Thirty / Treinta

I turned 30 years old on Saturday. I know some people get depressed when they turn 30, but I didn't. I was happy. At least my friends will have one less annoying comment to make ("but you're not even 30 yet, you're so young!")... although... then again, that provides for extra annoying comments ("you're 30 already, aren't you going to have a child soon?"). Oh well, you can't please everybody... except yourself, and I can honestly say this... at 30, life seems perfect. I am healthy (and have the 13 miles that I ran yesterday to prove it), I am married to the most wonderful man that lives on this Earth, I have a loving family and some wonderful friends... and I just saw the Eiffel tower some weeks ago!

8 weeks down, 10 to go.

I ran 3 mi on Tuesday, 6 mi on Wednesday, and 3 mi on Thursday last week. The Thursday run deserves a special mention, since I ran the 3 mi in 26:40, which is my best time so far. I ran 13 mi on Sunday and skipped the cross-training this weekend. The long run was supposed to be on Saturday, but considering my birthday party went on until almost 4 am, it had to be changed to Sunday. The weather wasn't perfect... it was too humid, but it wasn't terrible either. This time I decided to bring 2 packs of energy gel with me (I bought an assortment of flavors and brands last week) to try them out. I tried the Honey Stinger "Gold" flavor... It was delicious. Still, with the sun, and the humidity, the last mile was hard. I just wanted to finish. And I did... in 2:11:16. Not too bad for a 30 year old.

The party on Friday night was a lot of fun. I got to see some friends that were in town for that weekend, I got some good gifts (including some mashed prunes, thank you Robert). My dear husband surprised me with a photo collection that started in 1976 with a baby Super Babe with curly hair, and ended with a hot Super Babe in front of the Eiffel tower. My favorite part of the collection was Super Babe in the 80s. And it was fun to share those Super Babe memories with our friends for my last birthday in Nashville. Fine, now I'll start crying. Regroup. At some point during the party my friend Hugo was playing cumbias, and there was one about wrestlers... so it only seemed natural to put on a Blue Demon mask that I got for Chase some years ago... Who says old people don't have fun?

On Saturday, my actual birthday, I got up kind of late, received some phone calls from my family and friends, including my lesbian lover (thank you dear), and pretty much lazed around the house for most of the morning. In the evening we went to the Shors house to have dinner and celebrate my birthday, Caryll's birthday, and most important, the Jewish New Year. That was fun. As always, the food was heavenly.

Sunday morning we met Manoj at Shelby Bottoms for a run. My man ran 4 mi and Manoj and I had to run 13 mi for our marathon training... If it hadn't been for the humidity, it would have been a nice run. Later on we went to Percy Priest Lake to the baby shower for Vivi and Luis. That was fun. After that we went to have a late lunch to the Cheesecake Factory (have I mentioned I love this place?) and then to the movies to see The Black Dahlia. I thought it was good, but I didn't particularly like that they changed ("added" sounds more appropriate) things about the novel that the movie is based on. I guess the movie is "based on a novel that is based on something that actually happened".

Click here to see some pictures from the birthday celebration weekend. Click here to see some pictures of Luis & Vivi's baby shower.

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Cumpli 30 años el Sabado. He sabido de personas que se deprimen al cumplir 30 (o peor aun, que no les gusta decir cuantos años tienen), pero la verdad, yo estoy feliz de tener 30. Al menos asi la gente que luego me sale con "pero ni siquiera tienes 30, de que te preocupas!" tendra que buscar otras razones... aunque bueno, ahora tendre que escuchar mas del nefasto "ya tienes 30, no piensas tener hijos pronto?". En fin, no se puede tener a todo el mundo contento, y lo unico que importa es que yo este contenta... Y a decir verdad, lo estoy. Tengo 30 años y la vida esta perfecta ahorita: tengo mi salud (y tengo los 21 K que corri el Domingo para probarlo), estoy casada con un hombre maravilloso, tengo una familia que me quiere (aunque estemos lejos), y tengo buenos amigos... y vi la torre Eiffel hace unas semanas!

Ya van 8 semanas del entrenamiento del maraton. Solo quedan 10! Esta semana corri 3 millas el Martes, 6 el Miercoles, y 3 el Jueves. El Jueves de hecho corri las 3 millas en 26:40 min... mi mejor tiempo hasta ahorita! El Domingo corri 21 K en 2:11:16... nada mal para una treintona!!!

