did not stop. It was kind of unreal. But the flight attendents gave our row "first-class meal trays" - I'm not sure if this was because they ran out of the other kind by the time they got to our row, or because we were seated in clearly worst spot on the plane. In any case, it came with a mini personal bottle of wine, so I got about an hour of restless sleep after dinner.
The second flight (Dublin - Amsterdam) was fine, once I negotiated through the Dublin airport, which is pretty confusing for such a small airport. It was shorter, the seats were more comfortable, and the children were better behaved.
After two plane rides, I bought a ticket for the train to Den Haag Central Station. Standing on the platform, an older gentleman with an Australian accent started chatting (he saw my UofC bag, was behind me on the ticket line). It turns out he was the Australian embassador to the Netherlands for three years some years back, also sat on the Australian parliament for many years, and was excellent conversation. Had some choice words for our Mr. Bush.
Once I got to the apartment, Jeff showed me around, I took a shower, and got settled in. I managed to stay awake until 9:30pm, in an effort to get on the proper sleep cycle. But then I ended up sleeping until 11am this morning, so it didn't work out quite as I had planned.
Strangest thing, because we are so far north (latitudinally), it stays light until almost 11pm, and gets light at around 5am. There are blackout shades in my room, but it was still quite bright in my room as I was going to bed. It's a good thing I sleep like the dead.

Today I took out the bike Jeff got me, and set out to find my office and explore the city. I was expecting it to take a while but it was a quick trip into the Centrum. I got incredibly lost almost instantly, so I biked around for an hour or two to try and get my bearings, and then I pulled over to get out the map I brought. The thing is, with a bike, it makes it much faster to correct for directional mistakes, but if you're not careful, you can get pretty far out of the way before you know it. As I was paused to look at my map, the chain fell off my bike. I popped it back on, no problem, but it did that a few more times (only when I was stopped; I think as long as I'm moving it's fine) and by the time I found the place I will be working, my hands (and jeans) were covered in bike grease. I looked a little more like a hobo than I was comfortable with, but I had to get a watch, since my cell phone is usually my only way of keeping time, and I don't have that here. I went into store after store looking for a watch, and finally came across an higher-scale Claire's (though they had one of those, too), asked if they minded speaking in English, and bought a watch. Success!
On the way home, I bought my own map (Jeff had lent me his, but it's a book, and the seam of the spine falls in all the wrong places) and found a health food store to get some tofu and lentils. I made the mistake of also getting a couple of apples here - and ended up paying 1.60 euro for them. I think the general grocer will serve me fine for produce in the future.

I've decided I have to learn Dutch. Every time I had to ask someone if they minded speaking English today, a little piece of my pride died. They don't mind, and they speak it perfectly, but it feels really helpless to not be able to speak Dutch, or read the signs, or the newspaper, etc. So I'm going to just do it.

That's enough for today, I think. I'll post again soon to update on how the job is working out!