Two for One

Whoops, it seems as if I've missed March and most of April! Alas, things have been going well... busy, but fun as ever. At the end of February I started a Flamenco dance class that will go through May, which has put my high heels to good use. It's a really complicated form of dance, but it's also very fun. The main problem is that your arms are always doing something completely different from your legs, which is hard to wrap your head around. I also started a Lindy Hop swing dance class with Albert at the end of February, which is much less complicated and more fun. Lots of twirling around in circles! It's a relatively popular dance form here and every month or so there is a dance (last month with a live big band) that's open to the public. So, dancing has been a good distraction from academic work.

On 29 February Katie, Albert, and I hosted a "Quixotic" dinner party, which was amazingly fun. Email me if you want a more in-depth description and/or pictures. We're hoping to have some more strange parties soon... we'll see how that works out.


The week of March 3 the Netherlands held a "Restaurant Week" where yummy places offer 3-course menus for €20-25. I had a good but unexciting dinner at Brasserie Prins-H, and then another more exciting meal at Pollux, a restaurant on an old ship. By the time I found out about the restaurant week many of the most exciting places were booked (think castles on little islands), but hopefully we'll do better next time.

After that, my brother Alex came to visit for a week of Spring Break, and we managed to do lots of really nice eating and relaxing in Amsterdam, not to mention a trip to visit the Pancake Pirates at the beach. Then, immediately after he left I flew to the UK to meet up with Katie. We spent a day at her house, a day watching the women's Oxford-Cambridge boat race, and then a few days in Oxford. All of this was very enjoyable and relaxing, a perfect ending to a week of relaxing with Alex.

In April I got back to work a bit more, writing and rewriting thesis proposals until it is now (I hope, I'll find out tomorrow) ready for approval. Amazingly, I am still writing about the Ugandan publication Straight Talk, which you can see a link to in the post below. There have been some theoretical kinks to work out, but I'm hoping that all of this preliminary work will lead to smoother sailing when it comes to actual thesis writing.

Most recently, last weekend I went to the Spring European Unitarian Universalist retreat, which was in Spa, Belgium (the source of Spa water). This involved some inspirational talks from Charlie Clements of the UU Service Committee about their work defending human rights around the world. I also spent an afternoon soaking in Spa's legendary water, which was thoroughly enjoyable in itself. Finally, no UU retreat is complete without late nights spend chatting, playing guitar, and singing, all of which were present in great quantities last weekend.

So now I have finished my last university course of the immediately foreseeable future (Monday was the end of Research Methodology) and am off to focus on thesis writing. I also recently became involved as a volunteer/intern here in Amsterdam at the Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights, where I will be working on integrating HIV/AIDS issues into their current work. I am also exploring the possibility of staying in the Netherlands a bit longer, perhaps another year. Of course I'm still open to the idea of finding my dream job elsewhere, but barring that, Amsterdam is a place I'm happy to call home. Of course there are many details to work out still, but for now I know for certain that I will stay at least through 15 July, which is when my present lease ends. From then on.... we'll see!

I hope to be a bit more frequent with these updates in the future; at least one a month does not seem like a lot to ask. I hope to see many more of my friends vacationing in Amsterdam in the near future!