El Viernes en la noche tuvimos una pachanga en la casa para celebrar... la pase super bien. Al final de la fiesta creo que Hugo tenia una cancion de luchadores y yo termine con la mascara del Blue Demon puesta... que puedo decir... no puedo ocultar la cruz de mi parroquia. El Sabado la pasamos tranquilos... en la noche fuimos a cenar a casa de unos amigos, pero nada exagerado (excepto, tal vez, la comida... pero es que a mi amiga Leslie le encanta tirar la casa por la ventana cuando cocina!), porque al dia siguiente tenia que levantarme temprano para ir a correr. El Domingo, despues de los 21 K, fuimos a un baby shower para unos amigos, despues a comer y luego al cine a ver La Dalia Negra.

Denle click aqui para ver fotos del fin de semana de celebracion. Denle click aqui para ver las fotos del baby shower.

Super Uncle

My uncle celebrated his 72nd birthday on Sunday, and to celebrate he decided to run an off-road marathon in Montemorelos, the town where all my Mom's family is from. When I spoke to him on Sunday, he said the marathon started kind of late, and considering this is in North Mexico, where the temperatures around this time of year are about 30 C (upper 80s for those of you who still don't want to learn the real international ways), that wasn't great, and he had to walk some because it was getting too hot.

My uncle started running when he was in his mid 50s. He was starting to gain some weight and my Dad, an avid runner, suggested to him that maybe he could start running to lose some weight and be healthy. My uncle tells the story of his first couple of runs, where he couldn't even run half a block without stopping. Then, at some point, he was able to run the 1 mile loop around his neighborhood. Apparently he really liked running, because now, at 72, he has run about 14 marathons and numerous half-marathons and other assorted shorter races.

My favorite part of his running adventures is that in his neighborhood, at least when I was living with him and my aunt when I was in college, he was one of the few guys running in the mornings... all the other runners and walkers were the ladies that lived in the area, and he used to call them the "majorettes". After running a couple of times while vacationing in Corpus Christi, TX, he realized Americans run without their shirts a lot of times, a habit he acquired as his own upon going back to Monterrey (this is a big deal, considering it is illegal in Mexico to be without a shirt in the streets). One time, one of the majorettes saw him, with my aunt, at a store and mentioned: "Hi Professor, I almost didn't recognize you with your clothes on!". If it weren't for the running, my aunt would have required more explanation...

I am really inspired by my uncle: he really is proof that it's never too late to start running. And I am excited he's coming to join me at the Memphis Marathon in December!

(Picture by C.M.B.)

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Mi Tio cumplio 72 años el Domingo pasado, y para celebrarlos decidio correr un maraton a campo traviesa en Montemorelos, la ciudad de donde es el y la familia de mi Mama. Cuando hable con el para felicitarlo, me comento que el maraton habia empezado algo tarde, y considerando las temperaturas en el Norte de Mexico, eso realmente no es muy bueno... aunque corrio bastante, tuvo que caminar bastante tambien.

Mi Tio comenzo a correr cuando tenia 50-y tantos. Habia comenzado a aumentar un poco de peso, y mi Papa, a quien le encanta correr, le sugirio que tal vez seria bueno comenzar a correr un poco para bajar de peso y mantenerse saludable. Al principio mi Tio a duras penas podia correr media cuadra... despues pudo correr el kilometro y medio alrededor de su colonia... y al parecer le encanto correr, porque ahora, a sus 72 años, ha corrido ya 14 maratones, multiples medios-maratones, e incontables carreras mas cortas.

Mi parte favorita de sus aventuras corriendo en su colonia es cuando menciona a sus "compañeras bastoneras". Cuando vivi con mis Tios (mientras estaba en la Universidad), mi Tio era de los pocos hombres que salian a correr en las mañanas; la mayoria eran las señoras que se juntaban a caminar. Despues de correr varios veranos en Corpus Christi, TX, mi Tio decidio empezar a correr como los Americanos: sin camisa. Una vez, al estar con mi Tia en una tienda, se encontro a una de sus compañeras bastoneras, y la señora le dijo: "Profesor, hola, casi ni lo reconozco con ropa!". De no haber sido por la corrida (y tal vez por que la conocia) estoy segura que el comentario no le hubiera caido muy en gracia a mi Tia...

