yay! i am pretty much packed and ready to go. i am meeting annemette at the train station a little past 2 tomorrow afternoon. we will be at schiphol by 5:15, fly out at 8:00, then in antalya around 10pm. i can’t wait. relax, exercise, eat… basically take it easy. fantastic. no worries… i won’t be handling any live or dead birds.

tonight we are going to try a tango lesson. there’s a tango club here that charges only 2 euros for lessons on monday nights. a bunch of people are going after aikido tonight, and i will join them. hopefully matt will make it back from paris in time (he had a meeting today). i’m pretty excited. i’ve always wanted to learn tango, but in general i’m pretty bad at learning dances. i can dance, if there’s no rule to it! 🙂 dances that require the remembering of steps are difficult. but at least i expect it will be easier than flamenco, and i loved doing that. i’ve tried a bit of swing and salsa, and depending on my partner, enjoyed them. but i’m not good at them, either. anyway, it’s kind of exciting to try.

we had a busy weekend. we hung out with dick on friday night, watching videos. jane and jonathan came down from amsterdam on saturday, to go to dinner at mark’s, out in smeermaas. we had a crazy 5 person party: me, matt, mark, jane and jonathan. loud music, dancing, lots of drinking and eating. we were pretty silly. we got home sometime in the wee hours, and they spent the night. the next day, mark came over for breakfast with all of us. then j & j left, and matt and i joined annemette and steen for a hike in the countryside. then fondue at zorica and maarten’s, also joined by mirza and laia. it was good to see so many people all at once like that. it reminds us that we do actually have friends here. we know it, but sometimes it feels otherwise.

today i had 3 lessons: with astrid, yoriko and a new one: eduardo, the younger brother of another student, fernando. it was a fantastic day, actually. astrid is great fun, yoriko is really sweet, and eduardo was quite a surprise: very articulate and energetic. a cool kid. all in all, i’m feeling pretty good about life today. 🙂

fortunately, daylight is longer and longer lately. when it’s winter here, it’s really dark. i mind the dark much less than i mind the cold, but our apartment isn’t very well insulated, and so mostly it’s both cold and dark around here. not loving it. i spend way more time than i like bundled up. i hate having to wear pajamas, but it’s too cold not to.

yesterday we went to our first dutch lesson in weeks. i ran into our teacher on the street last week, and was so out of it that i couldn’t think of ANYthing to say. not so, yesterday. i didn’t shut up. also, i may be getting 2 lessons per week, depending on schedule. matt has to keep our wednesday evening time, but annemette can’t anymore, so i may join up with both of them and take twice the lessons. good for me. my dutch seems to be getting worse.

i have 3 new students, which is both good and bad. good for me trying to save up money to ship the motorcycle and save up for visits from friends, but bad for my disappearing free time. fortunately, they’re all 1 lesson/week students. it’s easier. and who knows: they may go to twice per week later. one of my older students has, recently. again, good for finances!

well, i just wanted to try to get into the habit of updating this occasionally again. later!

hi there!

matt and i are back in maastricht. i swear it’s colder here than minnesota was the past week. we’ve been sleeping like crazy. way more than jet lag can account for. maybe we partied too much those past couple of days in minnesota. or maybe we’re just a tiny bit sick and our bodies are trying to get better before it gets worse. or maybe just a combination of both.

it sounds like most of the people who have any intention of coming to visit europe have decided to come this spring and summer, so matt and i have to save up our money. with so many visitors, we’ll be doing a lot of travelling around with them. i may need to take on more students. also to (finally) bring over my beautiful motorcycle, which is still in matt’s dad’s garage in minnesota, but will soon be legally ship-able. yay!

anyway, i suppose my life will be pretty uninteresting for the next while as i try to save money and thus don’t do much. except for go to turkey in a couple of weeks. but that was paid for months ago.

now i’m going to (yay! for the first time in months!) read some of other peoples’ posts!!!

later!