i haven't written anything for a while

because i really don't have much to say. here are the highlights from my day.

- it was warm
- i wore a nice dress
- i went for a nice walk
- i ate delicious falafel

the mouse saga is probably the most interesting thing in my life. i've kind of made peace with it and we live in the same room now and i don't see  it and i'm very polite about making sure it knows i'm coming upstairs. it's the most clever mouse ever because joris and i put a trap out and IT ACTUALLY TRIED TO TAKE THE TRAP AWAY without getting caught in it. Today I heard it in the rubbish bin so I asked joris to get rid of it, but it made a hole in the plastic and ran away. I feel almost bad for trying to get rid of it. It's probably having the best time and who am I to deny a mouse a good time.

MOUSE

I AM SITTING AND WORKING IN MY ROOM AND THERE IS A MOUSE AND I AM ALL ALONE.  IT RAN ALL THE WAY ALONG MY SHOES. IT IS SO BRAVE AND TERRIFYING.

now i am perched on a chair just watching the area it's (hopefully) still hiding in. If I stay like this for the next two hours I'll be able to show Joris exactly where it is. If I move it'll be this serious mouse hunt and if we don't find it I'm not going near my bedroom which is a real problem.

It has also unfortunately taken over the kitchen area of the room and i'm quite hungry. I bet there's a whole mouse family living in the kitchen. I'll see them all dead before sunset. haha.
(the sun only sets here at around ten o clock so there's plenty of time)

i could see this as three things.

an opportunity to leave the house and go shopping to take my mind off the mouse. this isn't a wise idea.

an opportunity to go downstairs and watch dexter which is a great series about a serial killer. this is more sensible.

an opportunity to confront my fear of mice. unlikely.

the photos below

make it look like all joris and i do is play with our phones and ignore each other, which is not true, but we both have new phones and it's quite exciting. 

it's warm here

which is so great. I've been outside all day having walks and joris has taken me into a million cafes just so I can see what they look like. This is a real thing with him. On the way home he told me oh man i totally forgot there is this fish shop I wanted to show you. Obviously I was pleased he forgot. So yes Joris and I have not been to a single museum or church or place of significance, but I have seen loads of shops that sell nice bread or nice ice cream or nice whatevers. 


Here are some pictures of my day since I'm too lazy to write anything else about it. 

looking for a chess set for john in this nice chess shop

some nice place in some big park 

more nice place

i just realised

that i wrote "more constrictive things like actually working," instead of more constructive things.

HOW REVEALING.


pffffff

something that has happened to me since i've been here

is that since I have basically no friends if I do talk to someone or see people I decide that they are THE BEST people ever. For example the other day I went outside to sit on the bench and there was this girl sitting there with a map so I decided to start a conversation with her and by the end of it I just wanted her to come up to the house and have tea with me and be my nice chick friend, but obviously you can't just invite some random american biology student into a house that isn't even yours so I came upstairs all alone and felt a bit sorry for myself. I feel like I might become a bit like George Bluth in arrested development and start having tea parties with dolls. One good thing though is that I end up doing far more constrictive things like actually working. Can't just pitch up at rosie's for a million chats, or have an afternoon coffee with james or a mopey glass of wine with andre. So that's good. It's for the best having no friends. At the end of the day friends were just stopping me reaching my full potential. Pfffffffff. That's not even slightly true.

I went to see Animal Collective last night

and it was very fun, but a bit disappointing. They didn't really play that many of my favorite songs and it started quite early and I didn't feel like people got that into it. I managed to get all the way to the front where there were quite a few bro teams going bananas, but overall it wasn't half as good as I'd hoped it would be. I did go crazy when they played brothersport and summertime clothes, but I really wanted my girls and what would i want?sky. Also I wanted Rafi and Alexis cause they would have been a nice bro team with their fists up in the air and jumping around and getting so into it.

