It's been a while.
Some things I've been up to this summer:
Had an amazing two and a half weeks studying international law in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, there's really not much work for Americans in the field of international criminal law, since we're not down with the International Criminal Court, but it was still fascinating. I saw parts of trials at the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and toured a lot of important buildings in The Hague that I'd never heard of before starting this class (when I first heard we were going to the Peace Palace, I pictured a gleaming white castle that we had to defend from the invading forces of evil who were going to try to steal the Peace Crystal. Or something along those lines).
I stayed with an incredibly nice family in a village outside the city of Leiden. They got me a bike so that I could ride to school, brought me on bike rides to cheese farms, went kayaking with me on the canals, and were generally more fun to stay with than I could have imagined.
This was going to be a more comprehensive entry, but now we have company, so I'll jump to the present:
Yesterday I went on a ten mile hike, played all-you-can-pinball in Illinois, then ate (and quickly regretted) a cheese omelet and two and a half pancakes (I needed to leave half a pancake to cut in the shape of an anteater).
Today I watched the Godfather for the very first time, and now we're going to play Ticket to Ride, which is a board game about trains.