Sunny and hot Holland

The weekend started Friday after our six-weekly CATCH programme meeting, this time in Rotterdam. Everyone working on CATCH projects was invited to a dinner afterwards, but as it turned out there are only 7 hardcore CATCH people who attended the dinner (the full MITCH team, I'm proud to announce, a SCRATCH person and a CHORAL project leader, the other people at the table were CATCH committee members, the director of one of the cultural heritage institutions and one of the invited speakers of that day). The food was OK, the company entertaining and the bill shocking (at least, for PhD Student standards, but the liqueur soothed that). After that 2/3 of the MITCH team plus the SCRATCH die-hard went out to find a nice pub, but as it happens we didn't know anything about nightlife in Rotterdam so we ended up on a bench near a canal with a bottle of rose from a nightshop :)

Waking up Saturday was OK, apart from the heat. Later that day Steve's family would come from England with a van to bring his stuff, but first we went to the beach with my dad, sister and brother. The water was pretty cold, but warm enough to swim a little. I also took out my surfboard to let my sister get used to balancing a bit on it and paddling. I also got a new key for my container at the surfclub, and found out that someone has been using my towel and my wax had gone, grmbl! Fortunately, the rest of my stuff was still there and in good order.

Around 3:30pm we went back to Leiden where dad put up my new blinds, and wow that makes such a difference!! It still gets hot in here, but less, and it just looks much and much better than the mucky curtains I had before this. Now I just need to finish painting and then my room is really done. After most of my blinds were up we went to help Dave, Heather, Sophie and Steve with getting stuff up to his apartment, although a lot had been done already. This seriously wasn't a good weekend for moving stuff up two staircases, but at least Steve's sort of got a home now (even though he wants to change the pink walls in his bedroom and he still hasn't got a fridge yet). Around 20:00 I discovered the limitations of my kitchen: I can cook for 8 people because I don't have any more cutlery or crockery or pans large enough for more people.


This morning we had breakfast in my garden where it was very nice and cool until the sun turned and the shade was gone. After Dave, Heather and Sophie had left I even dozed off for a little while. The rest of the day I played some guitar, read a little, dozed off again, got ice-cream and cooked some quick and dirty pasta. Steve picked some really good peche melba ice-cream so we ate the whole box. And now it's time to go to sleep, and get rested for my last week until the big summer holidays :)