There were quite a few smug americans there complaining about how the show was no good and how they saw them live at some blablabla and it was so much better and then loads of sort of talking about animal collective like they hang out with them everyday which is one of my worst things. Still it was really nice to go and see a band I like a lot live. Next week I'm going to see Caribou which I'm very pleased about. AND THEN WU TANG CLAN ARE COMING IN JUNE. yyiiiippppppeeeeeee.

nice day

Today has been an excellent day. I've basically done nothing except eat and laze around. Last night Joris and I went to have drinks with a whole bunch of his friends who are very nice and who are also not particularly interested in speaking english all night. So basically I spent the night listening to Dutch and sometimes understanding and sometimes speaking english to certain people, but mainly drinking lot's of martinis. The guy who's house we went to (Luuk) has this great deal which is that he can live in his apartment for 100 euros a month (which is clearly nothing) but he can be kicked out at any point. It doesn't sound very glamorous, but really it's an excellent idea. The person who owns the apartment doesn't want it sitting empty because then people will just squat (which was apparently banned a year ago, but people still do it) and ruin it so they get people to live in them very cheap with the understanding that they can kick you out whenever they want to. Apparently it's quite hard to get one of these apartments and if you get called and told you have one you have to be able to move a chair, a bed and a plant into the apartment within the same day. Which is odd.

I also got to find out about riding bikes after a few martinis last night and it's pretty scary, but apparently it's what everyone does. I thought ah obviously there are bike police out who breathalise you and say no no you are over the legal bike driving limit or something, but nope apparently nothing can stand between the dutch and their bikes.

I really write a lot about bikes. I'm sure I'll get over it.

obviously

So the blog thing has been down for two days which is annoying because there are two VERY interesting things I've wanted to write about.

FIRSTLY.
obviously i've had an allergic reaction to something and had to go to the doctor. obviously i'm feeling seriously sorry for myself and being a huge drama queen. obviously i've diagnosed myself with some incurable skin disease. pffffff

SECONDLY
Yesterday I went to see an exhibition called The Svart Metal Series by some guy called Grant Willing. I don't think it's a problem never to have heard of him because HE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A WIKIPEDIA PAGE. jeeeezzz. So the point of this exhibition was that he was going to "depict the shadowy, rebellious and occult world which is at the heart of Scandinavian Black Metal." which sounds promising or at least like it might be the grown up version of the movie the craft which I LOVED.
It really wasn't though. There was some metal band called wood or something that were meant to be playing, but they didn't seem to be able to get their equipment to work, which was a shame because it would have been quite fun or funny. Also I met my friend Kurt there (who is from Cape Town) and it was very, very nice to see him and to have a nice drink and not feel a tiny bit bad about not speaking any dutch, not knowing my way around or being awful at cycling.

Here are some pictures from the exhibition

and this is the outside of the house

and my bike in the front! I had my seat adjusted today so I'm much better at not falling off now. 

so this is what the house looks like

   

somehow i ended up at the shops today

I kind of wanted to, but I didn't think I'd be able to find my way there, BUT I DID. Which means I'm a genius of both direction and shopping. Here are some boring things I realised while shopping:

There are stripey tops everywhere and they all look great and it's important to remember that it's nonsense to own a zillion stripey tops.
You can't just  buy a short leather skirt with a zip up the back because you are in Europe.
I really like that Coldplay song about ruling the world or whatever it is and it makes me a bit sad.
It's sometimes a real shame that when people are trying on clothes in the change rooms and they come out and look at themselves in the big mirror in front of everyone that you can't just say to them you know what that really looks awful.

I'm not going to the shops again for a while because everything is nice and it makes me panic.

First Weekend

So now I have a blog and the reason for this is that
a) it's hard to send everyone emails and
b) rosie did it and it was great

It's quite hard to have a blog. It's a huge pain to choose how it will look and my computer has decided to make everything Dutch so I have no idea what's going on.

ANYWAY

Amsterdam is great. really. The weather is very warm and everyone is really friendly and I live very close to an H&M. The house I'm staying in is "so charming." All these beautiful paintings and loads of books everywhere and I have this loft bed with a nice little window and it feels kind of like I live on a cool boat. I've walked around loads and seen tons of stuffs, but I think the most important thing is that I have now ridden a bike around Amsterdam. Jees. Jees. It's hard. It's like how I find driving hard except I'm even worse at it and I have no idea where I'm going most of the time and people are SERIOUS about cycling here. I went for my first ride yesterday after sulking a lot about having to get on a bike and I really struggle to take off and stop. Once I'm going it's ok, but I can't stop the bike without basically falling off. I think the seat is too high. Apparently this is not true. ALSO my shoes keep falling off when I ride which is pretty embarrassing. I'm sure I'll get used to it. I really should.

Here are some pictures of things.

This is a photo I took from Joris' Boat. 

 Sitting on the side of the canal

View from the public library. 

Trying to cross the road with cars and bikes and trams all over the place and on the wrong side of the road. it's far out.