Aww, it's getting better, now.

I'm over the hurdle. It took a week, but I'm no longer jet-lagged, no longer feeling completely lost and terrified, beginning to at least recognize some Dutch words (though I still can't get the pronunciation right - did you know Gouda [town famous for it's cheese] is pronounced "Khow-da"? Not Goo-duh. At least that mispronunciation got a laugh. And "Spui" [the central road that leads to my office] is "spow", not "spoo-ee". Who knew.)

In any case, I'm feeling good. Working harder and longer than I did last summer, but at least that means the time passes relatively normally, instead of molasses-slow. And the work is really interesting. I'm learning a lot, fast, and I'm considering changing my BA topic. Sorry, Mayor Bloomberg, but at least you have the Independent party to keep you occupied (I'm still keeping up with US politics - Woohoo!).

Biking to work is great. Most of the time. It's a nice ride, the bike runs smoothly, and though it's been cloudy, I haven't had to actually ride through the frequent rains. Until this morning. And of course, I'm wearing the wrong shoes, shoes I had never biked in before; shoes with no tread. So my feet are slipping all over the place, I'm getting drenched in the rain, and the woman in front of my was pedaling painfully slowly, so I couldn't even just speed up to get the ride over with. And the way the bike lanes are set up here are like the road, so there's oncoming bike traffic, and during rush hour, you can't really pass. Argh! The other terrifying thing about biking here is that the bike lanes are shared between the bicycles and the mopeds - an unfair compromise, if you ask me. They go so much faster than we do; they belong on the road!

Plus, I can't figure out the lights. It seems like there is no pattern, and no one obeys the green/red, either. There are cute little bike lights, same as the traffic lights, except smaller, on a pole, and instead of a green, red, or yellow circle it lights up in the shape of a bicycle. But it doesn't matter, because no one follows them. So I'll be sitting at a red bike light (which corresponds to I have no idea what for the cars) and someone will whizz by me, yelling presumably to get out of the way. I can't figure it out, and it's terrifying.

In any case, doing well. Sunday I went to the ParkPop, by myself, and it rained the entire time. But it was fun, anyway. It's liberating going places by yourself - it's like when you first get your license and you don't have to be on other peoples' schedules to get places - except more so, because it's just YOU. It's nice.

Last night, I went to Utrecht with Pieter, a work associate. There was a discussion on the fourth assessment on climate change from the IPCC and it sounded interesting. He sent out an email in the morning asking if anyone wanted to go with him; I figured this was an opening to become friendly with work people, and I took it. Plus it was an interesting discussion; the two guys leading it were actually from the IPCC, they had some interesting opinions about US politics, and I got to see Utrecht a little bit. Really really cute city. Much less modern than Den Haag, and the university is there, so it's really young and international (though Den Haag is very international, too, with the courts). It was about an hour train ride to get there, so I got to talk to Pieter a bit.

I'm not sure I'm ready to go out socializing by myself, but I think I'm getting there, slowly. I want to meet people and I don't know any other way then to go to bars. Any suggestions? I might have a new roommate in the next week (Jeff, the guy who owns the apartment, is in Greece and then going to the States for 8 weeks, and Isabel left this morning). Now that I'm feeling more comfortable, I hope she's up for hanging out. We'll see....More next time.