The weekend update

For those of you wondering about me.

After two months I'm settling in.  Things are feeling more like "normal" now, and I have a weekly pattern which is good for me.  My housemates are nice and we seem to be settling in with each other, which is very good, and there's a couple of the other girls who are here that I'm enjoying.  My host family is very nice.  The kids are a great deal of fun and the parents are lovely people.  I'm figuring things out with the dog too.  I still crash in to some of the cultural differences sometimes, as the Dutch take some getting used to, and I'm still homesick occasionally.  Although it's less what I think of as homesickness.  Homesickness is when I'm miserable with missing things and people.  Where I'm at now is not that.  I get a bit sad sometimes, but not out and out miserable.  And what I'm missing right now is landscapes.  Things like mountains and forests, or evergreen forests anyway, and ocean.  I'm getting two weeks free at Christmas and I'm really looking forward to that.

But on to my weekend.  Or Saturday anyway.  I headed out and everything went as usual until I got to the train station.  Whereupon I discovered that there was track work being done between Hilversum (the station closest to where I'm living) and Weesp (about halfway to Amsterdam) so you had to catch one of the buses they were using to take people to the various stations.  Ok, I can do that.  Takes a bit longer but you get to see the places you usually speed by so that's fun.  I finally get in to the city and head off on a ramble.  I had originally planned to come in because there were about fifty museums staying open 'til two am, but with the trains being tricky I decided I probably wouldn't stay in too late.  I'd been looking for a Winter coat for a while, and I decided I might as well get one now so I headed to one of the stores I'd been sussing out and discovered there was a sale on.  I ended up getting a very nice coat for 20 euros less than the price.  Huzzah!

On my last trip in I'd passed a store called Chimera on the way to the Halloween parade.  It was closed at the time, but I'd made a mental note of where it was so I could go back during opening hours, so that was the next stop.  And ooooh myyyyy!  I loved it!  For those of you familiar with the store Dragonspace on Granville Island it is very similar, but twice the floor space and two floors.  I was hopping up and down and squeeing internally the whole time I was in there.  The upper floor is entirely Asian, and has everything from incense to tableware and chopsticks.  The bottom floor has clothes, statues, jewelry, and just about everything else fantasy oriented I could possibly hope for.

After that I decided I was going to just wander down some of the streets I was somewhat familiar with and let the city wash over me.  I headed down on e of the shopping streets and ambled my way through the masses of people until I got to Spui square.  I spent some time in one of the English bookstores, and then noticed people going in and out of the Begijnhof so I headed over.  The Begijnhof is a beautiful little sheltered square just off Spui, but it's so much quieter.  There's a little church in the middle of the square and a chapel across from it.  The chapel has some beautiful wall murals and a little pipe organ inside.  It was a breath of quiet in the middle of the bustle of the city and I loved it.

At this point it was raining, and I was getting tired and starting to curse in my head at people getting in my way, so I decided I should grab some dinner and then head home.  I found an Asian takeaway place and then headed to the train station.  Oh my word the trip back.  The train was literally stuffed to the gunnels with people.  Standing room only, and then only if you squashed like sardines.  I have never fainted, but I came very, very close on the short trip to Weesp.  I was positively relieved to get on the shuttle bus.  The bus trip went as expected, but I just missed my bus back to Blaricum, so I hung about for a half hour reading.  Everyone was tired when I got back, so we just kind of sat doing our own things being tired together.  Which was nice.  Oh, yes,  I forgot to mention we had a party on Friday and most of the others went in to Amsterdam around ten, so everyone was exhausted from partying.  I'd just stayed up 'til stupid o'clock in the morning, spent all day walking, and then endured being stuffed in a tight airless space for a good thirty minutes (or more).  Anyway, we all ended up going to bed earlier than usual for a weekend.  And I still probably stayed up to late, but that was due to a book.

That's all for now.  Peace out.