Some LIght Traveling

Last Thursday, after my Archaeology course, I embark on my first long-distance bike journey, to visit my dad in Wassenaar.  Although I am a bit worried about navigating the main roads, I reach my destination with surprising ease after a leisurely 45-minute ride.  My destination, NIAS (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study), is a beautiful building set among other equally beautiful buildings (mostly large houses).  It's night by the time I reached NIAS, so I don't get the chance to really look around the neighborhood, but next time I'm there during the day I will definitely make it a point to explore.  In any case, at NIAS I meet several of the fellows my dad is spending the year with, and I get to see my dad fulfill his weekly role as bartender (somewhat comical, but I think it suits him well).  I take a different route back to Leiden with Wim, the Director of NIAS, and he points outs some highlights of the landscape along the way (he also shows me that my bike does have gears after all, accessible by a mere turn of the handlebar!).  It's Valentine's Day, but having no particular sweetheart of my own and feeling a bit tired after all that biking, I take a quiet evening to myself.  

Saturday I visit Utrecht with my dad, which is about 40 minutes by train.  Definitely more bustling than Leiden, but not nearly as busy as Amsterdam, it's filled with churches, museums, and other buildings to discover.  It's definitely a place I plan to return to, and since transportation is so easy here, I don't need to worry about going back.

Other than that, I've mainly stayed in town, exploring the city with my friends.  The hardest thing for me to adjust to here is how early everything closes - my street all but shuts down at 6:00pm every night except Thursday (most stores stay open late once a week in the Netherlands, and in Leiden it's Thursday).  Likewise, stores don't tend to open until 9:00 or 10:00am.  The only night scene, as far as I can tell, is comprised of the bars (even the coffee shops close at 10), and so I've started to reevaluate my night-owl lifestyle.  It's amazing, really, how much earlier I go to bed when I know there's nothing "awake" around me, even though I used to stay up late without leaving my room.  This may also have to do with the fact that I have a LOT more free time here - for the first time in years, I can actually sleep as much as I want every day.  As my friends and I are finding, the hardest part about having free time is motivating yourself to be active!  

 Tomorrow I'm biking to Den Haag (The Hague) with friends Rachel and Brian for a day trip.  I'm especially excited for the Mauritshuis, an old mansion with an excellent art collection, and for the M.C. Escher museum.  It feels good to be making travel plans - I think now that we're starting to really feel settled in, we'll be seeing the sights and moving around much more easily.

In other news, on Sunday I auditioned for a play!  Those of you who know me from my pre-college days understand my background in theater, but I haven't been involved with the stage since I sacrificed my last year of Arts High School for the We the People competition my senior year.  The play is a black comedy called Blood Enemies; it's set inside the body of an alcoholic man, and the three main characters are Large Intestine, Small Intestine, and Right Kidney.  A few of my friends who also auditioned started to second-guess themselves after seeing the script, but I personally think it's great (this coming from a girl who proudly played the role of Cereal in the ninth-grade play).  I'll find out later in the week if I have a role, but it felt great just to audition.  I've definitely missed the theater, and it's great to have the time to go back to it again.