Day 8 - Spinning Class and Office Happenings

After work today i went to my first dutch spinning class. i'm completely in love with my spinning instructor. unfortunately, he speaks little english. i guess its not meant to be. sigh. the class was pretty good. was hard to follow since i didnt understand what he was saying, but tried to follow the cadence of his perfectly molded legs as best i could. note to self - bring a towel next time. another observation - the dutch men have the longest skinniest legs! like giraffes in spandex.

after class i did some weights and then hung out with my co-workers (elisabet, wouter, robin, patricia, and annameik) at the coffee bar (located right in the gym area of course) and got home around 9PM. these dutchies love thier coffee. Robin (my officemate) haggled with the gym staff to get me a reduced membership. he was moderately successful, but i think we'll get it worked out soon.

Got another email from the dutch football houligans. they will take me to a football match next sunday. my fugro co-workers find this whole scenario quite amusing. i also re-connected with an old co-worker from when i lived up in northern california. small world.

so i've made some more observations about my office surroundings. i'm starting to figure out who is friends with who, who are the 'black sheep', who's respected and who's not, who's fun, who's serious, etc. its interesting. i've posted two pictures of my colleagues, both were taken quite recently so they are a good indication of the team i've joined. robin and elisabet are so great i'm so thankful for all thier help with translating and questions and gym memberships and trains and all the other zillion things they help with. i never even ask them they just help me on thier own. i've been thinking of something i can do for them to express my gratitude but nothing has come to mind yet. elisabet is very funny and blunt, but she's a bit of a stickler for rules it seems. she gave me her old cell phone and i put my SIM chip in it and its working great now. robin on the otherhand is a bit more like me. likes to do things then ask for permission later. he's more of a smooth talker. his english is perfect (australian mum) so he picks up on little nuances in my speech and my tone and gets my sarcasm. we've had some good laughs.

Adriaan is so funny we talked today about SinterKlaas, which is like Santa Claus. he comes in early december and brings kids toys. its not affiliated with christmas. SinterKlaas has black men as helpers (originally slaves back in the day) named Black Pete (Zwarte Piet). the P.C. version they tell to kids now is that Pete is black becuase he get soot on him when he slides down the chimney to deliver the presents. pretty clever spin on the story i think.