Saturday morning i got up and did the rest of my cleaning and laundry etc etc. i also spent a few hours planning my berlin trip. i'm not doing that much planning actually. i have complete faith in thomas that he will show me around the city much better than i could have ever done on my own. i have a few highlights i definitely want to see, but other than that, i trust him. there is a museum, not a museum really, but its "the story of berlin" and it walks you through the history etc. i think i should start there. there's also a really cool tour of the underground bunkers and tunnels from WW2 that i want to see and of course checkpoint charlie. thomas says its about -15 degrees celcius so i'm mentally preparing for the cold.
on saturday nigth i went up to haarlem for a dinner with about 20 people. i picked up a girl named paula who's friends with a guy a know. i hadnt met her before, but she lives about 3 minutes from me in delft. she's actually really really cool and i can't believe i met her just now and not when i first got here! oh well better late than never. she's some sort of aerospace mechanical engineer originally from columbia but spent her teens in connecticut, on a 3 year contract working for some company in delft. she small with wild curly hair. very latin. her face looks like reese withespoon's, but with dark skin and pale blue eyes. she looks quite young i was surprised when she said she was 27. i would have guessed 23 or 24.
so we head up to haarlem to this little turkish restaurant that boasts live music and live bellydancing on saturday nights. i was prepared for the usual dutch 3+ hour dinners, but nothing could have prepared me for tonight. the live music consisted of an electric keyboard with a man playing it and singing at the same time, and he was accompanied by a man playing some sort of guitar. at first, it was nice, pleasant background music. the dinner started at 7PM, and about 8PM, we finally got our drinks and then the bellydancer came out! she was very very good. she was amazing actually. her control and the way she worked the crowd. when she came out, the music got really loud, so you couldt talk to anyone. surprisingly, she danced for about an hour! an hour!! i'm HUNGRY. actually, we're all hungry. i would esimate we got our dinner at about 9:45. there was a table of turkish girls next to us (the retaurant only had about 10 tables). and one of them was SUPER drunk. i mean DRUNK. she was dancing on her chair and then finally she just got up on table. the "dress" she was wearing was looking more and more like one of my good friend Edda's dresses, and by "dress" i mean "long-ish shirt". she was spilling drinks on the poor guitar player and trying to play his guitar hahaha. her friends were trying to feed her water. actually the whole thing was pretty entertaining. she had one go-to dance move. aside from everything else, i wanted to tell her to get some new moves. and a longer shirt.
she was friends somehow with the owner, because he kept coming out and just laughing at her. so were we all. so after the bellydance first came out, the music never went back down to the nice pleasant background music. it was really hard to talk to other people at my table. and beleive me, we had plenty of time to talk becuase the food literally took hours to come out. the bellydancer came back out for round 2 around 10:30, then the owner got up and sang a few songs, then we finally left at about 11:30. a 4.5 hour dinner. all in all, quite entertaining though. just forever long. me and paula got back to delft around 12:15. some guys we gave a ride to the train station (worked for Fluor... knew fugro from some work we did for fluor in the congo...) they wanted to go out to some club but we declined. didnt seem like a good idea.
sunday i got up and another beatiful day in delft. me and rik went skating outside. he got a snazzy new pair of speed skates. i rented some skates that looked like they were skates for ronald mcdonald. after last week's discouraging performance at de uithof, i was little bit reluctant to get back out there, but how often do i get to skate OUTSIDE on REAL ice??? so i strap the big red skates on and get out there, and surprisingly, i'm skating around no problem! which brings me back to de huithof. the speed skates yeah i was having problems with those becuase they were new and different. but the hockey skates?? i think they just had some bad edges. i'm quite sure actually. so we had so much fun skating around on this big pond. i had two pairs of pants on, two pairs of socks, two pairs of gloves, and two coats of course, and i was the perfect temperature! skating outside on real ice is about 1000 times better than skating in circles in the rink. i was doing crossovers and turns and scooting all over the place. perfect skating day!!!
i should note, that i am so lucky to be in holland for this winter. it hasnt been cold enough in over 10 years that the canals and lakes have frozen. usually they will be skate-able for 2 or 3 days, but this year its been consistent for almost 3 weeks! everyone is out skating, just out on the canals and things its really cool. playing hockey and even futbol. speedskates, hockey skates, figure skates, even those little two-plankers that you can strap onto the bottom of your shoes. anything goes!
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