never posted: London to Scotland to Morocco to Belgium and back to the river Maas

Queen's day in the Netherlands is yet another excuse for all of Holland to whip out an orange (the national color) feather boa and take to the streets with a little plastic tray of fries in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. my bus to the airport took me from city to city where normally neat streets were decorated with crushed cans and packs of teenagers smoking cigarettes and punching text messages into their cell phones. the man in the seat across from mine on the train was engrossed in a massive encyclopedia of dogs and didn't bat an eye out the window. I guess he'd seen it all before, and he was lost somewhere in an article about cocker spaniels.

The overdose in national pride made for a good farewell to the netherlands and I was only on my way to Eindhoven to go to the airport to fly to London. It's a relief to leave small town life and head to the big city. It's cute here, it's peaceful. There are some days that I find a pleasant appreciation for the fact that I can wander ten minutes outside my dorm and stumble upon fields of strawberries and asparagus, but I am stuck a city girl after growing up in the middle of san francisco. I don't even try to fight it. Something about this place makes me more than a little stir crazy, though that's worked as a good incentive to keep traveling and exploring this part of the world.

Though at this point I am getting tired of tourism. I am sick of the maps and the traps and the hostel check ins and check outs. I have wandered though enough postcard photographed/postcard laden streets, dangled my legs off of enough stone walls framing that day's scenic cityscape. I was excited about this trip, because I was visiting friends. I got to see people's lives, not just the standard sights. I was happier on Molly's dorm room floor than any hotel bed.

Molly met me at the airport still glowy and a little giddy after a last minute Mediterranean holidy in Spain, and we took the train into London. The train is more expensive, but we went for it, because I was still reeling from a very bumpy flight. I swear we took off and were basically flying sideways the whole time, and by the time we landed I was not in good shape. Long story short, I've puked all over London. That's right- the plane, the train, the tube, the streets... A very lovely way to start the trip. I was so lucky to have Molly there to guide me through transit and central London, pat me on the back and hand me sips of water.

Once we were done with all of the planes and trains and subway cars, I felt better. We went to a grocery store to pick up some food for dinner. And it was open past 8 pm- amazing. Americans expect 24 hour service. I don't know why, but it seems to be a pretty common sentiment among us that not having the option of buying our groceries or stopping in at the pharmacy at all hours of the night weirds us out. I don't know why I feel like i should be able to pick up a carton of milk and laundry detergent whenever i want, but i just do.

Here's the gorgeous last minute twist on this trip: the day before i flew to london, i bought plane tickets to morocco. the whole affair involved some 7 or 8 hours on skyscanner working out various combinations of flights, calculating connection times and alternate airports somewhere around maastricht. The final winning combo: Eindhoven to London to Madrid to Tangier, and Casablanca back to Charleroi (near Brussels).

My first full day in London was May Day, and I walked right into a protest for migrant laborers' rights. This city was winning me over already. Turkish workers dominated the scene and blared their stories over a bullhorn, and I found myself playing photographer for a large group of Turkish guys striking poses before their banners.

After a few turns meandering in and out of London's FREE! museums, I got into an argument with a priest outside of Westminster Abbey when I tried to just stroll in. I explained that since museums were free, I thought that it was possible that this would be free, too. He said, this is a church, not a museum. I tried to make the point that most churches are free, but he really wasn't having it.

Thank goodness Molly's dorm was near the BT Tower, or else I would never have found my way back in the hours that I explored while she worked or went to class. Or didn't go to class. That's one thing about the british education system; if it's all about the exam, attendance can feel somewhat optional.

The London School of Economics, or dare I say all students in the UK, had been struck by an academic epidemic called 'revising.' Revising means studying, but it is high stakes studying for exams that decides your grade. Basically, all of your grade. It feels like the russian roulette of academia; you do your best (hopefully), you read, you hope you remember, but it's a gamble. You could get sick or panic and just shoot yourself in the foot. None of this knowing your professors, going to class and doing smaller assignments, dinner at the professor's house to discuss the course and the final paper business that we have at Macalester.

In the middle of my trip, I took a beautiful weekend detour up to Scotland to visit my former roommate, traveling companion, and good friend from my summer in Nicaragua. I found plane tickets for five pounds, ten with tax/service charge, so I decided to take advantage. When she met me at the train station in the city, she walked into the coffee shop where I was waiting for her, and seemed instantly so familiar again. I think this is the sign that you've really gotten to know someone, when it seems like no time has past since you've been apart. I felt like we could have been at the cafe we'd always spent time in in Granada.

