The Aerie

Teaching

Not exhausted tonight. Not sure why. Maybe yesterday was the peak of the jetlag, not sure. Last night I was SO bloody tired... When my alarm went off this morning, I found workers in my hotel bathroom, and when I asked what the heck they were doing one of them crooked a finger at me and pointed at a pile of white sugar on the floor of the bathroom. "What!?" I insisted, "I didn't spill it!" They just shook their heads at me ruefully and started to sweep up all the sugar.

Then my SECOND alarm went off, and I woke up.

Today was the first occasion of non-perfect weather on this trip - this morning dawned gray and rainy. I considered walking the mile anyway, but I left my hat home because I couldn't find my foldable hat and I didn't want to lug around the regular hat.

So I called for a cab, and then sat down to wait. Another woman had already been waiting when I came down to the lobby, and when my cab finally arrived she was very disappointed. So I asked her to share the cab, since I was only going a mile. To my delight, when we reached my building, she refused to let me pay for the ride. Free cab ride!

Class was fine. The students are a silent bunch, but they pay attention which is helpful. My crew in Stockholm was much more friendly, but they sat and clicked away on the computers in the training room the whole week. These guys are paying attention, but when we go to lunch they sit silently and chew their sandwiches. I've never met such a quiet bunch.

The rain passed by the end of the day, and I was able tolisten to the The Stephanie Miller Show while strolling home. A California drive-time morning show, it runs 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. here.

After class I considered just hopping on the train and going to Rotterdam or even Amsterdam, but I was still carrying my laptop, and I didn't really want to carry it all around strange large cities. One mugging and the rest of my class would be a wash, to say nothing of my laptop. Unfortunately, the train station is next to my class, meaning that dropping off my laptop slices an hour out of my day. So I'm considering locking my computer into the classroom tomorrow night, and then hopping a train right into Amsterdam, 45 minutes away.

We'll see, I've also got it my head to try to get some of my college work done this week. So do I stay and do work, or go and tour Amsterdam? Hard to say. Certainly it's easier to go back to the hotel and do work - but I've been doing that all week and not getting any work done - mostly just passing out from exhaustion.

Tonight after a brief nap I forced myself to go for a walk. The sun sets so early that only an hour after getting back to my room the sun was set. Rotterdam is more than 51 degrees north, six more than Minneapolis, and nearly as far north as Edmonton Canada. So the days get pretty short.

Anyway I decided to explore, so I strolled away from the hotel in the direction opposite of the one I take to class. It turns out that I'tm buried in a large housing tract - blocks and blocks of oppressively-similar apartment buildings in all directions. I managed to walk about half a mile, and found a strip mall with a fast-food joint alled "Verhage". I ordered something that looked like meat. and turned out to be a big sliced-up meatball. I carried it back to my room, returning more than half an hour after I left. It was tasty...

Anyway I went for a walk, ate dinner,blogged a bit, and suddenly it's time for bed. Sigh. It seems foolish to spend a week in Rotterdam by myself, and neither get my homework done nor actually see much of Rotterdam. But you can't do everything...

So we'll see what I can manage tomorrow - maybe I'll catch a train, maybe I'll tryto get some homework done. We'll see...

Posted by Albatross at October 17, 2007 1:30 PM | TrackBack