Current Music: S yelling at the TV (Oranje’s playing Austria)

Well, that exchange-student thing was a load of boring-ness... except for the intro speech by the international director, Jeroen Torenbeek. That's the guy who came and spoke at UF, the one who gave me and S his cards with his personal address and phone numbers and everything. Anyway, he's really funny and had everyone laughing hysterically... giving us lessons on how to use an umbrella, how to use a bike, and then how to use them both together. (And yes, he did ride a bike across the lecture hall!) Very amusing. I also met some new people - a girl from Madrid who lives one floor above me (yay, Spanish practice!), a girl from the Czech Republic, and then a bunch more Australians. I still like C the best of them, the girl we met Wednesday (she and I spent most of the intro speech talking about how good-looking the Dutch boys are, LOL!), but there are sure a lot of Aussies here – more Aussies than Americans, I think. I've only met 3 other Americans - 2 boys from Montana and then a girl from Miami (who actually used to go to UF). And then of course S. And me. And that’s it, so far.

So, the bike. Well. Remember what I said yesterday? That paranoid-sounding thing that nobody took very seriously, about me feeling like the other brake was going to go out at any second?...

Yeah. Uh-huh. Oh, yeah.

OK, the details: it didn’t happen in a very noticeable way – no big snap or anything – so I was coasting downhill by the Neude, tried to brake, then realized, @#$%, I have no brakes! I tried to stop with my feet, but I was going too fast. I had the green light, thank goodness, or I don’t know what I would have done – it’s a boy’s bike so I couldn’t just jump off the way you can on a girl’s. There was a lot of luck with me today. But then there was this guy coming from the right who just decided not to stop – I had the green light but he kept going anyway – and I had to swerve back and forth like a crazy person so I wouldn’t hit him. He shot me the dirtiest look! LOL! Anyway, I made it to the bike store in one piece and without causing any other accidents either, haha, and I left it with them for the day, and they completely replaced both brakes – handles, cables, everything – free of charge. It was really nice.

Other news… I did some more exploring on the bike, went over that bridge that S calls ‘the cool bridge’ (and found out that the real name is ‘Prins Clausbrug’… brug=bridge), found a new way to the centrum, ate a ‘kaassouffle’ out of the wall… (eating out of the wall… that’s too hard to explain… like a high-tech vending machine)… Oh yeah, and someone from the 4th floor called me – she’s trying to learn Dutch on her own, with no class, and Yvon (the housing coordinator in this building) apparently told her to call me. So she did, with the idea of setting up one evening a week when she can come down here and we can just talk Dutch for a while. Sounds like a good idea – S wants to join in, too, and P even said she’d like to come sometime. (If we can have the two of them in the same apartment without them killing each other… well… that remains to be seen.) I didn’t catch the girl’s name, but she has 2-3 little kids and I think she might be Swedish.

I’m going to go fix myself a sandwich. I’ve had a lot of exercise the past couple of days (Mom, those Old Navy khakis are sort of ‘hanging’ on me… nice feeling, LOL!) so it’s time to replace some burned calories, haha!

Oh… and P signed my guestbook and says she thinks there should be more Dutch on this page (haha) so we’ll see what we can do about that tomorrow.

Tot morgen, allemaal!