Her parents left the car for the weekend, and we took it out into the highlands without a destination, only Cathy's intuition, some snacks, and a map, just in case. It was such a moment of freedom driving along the roads, getting out and walking whenever the impulse struck. We parked in a town with bagpipes blaring by the waterfront, and sat by the water with the sun hot on our backs.

The city of London told me it was time to go. The coldness of the place came out on my last night as I made my way to the bus to the train station to the bus to the airport. My bus was got stuck in the middle of the street in Central London due to a back log of limousines and a fight in the middle of the street. I was waiting for the moment when the yelling and the stiletto heel stomping would turn into screaming and hair pulling, but no such luck, and eventually it cleared up and my bus was on its way and back into Standard 3 am London traffic: slow, but chugging along.

morocco SOON.

springtime is the best thing that ever happened to this city.
i am happy.

i've come to realize that i barely knew how to ride a bike before i came here. i've improved, but it's not always so smooth.

a few incidents:

ONE the maastricht police attempted to flag me down for going the wrong way on a street that i suddenly realized did only seem to have oncoming traffic. tickets can be steep around here, so i was lucky when i smiled, said good afternoon!, and these cops got distracted by some guys hanging out in that cloud of smoke that encircles the coffee shops in town. it's such a small town though, i fear they'll recognize me. a pair of security gaurds once flagged me down to let me know that they found my id card behind the desk. they managed to pick me out even while tucked into a coat and scarf, whizzing into a parking lot.

TWO a middle aged dutch man wearing a plaid suit actually grabbed me by the shoulders while i was biking up a hill. now, i am used to being yelled at on the street, and i got more than a few marriage proposals walking around my neighborhood in namibia, but this was a first. the worst part was that this chubby little bald man was definitely pedaling at twice my speed. of course.

also, i've never seen a tricycle. i guess that they skip the whole training wheels thing around here.

THREE i fell. twice in a row. i've told some people about the first, and others about the second, but this is my first confession that it was actually twice. in a span of five minutes. yes.

first, i was running across a street with my bike and it managed to slip out of my hands. it slammed onto the asphault, my legs all tangled up in the frame.

the second time, i had a very large sack of apples (the big bags were on sale!) in my purse. on a very windy evening making a sharp turn over a curb, i was more than a little lopsided. i tipped over. when i stood up, the wheel was pointed one way, and the handlebars another.

when i took it into the shop the repairman whipped out a wrench from his overall pockets, turned a couple of screws, and sent me on my way. no charge, of course. the fact that i had actually dragged the bike squeaking and sputtering all the way into town for this seemed comedy enough to make it worth his while.

Amid the paper writing, final studying, and presentation prepping, it looks like I've given up on writing the kind of full entries that I used to create for my time in Nicaragua and Namibia.

In Nicaragua, my days at pre-school didn't exactly wear me out the way courses here do. After a day of trying to coax kids into recognizing and naming colors and praying that today will indeed be the day that they will be able to write their name, I couldn't wait to take the bus back into town and spend the sweaty afternoon in the fanned and quiet shelter of Cafe Email just off the plaza.

In Namibia, I found myself struck so deeply by some of my experiences that I wanted to share them with people back home fully, and I felt that if I didn't have the time or energy (or internet access) to do that, I didn't want to write an entry. I didn't want to try to explain if I didn't think that I'd be able to fully convey my experience.

Here, the truth of the matter is that after writing an essay, writing an entry don't always sound appealing. Pure and simple laziness. I also feel like my study abroad experience this semester is much more standard issue than my time in Namibia and South Africa. It is easier to image my life tucked into this charming little rainy gray dutch town, spent alternating between classes and trips to the typical tourist destinations.

Still, I do want to document this, and to share a little bit of what life is like. So, I am going to try to keep it up, even if that just means writing lists like the last entry, or very incoherent musings about my days here.

Like today. I think I had a very belated realization about a cultural difference between dorm life here and back in the States. I seem to be the only one who walks around in my pajamas. I go into the kitchen to get breakfast as early as 7, and everyone I come across appears to be showered and dressed. Is it not appropriate to walk around in my purple gym shorts for extended periods of time?

Speaking of being culturally awkward, on my last trip to Barcelona and Rome, my friend Molly was teaching a friend of hers from uni in London how to identify Americans immediately. Best indicators? North Face fleeces, Jansport (vs. eastpack) backpacks, flared jeans. Then Molly and I would try to gauge our obvious American-ness at any given moment. Every city I visit feels flooded with study abroad students from the US, so there are plenty of opportunities to practice.

