the ginormous time-eating monster

Wel, haha, so much for writing my blog today. I just got home and it's bedtime already. Had a lovely day though, one of many. I know you're all curious to know how I'm faring, all alone in big bad Amsterdam. (a.k.a. the ginormous time-eating monster) I'm making a lot of typos right now because my fingers are tingling and burning from that cold bike ride home from Central Station, so it's slow progress. Better go and make my cup of 'sleepy time tea', be right back.

The tea is more to warm my hands than to put me to sleep, but anything that will aid my sleeping here is welcome. I'm such a light sleeper! Annoying in noisy Amsterdam, I have to say. I struggled to sleep here the first night, partly because I had too much coffee earlier on Saturday. I went to my double whammy gym session in the morning, which I really enjoyed but it totally wiped me out, so I had an espresso to wake me up after I got back so I could drive to Amsterdam. But even after the espresso I felt soooo tired that I had to ask Mum to drive. I fell asleep during the drive here. What caffeine? Then I had some more coffee at my cousin Lieske's place, which did perk me up a bit.

It was great to spend some time with my family together with Mum on Saturday, but then when we got back here, it was really hard to sleep. Stella's cute apartment is at a busy intersection, the corner of the Nassaukade and the Kinkerstraat, there's always traffic here and trams. But then also on Saturday nights, the pub on the corner (next door, that is) plays very, very loud music which really kept me awake and it went until 5 or 6 am. Also, my sister only has one bed which is a double, so Mum and I were sharing it and unfortunately she suffers from sleep apnoea which is quite disturbing to sleep next to. And her heater is extremely loud, and keeps starting up which sounds like an engine starting. All together not much rest for me that night! I was awake long enough to hear a bird start singing and daylight to start. And then there was daylight savings! Hahaha, what a mess.

Sunday was great too, we visited some good friends of ours who live in Amsterdam North, on a gorgeous little dike in a lovely house. We had a delightful day with them, and once again my good friend coffee pulled me though. We didn't get back to the apartment until dinner time, we were both too tired to look for anywhere to eat, so we just got some salads from the Albert Heijn, after which Mum trucked on home. And I was all alone and far from home for the first time in a long time!

Then I was going to write my blog, but then I wanted to put away the leftovers and opened one of Stella's kitchen cabinets and saw what disorganised shelves she had. And well, me being me, had to sort out her plastic containers. Which got me trying to find out where her vacuum was, just because the shelf was covered in crumbs and I thought I'd vacuum it. Then I opened the cabinet with the vacuum, which was also a total disorganised nightmare (for me, I am a bit of an anal retentive when it comes to cupboards) so I sorted that out while I was at it. Then when I was finished, it was way past my bedtime. Not much blogger then either! I also decided to figure out how to ride a bike from here to the Central Station, then where to catch the tram and how to get a chipcard for public transport, plus how to walk from the tram stop to Carla's house, whom I was visiting today.

And this morning I went to see if the people at the Nokia Care center around the corner could make my Aussie phone speak Dutch, as it's very hard to write text messages in Dutch when the phone speaks English, unless I want to type it all out old style. For some silly reason my phone only speaks English and Phillippino! I also wanted to use the GPS system on it to navigate my way through Amsterdam. None of it got organised. They just told me that I had to download the maps myself (which I tried but it didn't work) and then they told me they could make my phone speak Dutch, but it costs €25, they'd have to wipe my phone memory and then it wouldn't speak English anymore either. Useless! (I'm sorry Emma, but) I really, really hate my Nokia! An iPhone wouldn't have any of those problems, my iPod speaks several languages and Google maps works fine here, except of course, that it needs wifi and so it won't help me navigate when I'm out and about. So now I still have two phones and an iPod to carry around.

Sigh. Anyhow, I rode my bike to the station well enough, though my hands were freezing, and then when I tried to buy a chipcard for public transport from the ticket machines, they all (I tried 6!) told me they couldn't distribute them and to go to a counter. That took forever, of course, but I finally managed to get on the tram and made it to Carla's lovely new house in IJburg. It's a very new suburb that looks like Almere, only it's closer to Amsterdam, since it's IN Amsterdam.

It was great to see Carla, and her little girl Maxime and even Martin who came home late, they came to France with us last year. I spent the whole day with them and we had a lovely time.Silly me forgot to bring a packet of Mint Slice and the fluffy Kangaroo I have for Maxime, so we'll have to catch up again very soon. And now I just got home! It's already 11 pm. It was hard riding home just by guessing and I managed to get here just before my fingers froze. Luckily I found a hot water bottle (plus about one million and three shopping bags, a soccer ball, an orange fluffy robe and several hundred stray cotton tips, to name but a few things) in Stella's busy cupboard yesterday, so I can soon curl up under the blankets and try and get some sleep. Another fun filled day awaits me tomorrow. Goodnight all, sleep tight and warmly. x