Some of this is awkward. Some is not.
1. How to ride a bicycle in the pouring rain, during rush hour, in a pencil skirt and heels. (How, you ask? Carefully.)
2. Similarly, you have to be careful biking downtown any time between 6:00 pm and midnight. Because drunk bicyclists, even if you are said drunk bicyclist, are very, very dangerous.
3. Serbians sometimes order straight vodka with their dinner. None of that pansy wine-with-dinner stuff you see Western Europeans doing.
4. There is a bird outside my window that makes a peculiar noise at 4:45 a.m. every day, as the sun is rising. I want to end its life.
5. Dutch boys of all ages want to, uh practice their English with me. And when I say all ages, I mean anywhere from 12 to 50. If you're looking at it glass-half-full ...wider playing field.
6. Apparently when I talk I sound "like George W"... I didn't even realize that I drawl.
7. The Dutch search and rescue team coast guard team is apparently composed of male models who wear their wetsuits peeled down so far that if they were in America, there would be a lawsuit.
8. Baking late at night without measuring cups never turns out well. Especially when your landlord comes by the next morning to show a prospective tenant one of the bedrooms.
9. There's a deadly strain of e.coli on vegetables in Europe. Good thing I have consumed nothing but bread and cheese since I've been here.
10. Wandering alone a lot is good for the soul. So is going to the train station, picking a platform, and going on an adventure.
11. Security guards are human beings too. And apparently if you make friends with them, they won't say anything when there's two bottles of liquor in your briefcase as you put it through the scanner.
12. The Dutch special police forces are like American SWAT, only taller and brawnier, and they were in my office today. Not really complaining.
13. People who deal with death all day develop very twisted senses of humor. I understand them perfectly.
14. I am capable of, with the help of a tiny tiny Chinese girl and a French man, consuming a platter of meat literally the size of a boogie board.
15. I am almost short here. It's magnificent.
16. In Amsterdam, there are big brothels where men literally stand outside of booths in line and go in one by one as if they're on an assembly lines. There are different sections, like aisles in a grocery store, for different kinds of girls. Or, if you prefer, not girls. It's like a sexcapodge. (No, this is not something I know from entering into any such establishment.)
17. Thai Massage doesn't really mean a massage.
18. It's possible to miss the ones you love so much that your stomach hurts.
19. Nevertheless, human beings can belong to a place. I kind of belong to this place.
20. You really don't need to own a cell phone. Going two days straight without having a real conversation can be magical.
21. How to send emails in cyrillic Serbian.
22. There is nothing more marvelous than waking up to rain blowing in your open window. That wasn't sarcasm :)
23. When you take a lot of pictures but there's no one in them, people start to worry for your sanity/emotional health/social skills.
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