Dear Bloggy,

Alright world, why didn't someone tell me before how difficult travel in Europe is? I was always under the impression, during my previous trists through the continent that I could get anywhere, with many different modes of transportation, at the drop of a hat. But I am quickly learning that either something has changed in the last four years since I was last here, or else I am trying to bludgeon my head against a wall instead of trying to search for plane tickets and train passes. Or, realistically, I suppose it could be because of this little festival called "Oktoberfest" that everyone else in the civilized world appears to have made arrangements to go to at least 3 years ago. Who would have thought it'd be so frustrating trying to plan a trip from little ol' Rijswijk to Munich? Who?

*sigh*

This weekend it looks like I'll be traveling with a group of four guys to this city in Germany known for its forumula one racetrack, that lets you drive your own car on it for a fee. If you know me, then you know that "Jen" and "fast cars" and "Formula One" go hand-in-hand. Clearly. ha.

No, it's actually that I prefer to travel somewhere new, a place that I haven't been before, even if there's not much there that I'm super interested in, than sit by myself in a hotel -- plus, I don't feel comfortable traveling to a new city completely by myself (it just doesn't seem safe) and when you're in a class with 24 men (there are 3 of us women) and only around 7 of us are free to travel on the weekends (there's some crazy beaurocracy of when the company pays for your hotel and meals on the weekends depending on your "home" country -- which could be different from where you're from, where you live, and where you work), I feel like it's bound to happen that I'm going to get suckered into doing very manly things.

Which brings me to the gripe I mentioned yesterday, a gripe that isn't really fair to harp on and one which Tom is being driven crazy with whenever I talk about it (really, I don't talk about it that much. Seriously!): the incredibly slanted, worse-than-Tech male/female ratio. It's insane that I am experiencing a 1:9 ratio. 1:9!! ONE TO NINE!! It's no lie that I really do feel like I've learned to become moderately androgyneous to fit in with the group of MEN that I find myself with ALL DAY. Don't get me wrong - I really like men - they can be great people, good friends, fun....uhh... right, so it's more of this feeling of not being able to really relate with anyone on a different level, one that's emotional and touchy-feely. Men avoid those levels, for the most part, and it seems to take a woman to be able to have a discussion with a relative stranger about ooy-gooey things. I MISS OOY-GOOEY THINGS. It's gotten so bad that this past weekend when I was in Amsterdam with a group of 4 guys plus another 10 or so we met up with in the city for dinner Saturday night, I felt like I was flirting with one of the guy's girlfriends just to have a conversation with her! The situation made Tom and I crack up. We joked about shelling out the cash for me to buy a you-know in the red light district for the conversation for me. ha. ha.

Seriously, my heart swells when I talk to another woman - I'm immediately like --- AAAA I don't know how to relate anymore but I really, really want to because you can understand me and we can talk about shoes and shirts and guys and how much we like puppies and kitties! I also feel like my uber-competitive side is coming out because in order to survive in this man's world you have to constantly, repeatedly prove yourself to the rest of the group. "That's right I'm man enough!" BUT I'M NOT A MAN! Yet I still succumb to various challenges (I admit, they are kind of fun. And it is kind of fun to ignore the softer parts of life, pretend like feelings and etiquette don't matter, you know - think like a man) like who can drink 1.5 liters of water faster, who can drink 7 beers at the Heineken Experience, who can stand in the turn-y part of the tram (where the two cars are connected by accordian-style plastic things) while going around curves and remain standing without holding on to something.... you get the idea. Still, I'm looking forward to (I might even say, craving) being treated like a woman again. Being complimented, having doors held open for me, having someone think I am sweet and gentle. (Ok, they probably think I'm sweet and I guess I've never really been graceful or into male chivalry....I just want more of a middle ground instead of this masculine extreme environment!). I've even had their stereotypical thought processes invade my own in the past few days -- I find myself thinking about sex and sexual things every 3 minutes! Maybe it was the whole being in Amsterdam and watching the free 24 hour porn with the group (how excited do you think THEY were?!) and going to the sex museum there (good thing it was only 2.5euros) and the red light district....

*sigh* plus now I've used waaaaay to many ellipses in this post, something I am ashamed of because I like to be able to finish my thoughts definitely - I should be able to - with a simple period. *double sigh*

I feel much better having gotten THAT rant out of the way, so that poor Tom didn't have to listen to it AGAIN. For posterity's sake and my ability to look back on this and remember the special details of my experience here that will likely fade away in the next few months as I figure my life out again in New Orleans, I'm going to recap what the past almost-two-weeks have been like. First of all, the plane ride was INCREDIBLE. First class on a transatlantic flight with your own fold-out seat pod thing that gives you massages and toasts bread (ok it doesn't really toast bread) and individual tvs with on-demand movies easily made the trip worthwhile. And it was only 7 hours worth of my trip! I watched the movie Crash, which I really, really liked, and was inspired to write down some thoughts on racism and poverty and how to change the world, which I'm going to try to post here when I get some time. (again, for personal posterity's sake.) When the course started, our first task was to get ourselves from Rijswijk to Nadrin, in the Ardennes in Belgium, by 9am the following morning (we started around 2 pm Friday and had a bunch of tasks to do along the way, kind of like a world traveler's scavenger hunt, with only a certain amount of money that they gave us). I rode a random woman's rickety old bike in Den Haag (the Hague) next to the parliament building, painted a face mask on a train to Brussels, and slept on the cold, hard floor of a random carpark (parking lot) in some small (read: TINY. as in, one baker, one church, two hotels, NO TAXIS) town 20 minutes away from Nadrin. I refused to pee on this parking lot like the boys all did (again, I was the only girl in the 7 person group) and luckily one of the hotels in the town let me pee in their lobby. In the restroom of their lobby, that is. It was TONS of fun - I had a blast and there's nothing like an incredible journey to bond a group. In Nadrin, we stayed at the sort of place you would have a corporate or school retreat at -- bunk beds, greenery, middle of no where -- and did some projects related to working well in teams and chellenging yourself. Again, tons of fun. I went bike riding several times through the countryside surrounding Nadrin (essentially, I was biking the Ardennes! aaa!) and talked to the sheep (I have quite a "baaaaa!"), I went abseiling (repelling of a 40m sheer face mountain), did a ropes course (the one where you climb a 10m pole and jump off of it and try to catch a trapeze swing thing), drank a lot (the company buys tons of beer and wine to stock the place up for everyone), and had an all around wonderful time.

Since returning to Rijswijk, class has been bearable (interesting, with mostly sufficient lecturers). They give us lots of breaks throughout the day, the food and coffee is good, and we process alot of the information by doing mini sessions of group work. It's amazing to see how much of a "typical" person the company looks for there is - you can quite easily identify a common trait in all of us what it is that makes us employees and why we were chosen to work here, regardless of where we're from, what country we work in, and what discipline we work in. I mean that in a good way, because there are definitely plenty of things that define us as separate individuals, too.

Time to meet some friends for dinner. More soon!

Love, Jen