Raindrops in the Ocean

Help. I’m trapped in the computer room by three feet of hanging wet clothes.

Okay. People here use energy carefully. Even more carefully than those who have followed me around turning off lights my whole life. This translates into no dryers. With space at almost as much a premium as energy, you get a clothes rack in the doorway to the computer/laundry room. I did laundry for the first time since arriving and I learned that I am glad I only did about half of what I had to do. If you do all of your laundry, then you have to find places and clothes pins to hang all of it up. I was very nervous half way through that I would run out, but I have clothes pins to spare. It occurred to me that I could not do what I did in college: my laundry once every six weeks or so. No, no…I would need to do it weekly, if not more often.

I will have to brave the wet forrest of clothes if I want to go to bed. Speaking of going to bed, it is also unwise to wash one’s pajamas just before bed when dryers are a thing of the past.

I think that we should have canals in the US. I stepped out of a talk with a friend this evening to look into the lily-pad dotted water reflecting the lights of the town. Be still my heart. Water running through the entire town. I think it is only beginning to sink in how much water there is here…like…I could cognate it when I was in my delirious sleepless state on the way back from the airport. But every morning when I wake up and the canals are still there along with the thousands of bike and pedestrian and car lanes, each with its own walk signal and stripes on the light poles…it’s still there…and I begin to believe that I am in a somewhere all it’s own.

Can I just say that the church in the square in Delft all lit up at night is impressively beautiful, and the red bicycle with the light on the front strolling across the bricks we’re all sharing as night is setting in, night’s inhabitants scuttling to their next destinations…that was sweet and simple and completely other. Other than I have ever known before.

Somedays it feels like trying to play a violin with a pickle for a bow, but I really love learning this new place, culture, people…