After the immigration session on Thursday, we were supposed to have a tour of the city and go to something called a Cantus, which is apparently basically a big festival where everyone just sings and drinks a lot of beer. I was taking a nap and my roommate forgot to wake me up, so I missed that, but I got to go to capoeira and go out with my Dutch roommates instead. I got really lost trying to find capoeira. This was the first time I tried to find anyplace by myself, and it was pretty difficult. There's only 3 or 4 turns, but the last turn is onto a dark street in a neighborhood where everything looks exactly the same, but I eventually found it. Then I went out and the bars here are crazy. They get really really packed, and they don't close until 4am. Plus, there's no cover charge anywhere, so we went into 3 different places (1 of them, we went to twice). And I mapped out how far I rode my bike that day, and it was about 9.5 miles!
Friday, we started "ESN Camp" which was basically just a weekend where we played some games, danced, hung out, and nearly everyone (not me) spent the whole time getting completely wasted. There were some competitions that were pretty fun though. We did something called a pubquiz which was basically just a trivia contest. But before we did it, people were talking about it, and it kept sounding like they were saying pop quiz to me, so I was a little nervous until I found out what it really was. We got 2nd place, but a few of the questions were pretty biased toward Americans, so any team without at least one American didn't stand much of a chance. And we learned the "ESN Dance" to this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f--2gDdOgNA&feature=related. That's some seriously good quality music right there. I think it's only rivaled by this other song that they used to teach us some Dutch a few days ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJv4Rs-euGM&feature=related
On Saturday, we had a morning workout. Everyone was saying we were going to do gymnastics, so I was pretty excited, but then I found out that what they call gymnastics here is really basically a cardio/aerobics class. Then we played some more games, some of which were pretty strange. Like for one, they hung jeans from the ceiling, and you had to see who could hold themselves up hanging on the jeans the longest before falling. And we played beer pong, which none of the Europeans knew how to play! For Dinner, we had what was apparently traditional Dutch food such as Croquets which is apparently a bunch of types of meat mixed together and then fried, and Frickendel which is basically a fried Sausage. So we had those along with fried cheese, fried balls of rice, something that was like a mini eggroll, and french fries. EVERYTHING was fried, and they put mayo on almost everything, especially the french fries. I felt pretty obese after that meal. Then we did a Bonte Avond which was where they split us up into groups based on our nationalities, and we had to make a play or presentation that represented our country in some way. Most were pretty funny and interesting, and I learned a lot about a bunch of the different countries.
Today, we had a "secret activity" which turned out to just be more alcoholism, which was pretty much expected. People did beer races for probably about 3 hours, and just got completely wasted. Then we went home, and I went to sleep for a while, but a bunch of people had another party! I don't know how they party so much. Maybe I'll be crazy about it too by the time I come home.
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