I did get a compliment a couple of weeks ago that meant more to me than I could have ever imagined it would this time last year. After months of being told that I speak too fast by people for whom english is a second language, a floor mate told me that I speak slower than most Americans. It felt so good to know that I am finally learning how to communicate, and I wasn't even making a conscious effort to slow down my speech for him.

Barcelona to Roma via Gramaldi's 22 hour long ferry service

In Barcelona, I took the long way to get back to my hostel and ran into La Padrededa. This is another one of Gaudi's masterpieces in a city that sometimes felt like an homage to his architecture.

In Rome I went for a morning walk and stumbled upon the Colosseum.

I ate baby octupi, called pulpitos. (My time in Namibia made me much more adventurous in the meat department)

I went to my first Easter Sunday mass, which happened to be at the Vatican. In a thunderstorm. The pope had a heat lamp; the huddled masses all holding umbrellas and standing in puddles not.

I slept for 16 hours straight (with the assistance of dramamine) on a ferry ride across the Mediterranean with an on board casino, multiple swanky looking bars featuring lounge singers in the evening, and a pool.

I realized that I need to be pushier in lines. I always end up at the end, and sometimes that means standing out on the runway for 20 minutes in hailing rain.

I remembered how much I love to travel.

This is perhaps the most bizarre thing that I've seen in Maastricht, yet. Stranger to me than the countless couples donning matching fuzzy animal suits watching the prince of Carnival lower a giant statue of an old lady in the city center, weirder than when a full band all dressed in orange got on my bus one evening and proceeded to play a few numbers.

If you go for a stroll through the park built alongside the old World War II walls around the city center, you will stumble upon this massive statue of a dead giraffe. Sprawled across a giant cement podium covered in patchy grass and broken beer bottles, the creature is surrounded by other South African animals. A zebra, a springbok, and a penguin all appear trapped inside of a wrought iron cage. Apparently, it's a tribute to extinct animals, to remind us how fragile the planet is. If you walk further down a path, you can sit on a bench beside a huge statue of a very depressive looking bear slouching in his seat. Beyond that, you can find a few caged in fields where little gazelles and stout hoofed animals that look like they're related to goats are grazing. By that point, all you can think about is how sad they must be.

Keep walking and you'll find more of what you'd expect from Maastricht. There's a cast iron statue of a Dutch colonial officer, some little Dutch children set in stone, a small tower built of stone looking out over the city. It makes the modern looking tribute to that dead giraffe all the stranger, because there is no other piece of public art in town even remotely comparable.

And to think that I didn't think that I'd be seeing many more giraffes after I left Southern Africa.

On our last afternoon in Amsterdam, we wander into a little cafe with bright white walls and vintage movie posters in a language that I can't recognize. It's Swedish. The owner strikes up a conversation, asks me what I'm doing here.

"Ah, Maastricht, very chic," he says. "Everyone is so stylish."

And then he continues, without pause, "A bunch of farmers down there. All of them."

It's a good description of this town where you can stroll from designer shop to shop in the city center, walk twenty minutes from those carefully kept cobblestone streets until the road turns to asphalt, tidy three story houses turn to apartment complexes, and the sidewalks eventually turn into dirt paths and pastures. I can walk ten minutes from my dorm and find a field of cows.

Marseille, Madrid, and back to Maastricht.

We let discount airlines dictate our destinations.

It's not that there aren't places that I already was sure that I wanted to visit. I have to make it to Morocco while I'm in this hemisphere, I will go to London/explore the UK a bit, and I want to see Prague and Berlin. Hopefully, I'll be able to go back to see more of Spain and visit Italy, too. It's just that during the planning phase there were so many options, and we had this rare chunk of time available to us, so, seduced by the .01 Euro tickets, we let Ryan Air guide our course.

I'll try to recap the trip another time. For now I'll just say that the Mediterranean was gorgeous, I could feel the sunshine for the first time in weeks, and I wish that this program was set in Spain. I think that I'll try to keep heading southwards in my travels. That's always been the direction that I've been pulled.

It's February already. Classes haven't started, yet, but people are trickling into the dorms. I walk into the kitchen to find empty pizza boxes- some sign of life for a change.

It's Carnival in Maastricht. This entails elaborate costumes, speakers pounding the same steady beat across the streets all day through the night and until dawn. Parents drink little glasses of beer while strolling the central square dressed in costumes like clowns or popes or policemen, cattle or opera singers. The kids run around them eating fries our of paper cones dressed in mini-versions of the same intricate outfits. It reminds me of the Castro on Holloween except it's the whole city that is transformed, and it's a full family affair. There is serious preparation and investment here. Maastricht is famous for this event, this week every year when the people of Limburg province let loose and these tidy streets get absolutely trashed.