Let’s see, before I make myself dizzy, let me start at the beginning. The dinner with my interns was really great – the food turned out edible and it was really great to have them around the table. I was actually two chairs short so I ran down to my local bar and asked if I could borrow two of their chairs. They were happy to lend them.

Last week we also went to see 2Cellos – front row seats. Then on Friday, it was the Sinterklaas celebration. You know, where poems must be written, a surprise made and gifts purchased. It’s a big deal in GG’s family and I am seriously outclassed. This year, it was at my house so the boys could be part of the mayhem. Here’s where I admit, I did write all of my own poems, but in English this year. GG was the person I was supposed to make the surprise for – and I had to outsource it to her to do it. I couldn’t show up without one, but I seriously ran out of time and she doesn’t have to work on Fridays 😉 Since no one in her family knows about this blog, I feel okay admitting here that I did not make my own surprise for giving, nor did I buy the gifts. I did, however, put a lot of thought into writing the poems. They were much funnier in English than in Dutch.

This weekend also saw the start of the Great DeCluttering Experiment. For my school program, I have to pick something that symbolizes a value that is important to me, that I am afraid I will not succeed in and be able to turn it into some form of art. Well, the value I chose is freedom – being able to make any choice that I would like to without being weighed down by material objects or immaterial ones, such as doubts. I have until the end of the month to complete it. I will say that over the weekend I made some good progress. During the process, I found my old FiloFax. Which prompted me to think about how I think about time. I’ve made a decision to go back to a paper agenda which will really require me to think about each meeting that I say “Yes”to. This is important because this country has a meeting culture and it sometimes makes me very impatient…

Luckily, I turned GG’s attention to the kitchen cabinet. By the time she finished indulging her OCD tendencies, I think we had recovered an extra 3 square meters of space in the house! If we keep this up, we won’t need to move!

Last night we went to see Margaret Cho. She wasn’t great, only mildly funny and I felt vaguely disappointed. I also had a banjo lesson right before that since I really need to get my stuff ready for next week. Paul once again suggested that I go with plan B 😉

Tomorrow it’s off to Groningen again with the remaining interns to meet with the teams up there, tomorrow night school and then finally home. Saturday is the monthly meetup hosting and Sunday we’re going to see the Rock Goddess Anneke van Giersbergen and her band Vuurwerk perform – whoop whoop.

Lastly, on Friday, Meredith had a birthday and a moving day! She and Rupert have found a house of their own and the deal is done 🙂 Super excited for them (and for me) since they have a roof terrace!

There’s more stories to tell. I need to spend a little time working through them first 🙂