Getting to the weekend

Every day during the week my schedule was the following:

6:30AM wake up
7:15 Breakfast
7:30 Start drive w/coworkers from Amsterdam to Houten
8:30-9:10 Range of when we'd get in
12-12:30 Lunch (ordered in sandwiches since we're in the boonies)
1PM Back to work
6-7PM Start drive back to Amsterdam
8PM Start dinner
9PM back to room
10:30 hope to be in bed

It was pretty sad. The only thing that would change were the meats and breads in my lunch sandwiches and the restaurant we went for dinner. I wouldn't say it was miserable since I'm in a really nice hotel and I'm in a foreign country, but it wasn't ideal.

The thing that is really fun about being in a foreign country is learning the language. People get really pumped when you can say a couple things in their language and/or show some sort of effort to assimilate. I use how are you in Dutch religiously and everyone has a HUGE smile when they hear I'm actually american. So far I've learned How are you, Good morning, good night, Good, delicious and Do you speak English?

We've had Hotel food, Italian, Thai, Mexican, Asian fusion and they were good, below average, AMAZING, average and AMAZING respectively. Friday came and we went over to the Leidse Plein (a section of Amsterdam with a lot of restaurants/bars). We walked around and settled on Momo for dinner on recommendation from the waitress (I think Denise?) from Blinq. Momo had 2 BEAUTIFUL hostesses. We walked in and I flossed my semi Dutch skills. We were seated near the bar; I went down to the bathroom, it was a 3 min walk. Unfortunately, I passed this real cute asian girl that had been sitting near us, and did NOT chat her up. I don't know why I freeze up when it comes game time. I could've just said how are you in dutch and started a whole convo like what she's doing and blah blah... it woudl've been perfect! She was walkin up all slow too. I dunno. I need to think of something to start up a convo after i botch it haha. Sadly, I saw another girl i made eye contact with going to the bathroom for the 2nd time and didn't capitalize there too. I just get surprised.

Anyway, we went from Momo to Bulldog to chill; there were a lot of dudes and i failed to step up to 1 set of girls where one was decent. We stayed for about an hour and headed to Blinq again as that place seemed more like a professionals crowd. Bulldog was more casual bar.

Blinq was real nice! It had good techno music w/a guy playing jazz sax behind some of it. There were tons of ladies and we were busy talkin to people. I started chatting up this girl on my left who was half tunisian half dutch which made for an interesting look. probably died dirty blonde hair w/a bit of a tan and light eyes. She looked arabic and spoke arabic, dutch and english which is sick. We chatted about work and how she respected that I took time to learn dutch. Eventually I told her she should come w/me to museums, and that's when she told me she had a BF so even if we exchanged info she would NOT call me back. I said I respect that, that's fine. And later, she gave me her business card!??!?!

We moved on to try a brazilian bar, and it was straight empty. I swallowed the 10 EUR i spent for cover and we went BACK to Bulldog. I chatted up a girl who I thought was attractive named Sarah who was really pumped i lived in NYC (thanks rishi). We later just bounced cuz Eric was running out of gas.

I dropped him off at the hotel and I went out to find one last place around 2AM. I walked into NL which is a 5 min walk from the hotel. It was packed up, but most people were talking to each other and I didn't really get any good vibes from anyone there. It was really loud too, so I stayed for about 30 min and walked home. I was out of gas, and just winded down.