Mi Tio realmente es una inspiracion para mi: es prueba que nunca es tarde para comenzar a correr. Estoy muy contenta porque mi Tio vendra a correr el maraton en Memphis en Diciembre!

Ohhh, we were young...

7 weeks down, 11 to go.

It feels good to be back in the running routine. I ran 4 mi on Tuesday, 6 on Wednesday, 3 on Thursday, and then I ran 12 mi on Saturday. The weekday runs were perfectly fine, the long run wasn't. It was probably a combination of not loading on carbs properly on Friday, and not having enough energy during the actual run, but I sure hope that the 13 mi this coming weekend go better... otherwise, running the marathon won't be fun. I must go by REI this week and get some of the energy gels and start trying different flavors and see how my stomach likes them. We'll see.

On Saturday we celebrated the Mexican Independece Day by tailgating at the Vandy-Arkansas game. Vandy undergrads can be a disgrace... at least the ones we saw. We didn't go to the game, so we got to see what happens behind the scenes. Most of the kids don't actually make it for the first half of the game, instead they stay tailgating and getting trashed (and trashing their surroundings as well)... They usually start heading out to the stadium after the second half, but some students stayed behind... to have some drunken fun behind the bushes... Really so not cool... I mean, I know we are stupid when we're young and all, but there's no need to be that stupid. They were destroying furniture, they left the place disgustingly dirty, and we got to see a couple of girls just falling over and over... I'm sure one day they'll look back and say "but we were young"... hopefully they'll still have some brain cells left by then. Don't take me wrong, I love having a good time, and partying, and whatever, and I do drink some times... but this was really too much... We found it amusing that the VU police weren't actually patrolling the area, considering that most of these kids were clearly underage... but I guess their families have big wallets and the school needs it... Money is money after all!

Chase played with his band at Centennial Park that night, and considering it may be the last time he plays with the band at the park, I think it went pretty well... I really enjoy going to the park gigs. It makes me feel like Nashville is a fun place to be, and I really like seeing people, young and old, dancing.

Yesterday we went for a walk (cross-training) in the morning... In the afternoon we went to see The Illusionist. We really liked it. Other than that, not much going on. One of my uncles turned 72 yesterday, and he ran the Montemorelos Marathon (in Mexico) to celebrate... and you wonder where I got the craziness from.

Too lazy and busy to re-write this in Spanish... maybe later.

Back to Nashville

We're back in Nashville after our Euro-trip. We really had a lot of fun. You can read all the adventures here on the blog, starting on the "Greetings from Berlin" post on the "Previous posts" link on the right side.

I just finished posting the pictures from our trip... Take a look when you have some time. Click on the city/country name to see the pictures from: Berlin, Holland, and Paris. You can also click here to see the pictures from Chase's trip to Dresden.

We hope you like them...

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Ya estamos de regreso en Nashville despues de nuestro viaje en Europa. La pasamos bastante bien. Pueden ver el recuento de nuestras aventuras aqui en el blog, comenzando por el post "Greetings from Berlin" que pueden encontrar en el lado derecho de la pantalla, donde dice "Previous posts".

Acabo de terminar de subir las fotos a la pagina de Yahoo... Ojala que las puedan ver cuando tengan un tiempecito libre. Denle click en el nombre de la ciudad/pais para ver las fotos de: Berlin, Holanda, y Paris. Tambien pueden darle click aqui para ver las fotos que Chase tomo en su viaje a Dresden.

Esperamos que les gusten...

The scar on the face of Paris

That's my beloved Eiffel tower... apparently. Scar or not, it was nice... and now we're back from Paris.

I was bad and skipped my long run yesterday (it was a set-back week, the purpose being to let my muscles recover, so I figured all the walking we did in the last 3 days took care of that).

