The weather is BEAUTIFUL

Really though not like oh yeah it's pretty warm and it's only beautiful because the weather has been so awful for the last few weeks. IT'S REALLY, PROPERLY WARM. This morning I very, very optimistically went out and purchased sun cream. Factor 20. Yup. I also got a new conditioner that I'm very excited about. If you have curly hair you get very excited about conditioner. I can spend HOURS looking at hair things. All these words like glossy and silky are very enticing. Now I'm going to take a book and cycle to Vondelpark and laze around reading and suntanning. I'm not sure how this suntanning business is going to work because it's weird to suntan in a park.  This is a thing about cities without beaches. I remember in New York and Boston that people would get pretty naked for a park that was in the middle of a city. Like bras and underwear naked. I don't agree with this at all. The only public place you should ever wear so little clothing is by a pool or at the beach.

Yesterday Joris and I took a looonnnggg cycle to the North of Holland. It was really dreamy. We took a ferry and everything. Here are pictures.

this is how a lot of the trip looked. joris referred to the scenery as "an acquired taste."

joris

i can now ride a bike and pose for a camera AT THE SAME TIME which is pretty impressive i think

MY hat and MY sunglasses which joris very cunningly took over during the course of the day

the "beach"

some adorable town that had LOADS of hydrangeas

I did some cool things this weekend

well. one cool thing which is that I went to this big festival type of thing all over the city called nuit blanche. I could write all about it and explain it nicely, but instead I'm going to let you google it if you're interested because I really don't feel like explaining it and also THE INTERNET. Ya. The main thing I would like to say in this post is PLEASE SEND ME PEPPERMINT CRISPS AND ALSO MONEY IF YOU WANT.

with love
emma

this post is mainly for rosie.

i have made myself dinner two nights running so now i obviously think i'm a real cook. Both of my dinners were salads, BUT one of them had quinoa in it and the other one had a courgette in it. Sometimes Rosie and I talk about things that make you a grown up. So I thought about it today and went ah ok here's a huge generalisation that if I said to anyone except Rosie they would think i was an idiot. A THING ONLY A GROWN UP WOULD BUY IS A COURGETTE.  Also a thing only a grown up would do is buy a bottle of wine and then only have ONE GLASS which is what I'm doing right now thanks.

Here are my salads.I only took these pictures because I was so pleased with what I made that I wanted Joris to see, but then I was too hungry to wait for him to come home so I just took photos.  I'm writing about food quite a lot which is really, really boring. I'll do something cool soon and then maybe I'll have something to write about. If that fails I'll just keep writing about the mouse because that proved to be a real hit.

a conversation i often have with joris

goes like this:

Joris:  What are you doing on blablalba night?
Emma: I don't know. Why?
Joris: There's a nice blablalba I'd like us to go to.
Emma: Oh ya sorry I forgot I'm seeing all my bejillion friends that night.

Then I laugh A LOT.

The point of this joke is that I don't have bejillion friends.I really like this joke, I like it so much that I would consider not making any friends so I can keep using it. I do know that it's not really a very funny joke. Joris doesn't really laugh at it anymore and he finds everything I say hiiilllaarriooouus.

Anyway the reason I thought about this is that tonight I'm going to watch a movie called source code which is, "An action thriller centered on a soldier who wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers he's part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. " The words in this synopsis that make me not want to watch this movie at all are action, soldier, mission and bomber.   Joris is so excited about it though which kind of makes me want to see it a lot more. Also I watched the trailer and it looks like it'll be quite a "fun" movie.

this is the view from my bedroom this afternoon

                                                   LOOK HOW ARTY THIS PHOTO IS.
i really wish i took nice photos. the only reason i thought to take this one was because when my friend kurt (who is actually arty) came to visit he took a photo through the round window in my bedroom and i thought he was very clever for thinking of it. so then i copied him. look how gloomy it is. it's raining a lot and i have promised to go buy groceries, which I'm now regretting. I would just not bother, but I finished all Joris' muesli and yoghurt. And the cheese. And also the bread. I decided yesterday that I might get into cooking and by that I mean I might get into making different kinds of salads. I'm going to buy all these cool sounding things like quinoa and farro and then i'm going to put them in salads and be smug about it. I think it's probably the most into food I'll ever manage to get. It's really nice to be good at food, but one of the worst things in the whole world is when people refer to themselves as foodies. "Oh you know me I'm just such a foodie" It actually makes me want to scream. I also hate it when people describe food in a sexual way or just make weird noises when they eat to let you know it's really good. The only time it's ok to do this is if you're a judge on masterchef and only the British version of masterchef. Then it's really funny.

i've had a nice weekend

mainly because it's been very warm, well at least above 20 degrees. Everyone goes crazy when it's basically not raining so just loads of people all skimpily dressed with white limbs sticking out and really waaaayy too gung-ho about the weather. I also started learning to play chess this weekend. They have nice cafes where people just go to play chess and have drinks and well so far I'm pathetic at chess. I think Joris was very optimistic about my potential chess skills. I think he's under the illusion that I'm a fast learner.

Something else I learnt this weekend is that the Dutch really, really like Afrikaans. They have a real thing about it. I keep getting asked to say things in Afrikaans and then having to explain that I'm really no good at speaking it because I never, ever have to at home. I'm actually so bad at Afrikaans that I was once told that I sound like I'm Russian when I try and speak it. So yes I'm just letting Dutch people down all the time. I actually feel quite bad about only speaking one language properly. The other night i was at a bar talking to joris and two of his friends ( a dutch guy and a french girl ) and I realised that the three of them could all happily converse in dutch, french or english, but obviously they had to speak english because of me and this made me feel quite stupid. Then Joris and I went to get some food from an italian restaurant and joris was happily chatting away in Italian and i felt even more stupid. It would be nice to know loads of languages.  I thought that by now I would kind of be speaking dutch in this weird broken but maybe charming way. Obviously I'm not. Everyone just speaks such good english and no one even bothers to try speak to me in dutch because i think i mostly look quite lost and confused and it's very clear that i'm not a dutch person.