Normalizing

I've been here now almost a month. In my fourth week of work I have some real assignments, some real friends and colleagues, and am getting very real enjoyment out of being a part of the ICTY community of lawyers. Attended a lecture last week on "The Principle of Humanity" presented by lawyers who have been working in the field over 40 years. Very exciting stuff!

It hasn't taken me long to adopt the role as "the hostess with the mostess," and have already had 1 movie night and 1 dinner night, with more in the planning stages. I've found out where the "Chinatown" is, and where the Turkish market is, but have yet to find a Saturday free to visit. Perhaps this weekend... and then will come the real dinner nights...

And herein lies the problem - this Friday night is shaping up to be my first venture of of Den Haag and into the crazy wilderness of Amsterdam. A good friend from Argentina is going to be visiting, and a bunch of kids from work have all expressed interest in tagging along for the ride. So suddenly, Saturday morning food shopping trips are seeming less and less likely.

Normally it wouldn't be a problem to loose a day of the weekend, but one thing that has certainly taken some getting used to is the commercial schedule of this country. EVERYTHING closes by 6, every night of the week except Thursdays. The only exception to this is the grocery store, which closes at 8. So if you get out of work at 5:30 or 5:45, there is time to run about 1 errand before everything closes down. Furthermore, except the clothing stores in the center, everything is closed on Sundays as well. Basically, all shopping must be done on Saturdays. Saturday mornings preferably, as the market closes around 3. And since the last two Friday nights have ended around 6 on saturday morning, you see why this can be a problem.

But as it's the only problem so far, and is a minor one at that, I'm not that upset about it.

People probably have been wondering if the paucity of blogs and emails lately has come as the result of an unfortunate biking accident. Not true! I am very happy to report that the biking goes well. I now can't stand to be without it for more than a day, and my good friend finally got hers as well, so soon we will be non-stop biking machines. Hip Hip...