We got to Paris on Thursday in the mid-afternoon after a long delay in Zurich. I had been told that I should wait until nighttime to see the Eiffel tower for the first time, so we walked from our hotel on Rue Notre Dame de Lorette (near the St. Georges metro stop, if you feel compelled to really look for it) all the way to Montmartre on Rue Lepic. We were looking for the Cafe Deux Molines (the one they used in the Amelie movie). We saw the Moulin Rouge first, then we found the restaurant, and then we continued walking all the way up to see Sacre Coeur... the church is really pretty, all white, sitting on top of a hill. We then walked down and found a little place to have dinner. Then we continued walking on Rue des Trois Freres to find the "Colignon" market (also from Amelie -- yes, I like finding movie-related sites in cities).

After Montmartre, we took the train to the Eiffel tower, as we had planned to take a boat tour along the Seine, from the tower, to the end of the Ile St. Louis. The tour was really nice, except that it was really windy and it was kind of chilly... but still, very enjoyable. There were a bunch of Russian teenagers sitting around us, and when we went below a bridge where the "legend" (who knows which legend, but you're in the city of romance, so everything is possible) says you have to kiss your partner if you're going under the bridge, the girl sitting next to me looked at me... Yeah right. She then went and sat next to one of her friends. We got to see Notre Dame Cathedral at night, as well as some people taking dance lessons along the river banks. After the tour, we walked around some near the Eiffel tower, then took a train back to our hotel and called it a day.

The next morning we took the same train to the Eiffel tower and got on line to climb to the 2nd platform on the tower... it's cheaper if you go up the stairs, and you get a nice view of Paris anyway. 668 steps... that's right. We did get a little break in between, when we got to the 1st platform and bought some postcards and sent them from the post-office that is located there (I'm hoping it will say "Tour Eiffel" as the postal area). The view from the 2nd platform was quite nice, but still, it was very windy and the breeze was cold.

After our descent, we walked along Champs de Mars and found our way to the Eglise du Dome, near the Esplanade des Invalides. The golden dome there is impressive. We crossed the river on Pont Alexandre III and walked along the north side of the river all the way to Avenue Marceau and found a little restaurant to have lunch. The place was really neat and it seems that the French really enjoy talking and taking their time while they eat. The patrons seemed all friendly with each other, and I was surprised to see that the personal space "given" was way too small... even for my Mexican standards sometimes (I'm not even going to consider the American size of the personal space, which seems sometimes even wasteful to me). After lunch we walked all the way to the Arc de Triumphe.

One thing that caught my attention was the number of motorcycles on the streets. Not quite like the bikes in Amsterdam, but then again, there weren't really a lot of bikes in Paris. A lot of people seem to be driving motorcycles... the business guys in their suits and the women in skirts and high heels make it even more interesting! Ohh, and all the smart cars!!! The make the mini-cooper look big! I want one!!! Apparently they will be in the US market in 2008.

After the Arc, we walked down on Champs Elysees to Place de La Concorde, saw the Obelisque (that we thought the French had stolen from the Egyptians, but it seems it was a gift -- of course, that's what they would say if they had stolen it, so who knows) and then continued walking on the Jardin Des Tuileries, where we stopped to rest our legs for a while. One annoying thing of some of the public areas in Paris (park-like) was that they had dirt on the ground... not asphalt, grass, bricks, stones... but dirt. So not good on windy days!

We walked to the Louvre... the pyramid is really cool. The lines weren't long at all, which was nice, considering it was sunny and all. We went in and tried to find our way to see the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. Then we found a painting of Napoleon's crowning that my Man really wanted to see. The museum is HUGE... Somewhere we read that if you wanted to take a minute per painting/art piece, it would take you 4 months to see the whole thing. Not the time that the average tourist has, of course. Surprisingly, on our quest to find an exit, we got to the area of the Egypt exhibit, which has way more Egyptian stuff than the Egypt exhibit that came to the Frist museum in Nashville... sphinxes after sphinxes, papyrus after papyrus (sorry Men!!), faces of Pharaohs one after the other... basically, more Egypt art than I could take.... so after half an hour of seeing all these things that were taken from the pyramids (and they were sealed! imagine if they hadn't been!), we found our way out of the museum.


We walked to the Carrousel de Louvre area to find that infamous inverted pyramid from the DaVinci Code... what a disappointment, it's not even inside the museum!!! It's next to a food court! Oh well. We found some good Lebanese food there and walked out on Rue Rivoli, and then went to see the Palais Royal and the Eglise Eustache, right at the beginning of Rue Montmartre. The church was really nice, like most of the churches that we saw... We walked back to our hotel and rested for a bit.

