Living Life Rather Than Writing About It

My dear friend Sha was recently in Europe and as such we got to hang out, a lot. She commented on how many of her friends who have blogs haven't been posting recently and it seems as though many of us are living our lives rather than writing about them. And that's certainly what I've been doing!

I went and met up with the aforementioned Sha in Venice. It went something like this:

Sha: I'm going to Venice for the weekend, want to join me?
Me: (hesitates about 5 minutes) Ok.

So, I got a day off of work, put some of my air miles to good use and went to Venice for the weekend.

Venice is everything you imagine it to be and everywhere. So often when I travel I end up in the "real" part of a city, where people actually live and where it stops looking like the post cards. But this never happened in Venice. It really is that picturesque, everywhere. At least when you're on the islands of Venice anyway.

It's all narrow canals with gondoliers:


Hordes of tourists:


I, of course, hated the hordes of tourists, but somehow managed. Of course, I had Italian coffee, pizza for breakfast and wine for dinner to sooth me. Rarely do I immediately think of returning to a place, but I'm already planning a return trip for April break with my parents.

Then there was prom and graduation. Both really nice events, though somehow they were planned over a four day weekend!?!

Prom was on a boat:


There was beer and wine. And it was really fun. The boat made it great as it was only our students and teachers.

Here I am with the Assistant Head of the Upper School:


Graduation was interesting. There were singing/band acts in the middle.


And when each student's name was read there was about 20 seconds of a song of their choosing played. It ranged from heavy metal to show tunes to the Beatles. But in the end, that part was mostly awkward as the student just stood on stage in the middle with everyone staring at them. There were only 2 or 3 that did some sort of dance. Hopefully that will change in the up coming years.

Then suddenly the school year was over. I went with the grade 10 class to Wallabi World (why is a Dutch amusement park named after an Australian animal?!)


And then it was really over. And now it's summer holidays. I've been to Muenster, Germany. It is a small town that was completely destroyed in WWII and completely rebuilt to look like it used to. It's full of older people and because of that yarn stores. I was in heaven.

Here's Joz at our first cafe. Note the cliental, I'm not kidding when I say the town is mostly older people.


I went with my friend Joz and her 2.5 month old bebe L:


The baby fell asleep in my arms 3 times. That feeling of rocking a baby to sleep, having them sleep in your arms, it's incredible. Not so incredible that I want it (for now anyways) but it was pretty awesome. As was the chance to take funny pictures of her like this:


We got to go to the great farmers' market and got rained on quite a bit:

but that left more time for playing Quiddler in cafes.

When it wasn't raining we went to the (free!) botanical gardens:


Now I'm back in Amsterdam. Laura and I went to hear (free, again!) opera in Vondelpark:


And I built a ladder for my cat to climb more easily in and out the roof window. I haven't seen her use it yet though. But she's been super cute:


And that's the life I've been living. I'm off to California tomorrow to continue with the living.