USA! USA! USA!

What a week it has been. I stayed up until 1am Tuesday night to watch early election returns come in on the NBC broadcast, but, since was really nothing to see, I reluctantly went to bed with hope in my heart and fear in my stomach. When I woke up, I set the laptop on the edge of the bathtub and spent an hour trolling the online newspapers and getting progressively giddy as more races were called blue. My friends have been asking lots of questions about the implications of the election and I have taken a perverse pleasure in explaining the federal system and what the Dems could do in Congress. Every social studies teacher (and Schoolhouse Rock episode) who detailed the minutiae of the three branches to me as a kid deserves a thank you. It has been a wonderful thing to talk politics without feeling embarrassed by election results. Oh! And I just discovered the wonder of Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. I heart him.

Last night I went to a meet-in event at a local bar all by myself. Meet-in is a group of people who get together to do all sorts of things: eat out at different restaurants, travel, run, see music, go to events, and have casual get-togethers. Though most of the members are ex-pats, there are lots of Dutch people involved as well. This was my second event -- the first was a Thai dinner a few months ago -- and it was a HUGE deal for me to actually show up. I have chickened out of going to things probably 10 times because the idea of walking into a room without knowing anyone is terrifying. But I did it (I was feeling buoyant because I had gone out for a little wine with friends from work and had spent two hours talking politics) and it was great. I met a man named Max from Rome, a lawyer for the International Tribunal in The Hague who is working on prosecuting Yugoslav war criminals as well as Charles Taylor, and a guy who was brought over from Cardiff to coach the Amsterdam hockey team. Hockey, you say? Isn't that played on ice? Nope. Men's field hockey. And this guy and lawyer dude tried to tell me that field hockey is real hockey and ice hockey is somehow fake. Now, I can take the whole soccer/football superiority thing, but field hockey? Come on! I actually said, "Isn't that just a sport for girls?" Ahhh yea.

Tomorrow I cook a Mexican-themed lunch for the Sunday club, which I think will be fabulous. I will try to remember to take some photos because these pages are getting fairly bland.