Today, one of our seminar professors described what a hassle it was traveling in a packed van across the desert in Mali, the temperature pushed past 110 degrees F, hours and hours of driving. It made me miss Namibia. What a comfort it would be to be back in those vans driving the ten hour stretch from Windhoek to Luderitz, stopping to buy sodas at gas stations every three hours or so when another town grows up from out of the sand and the shrubs alongside the highway. These are some of the random things that traveling can make you feel attached to. It's always the parts that become routine that I miss most.

I didn't think being here would require much adjustment, but I always feel vaguely confused. It's like being in some version of a US city where everything is shifted a just a little bit so I am always just a little bit off. I feel so short and like I'm always running late. Everybody here seems to tower above me, gliding along on their bicycles and keeping to a tidy schedule.

And seminar classes are over. We've read the books, we've heard the lectures. We've had receptions with harpists and champagne and then, within the course of a week, visited an asylum seeker detention center where the people get less than the price of one of our catered dinners to spend on food for the month. Scratch that, maybe the price of drinks and hors d'oeuvre.

So, what am I doing here? The general theme of the entry applies: I'm only getting more confused.

Amsterdam this weekend, though. I am thrilled to see this city.

There's an old hospital building in Maastricht. It's been cleared out and cleaned up a bit, but it's still quite sterile. A few times a year a new batch of students roll their suitcases down its halls and move in; Welcome to the Guesthouse, the dorm where most international students stay. I feel like a freshman again sitting here between these blank white walls, bookshelf filled with folders labeled 'Welcome!', introductions every time i step into the hallway.

Maastricht is quite the cobblestone cliche. I walk to class wondering if I am really living here now, but I know that am. It's the longest time that I will have lived in one place for quite awhile now. 5 and a half months! That's nearly half a year in the same city, same address, same bed each night.

If you live in Maastricht, you have a bicycle. I tracked down a cheap and generally functional used bike from a floormate leaving in a couple of weeks. Soon I'll be pedaling the unmarked alleyways connecting the library to the cafeteria to lecture halls.

In all honesty, I really don't know much about the city, yet. Actually, I've barely seen Maastricht by daylight. We usually have seminar activities from 9 until 6, so I'm usually sitting around a table listening to a lectures on ethics or the UN or Dutch immigrants between dawn and dusk on these short mid-winter days.

Tomorrow we're taking a train to the Hague. We're going to be sitting in on a hearing of the ICTY, and then visiting the Peace Palace the next day. (Those are two stops on our very packed schedule. Did I mention how scheduled we are? Well, very.) Fieldtrips in Maastricht. It sounds like walking through an academic article to me, funny that the Hague isn't just a topic for class discussion, but Den Haag, a stop along the train tracks.

'Rondtrekken' is Dutch for wander. Cliche for a travel blog, but at this point, this third continent to temporarily call home this year, I feel a bit like I wouldn't be so surprised if I woke up tomorrow and was told that I was actually going to be studying somewhere else now. In fact, I'd probably pack up and go.