Alive and well, minus the black-eye

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Yes I promise I am alive! I have been having the usual case of the malfunctioning electronics, resulting in a lack of a computer. My computer´s charger has decided to stop working, and so I am using the school´s computer´s from now on, until I can maybe find a replacement charger on Ebay or learn magic.

Summary for lazy readers:
--"american" style dinner for our roommates
--experiencing a taste of my own medicine in the form of babysitting two 2 year olds
--amsterdam is incredible.

Long winded version:

So last thursday was the fateful day for the americans of the house (me and laurel) to cook for the rest of our roommates. We had a lot to live up to, after Cassandra´s humungous Italian meal and Thierry´s french gourmet dinner complete with crepes for dessert. Everyone had been joking that when it came to our turn that we´d get Burger King. It was funny until it actually almost came true.

I mean, don´t get me wrong, I can totally cook. But mac and cheese or peanut butter or hot pockets are kind of sparce here, so my supplies were limited. I had to get fancy and creative with the few ham free ingredients I could find. After much debate, Laurel and I decided to do a burrito night buffet style, in honor of all of our memorable mexican nights we´d look forward to as kids. It´s still american, technically, and something hard to screw up.

So we went out and bought all the food (half of it prebagged) and came home and set up a huge buffet with lettuce and tomatoes and cheese and mock sour cream and half homemade guacamole, complete with ingredients for ice cream sundaes for dessert. The general reaction was...tolerable. Luckily, our roommates were polite enough to enjoy our 10 minute preparation time meal, but more luckily than that they all kept it down (despite the looks on their faces that suggested they might do otherwise).

The next day we fled. Well, we had conveniently planned a trip right after the meal for them, to let them all cool off about it before having to face them again. Because of the way the scheduling worked out, Laurel and I left our apartment at 1245 at night and stayed at the airport until 6 in the morning when our flight took off. We flew into Eindhoven, where we took a bus afterwards to amsterdam.

Amsterdam is Venice meets Disneyland meets tulips. It is beautiful. Granted, the tulips weren´t out this time of year, but there was plenty to look at anyways. There are baroque looking towers every where you look, and the central station looks like its straight out of Cinderella. Laurel and I walked around with hot chocolate and waffles for a few hours before we met her friends, and then we went out to dinner. That night we went to a concert (if this means anything to anybody, to Paul Van Dyke front row, who held the #1 dj in the world title for quite some time) and I experienced my first pizza hot dog, which is exactly what it sounds like.

The rest of our time in Amsterdam we acted shamelessly like tourists, visiting the Anne Frank house and the Van Gogh museum, both of which were fascinating. I´ve decided that I need to learn dutch so I can go back every fall to get my quaint little christmasy town fix before the season starts, and you´re all invited, nay, obligated to join me.

We got back into town around noon yesterday, which is why none of you have heard from me until now (that and the whole broken computer thing which happened 2 days before I left), and I had to go almost immediately to work, where the twins were waiting to torture my already slightly deaf ears. While these children are generally adorable, yesterday they were MONSTERS, kicking and screaming about every little thing they had to do. But, for the record, I 100% tolerated it, because I´ve been told more than once about my childhood reputation.

Anyways, I have to get back to class now, but hopefully I´ll talk to some of you soon if I catch a phone call one of these days --sigh-- I should just tape my phone to myself to avoid that from now on.
back to missing all of you upon returning from my vacation of architectural paradise...

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