it's been a while...

yea, it's been a while since my last post by my terms. my terms means almost a week is too long. It's just that the past week has been crazy between the intense amount of site visits this past week (ok, 3 out of four days is intense in our frame of reference), reading, wasting timing thinking about my birthday, and planning for my parent filled weekend. And taking random pictures next to posters of Bollywood concerts in a sparsely indian populated Netherlands.

For starters, the site visits this week can be given mixed reviews. Monday we had a briefing at the US Embassy which was ok. Most of us went ready for a fight, throwing political questions at the foreign service officers who kept telling us, "we don't make the policy, we just implement it", or "o, that's a tough question, i mean it really depends on how Congress feels, or what the President felt was important". thanks, that explains a lot. I can't deny, their job seemed cool though. Give me a decent president, and I might consider it. but to honestly say, O no matter what the government believes, our job remains the same, we just carry it out. yea uh huh. sorry, just not my style to be a drone. (i'm not saying american diplomats are drones, but some of the things these people said just some of us that impression)

On Tuesday, we visited a hearing at the International Court for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It was ten times better watching a criminal trial here, vs the civil trials we slept through in the ICJ. One bothersome element though, was the pace of the trial which was considerable slower due to the translation lag. It was frustrating, but understandable. The same issue was present at the International Criminal Court, where we were sitting in on the Special Court for Sierra Leone's case trying Charles Taylor on Wednesday.

Wednesday night was fun. Ammi and Papa were due to arrive at some point on Thurs night, so I decided to celebrate with the program crew a night early. It wasn't anything huge or extravagant. Just some ice cream and hookah. Here me and my birthday candles, o and a very cheesy smile.

It was a good night, the weather was nice, and thanks to Natalie coming out of her room in a gorgeous blue dress, we all suddenly went from wearing jeans to dresses and skirts. So we were probably the most dressed up bunch of people going out for ice cream. At least we were the best looking :-)