Today I met my friend Mouloud from my Dutch class. We met at the library in central Antwerp, got a coffee and headed out to the little garden surrounded on all sides by the building housing books. Is was one of the most beautiful days this year. It was the perfect temperature to where a t-shirt and a light jacket and sit in the sun. I told him, "look, Mouloud, we're not going to study in the library today, let's go somewhere else."

There was no possible way I could have endured sitting inside with it so beautiful outside. We've had so many days of drizzle that the whole of Flanders was ready to sit in a cafe and drink a beer and practice a new language. :)

We headed over to a student-area square over by Eva's old university. We sat there in the sun, drank a few beers, and spoke only in Dutch for 4 hours. We talked about everything, from Belgium to politics, to my being a lesbian to what it's like in Morocco. Though I'm sure some of the people in our class have just as much to say in their native tongue, somehow we've managed to understand each other to an extent in a new one--though in the summer months I imagine that he'll become light-years better than me in Dutch, as he studies several hours a day. (maybe that's a good challenge!)

We parted ways and I told him that in light of Leila's political crisis last night, that I would try to see if the four of us could get together tomorrow sometime. I told him that he could even resort to French sense Eva and Leila are fine/great in French as well. Once again, I'd just be in my own little world with language flying all around me. I don't mind, I'm sort of used to it.

I came home, hopped in the car, and went to pick up Eva only to learn that her former co-workers (read: fired co-workers) had decided to come by for a drink with their old co-workers. (read: people that still work there)

Eva works/worked with a great group of people, so I never mind getting together with them. I was starving by this time and went to the frituur stand and waited 20 minutes (for no apparent reason) for my viandel before heading into the cafe to drink with them. I wasn't really in the mood to drink anymore or be really social, but I did my best.

Sometimes I get slaps in the face that I'm not in one-state-away from Kansas anymore and today I was reminded of this fact several times. The cafe was full of people from your typical old-men bar flies to young working-types celebrating the fact that it's a Friday (Eva's category) to bikers who were pedaling by and decided to drop in. Am I mistaken, or is this not a part of American culture. Duh, I live in Belgium now. :)

We came home and I plunked myself in front of the off-TV and stuck myself deep into the lengthy entries of last year. In a few weeks I should be a master of do-it-yourself book binding and will probably be so bad at it that I'll never want to do it again. As for Eva, she slept. Once again, we were so good at doing our own thing in a 6 foot by 6 foot portion of our apartment that it was almost laughable.

IN THE NEWS:
Just days after U.S. officials warned of possible worldwide attacks by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, a quick succession of five suicide bombings in Casablanca, the economic capital of Morocco, killed 31 bystanders and 10 terrorists Friday night, officials said. The Moroccan government did not directly implicate al-Qaida, but the attacks confirmed fears that terrorists are striking lightly defended sites. The buildings targeted Friday were the Casa de Espana, a Jewish community center called the Israelite Community Circle, an old Jewish cemetery, the Belgian Consulate and a major downtown hotel. (consequently, since Friday evenings are a part of the Jewish Sabbath, the community center was empty.)