Later that night we took a train up to the Abbesses station in Montmartre and saw Sacre Coeur at night... quite a view. We walked back down on Rue Lepic and stopped at the Cafe Deux Molines to have a Creme Brule de Amelie Poulain and a coffee, before going back to our hotel to call it a day. By the end of the day, we had walked about 12 km (1 mi = 1.609 km, you do the math --- yes, with 4 significant figures). Not too bad!

The next morning we took a train to Place Denfert Rochereau to see the Catacombes. Now that was disturbing. At some point they decided to "clean" the cemeteries in Paris, and basically took all the remains out and dumped them in this place... well, "dump" is not quite right... "arranged" is more like it. The bones are all weirdly positioned, and what makes it more disturbing is that sometimes the skulls would be in some shape (there was a "heart" shaped skull arrangement)... Very weird. We walked in the guts of Paris for about a mile and saw what is supposed to be the remains of almost 6 million people. Going in and out was quite the workout too, though after the stairs to the Eiffel tower this seemed easy.

Later on we went to the Jardin Du Luxembourg and walked around a bit, then we headed to the Pantheon, since my Man wanted to see Foucault's Pendulum inside... unfortunately, the Pendulum's cable was broken, so we couldn't see it... even more unfortunate was the fact that they had some weird "contemporary art" exhibit with lots of cables holding sacks filled with styrene beads -- yes, "art" --, and still, no cable for the Pendulum. Oh well. We climbed up to the dome and got to see another view of Paris from there, including the south side of Notre Dame. Down in the crypt we got to see the graves of Zola, Victor Hugo, LaGrange, Dumas, and Voltaire...

From there we walked to St. Sulpice (yes, more DaVinci Code stuff) which is a really big church, very pretty too. We noticed that a lot of the churches here have alcoves on the outer part, where they have assorted saints and the such. There they had one alcove for St. Jean Baptiste de La Salle.

We walked on Rue Dauphine all the way to Pont Neuf (yes, I wanted to see it because I had seen a movie called "Les Amantes Du Pont Neuf" with Juliette Binoche, and I really liked it!) and went into the Ile de la Cite to find Notre Dame. The entrance to the church is free, but to climb to the towers we had to pay and wait 30 min or so. The church is beautiful, yet packed with loud, obnoxious, filthy tourists who were even eating inside. SO not cool. We realized there would be a service later that evening, so we took our time to go to the towers. More stairs, joy. You do get a break while climbing up though... they make you go through a gift shop, then you continue walking. The view from the top is really cool and I got one of the typical Notre Dame pictures of the gargoyles overlooking Paris with the Eiffel tower on the background... that was neat. We also climbed a little more to see the main bell.

Here I once again realized how loud and obnoxious hispanics can be. I guess it is on our genes, and it's not because spanish is the language that I can pick up easily... it was just easy to pick because people were loud! Sorry Isa, but Spanish tourists were quite annoying! Followed by Italians! I didn't really notice a lot of Mexicans, but I'm sure that there were some... and they were annoying too. While waiting for the service, I also realized how stupid some people are with their cameras. Come on people, you are in a dark, big place... your flash will not light up the far ends of it. Many times I saw the disappointed faces of people after taking a picture (with flash)... I was tempted to tell them to turn the flash off (especially those with digital cameras) and just take the picture like that... it's so much better!

We stayed for the Vepres service (mainly hymns and the such) then for mass. That was quite an experience... a mass in french and latin! Now I can say I had communion at Notre Dame. I also inhaled lots of incense. My Man was excited with the organ music at the beginning and end of the ceremony. After mass we crossed another bridge to go to Ile St. Louis to find dinner. Chase tried some snails with herbs... I was boring and had chicken with mushrooms.

We took the train back to the Louvre, so that we could see it at night, then we walked along Rue Rivoli to the Place de La Concorde to say farewell to the Eiffel tower from the distance and that was the end of our Paris sightseeing... as our trip to the Charles De Gaulle airport this morning wasn't really exciting.

So that was it... I hope we get to go back again!

Back from Zeuthen

We're back from Zeuthen.

