Even after almost three weeks I am still amazed at how many ways this New Place is like the place from which I come. Everything's kind of shrunk, like the opposite of the Big Bang, but other than that it's very similar. I suppose it makes sense on some levels, since people are people the world over. I think the people here expect me to be strange and different as well, and I am, but only in the way that one person is strange and different from another.
This weekend I went to Amsterdam for a day. Now that was a different place. It reminded me of going to New York City and seeing all the tourists and hearing all the different languages, except it was my language that was the foreign one, and I was the tourist. It is a beautiful city, with the cobblestone streets and the canals and the flowers growing out of cracks in the rocks and pots on the pavement. It was also full of people who you could tell were there for the city's more infamous aspects, and having a marvelous time.