Zeuthen is a small little town southeast from Berlin, maybe a 45-min train ride. It has lots of trees and small cute houses. On Monday afternoon I went for a walk and saw a store that was selling roof tiles in different colors (blue, green, red, black, brown, etc)... I thought it was amusing, considering most of the houses have either red or brown tiles.

One funny thing is that a lot of the sidewalks were dirt, which made it kind of messy for my 5-mi run this morning... in the rain. A very cute thing about Zeuthen is that it is located next to a lake (they call it the Zeuthen See) so you get to see some sailboats around...

But anyway, the trip was fun and now we're off to have some Turkish food and see some of the southern part of Berlin that we haven't had a chance to see.

The crazy adventures will continue tomorrow... Oh La La, Paris!!! Until then, I leave you with a picture of a typical Zeuthen street.

Berlin after Amsterdam

I'm back in the peaceful city of Berlin.

On Thursday after lunch I took a little walk with Jontine (one of the students at the research center in Petten) to the dunes. It was very interesting to see dunes with vegetation. You could definitely tell the difference between the young dunes with short bushes and the old dunes with trees. I also got to walk along the beach of the North Sea. That was cool.

Friday morning I took a train from Heerhugowaard back to Amsterdam Schiphol (the train station at the airport), where I met my lesbian lover, her boyfriend, and another friend of hers. We took a train to Hoofddorp, where she had reserved an affordable hotel for us (hotels in the city of Amsterdam are really expensive), and dropped our bags there. Then we took a train to Amsterdam Centraal Station to see some of the city.

I wasn't prepared for what I was about to see. Let me remind you that back in Mexico I lived in the 3rd largest city (Monterrey) with approximately 6 million people in the metropolitan area (which in area is maybe about the size of Nashville)... but Amsterdam... "crowded" barely describes it. The architecture was beautiful, and the cute, tall, thin houses along the canals are very cool, especially when you see the ones that are old (we saw some from 1650) and crooked, and leaning to a side or to the front.

We walked on Nieuwendijk, which is a super touristy area, and then along Kalvestraat (more touristy, fashion shops) until we got to the flower market. The tulips are not in season right now, but we got to see thousands and thousand of tulip bulbs for sale, and lots of other typical souvenirs from Holland, like clogs with paintings of windmills and the such. I had been warned by my husband to stay away from those (he has his reasons), but I couldn't resist when I saw some tiny ones that were fridge magnets. We then walked on Leidsestraat all the way to the Rijksmuseum and we saw some Rembrandt paintings.

After the museum, we walked to Ferdinand Bolstraat, where we had found a Turkish restaurant called Turkiye to have lunch. It was ok. I got a grilled chicken thigh, with a rice that except for the lack of tomato flavoring could have been Mexican rice, and some grilled vegetables. Then we went back to where the Rijksmuseum was, since the Van Gogh museum is next to it. It is kind of cool, between the museums there is a big lawn called Museumplein and it has this really beautiful old building called Concertgebouw. The Van Gogh museum was really nice, though the architecture of it was terrible... I guess they thought that the art contained within the museum was enough. I never knew that Van Gogh did a couple of paintings inspired by japanese prints. Apparently the characters on the side of the paintings don't mean anything -- he just liked them.

After the museum we want back to the north part of the center area of Amsterdam to see the Red District. In between I was annoyed by the massive amount of bikers. That's the craziest thing of Amsterdam. It is crowded, the streets are extra narrow and they are shared by cars, buses, trams, bikes, and people. The bikes are supposedly acting like pedestrians, but they won't really stop when they're supposed to. And the amount of them is overwhelming! I was told that there are approximately 700,000 people living in Amsterdam, and there are about 600,000 bikes! Madness! The train stations show it the best... they have parking areas just for bikes, and you get to see the strangest things, like bikes with baby seats in the front, in the back, with big wicker baskets... they're mostly old and crappy, since they tend to get easily stolen, but still, that was one of the things that annoyed me the most.

Well, the Red Light District. Apparently it is forbidden to take pictures of the girls standing by the windows. I wasn't aware of this, so I took a picture... just so that my man could have an idea of what it was like. Of course I won't put it online, though I found out that one of the reasons for this is that "the girls don't want their picture somewhere public so that their parents find out what they do for a living". I don't really see how that is my problem, but anyway. It was sort of strange to see the sex cinemas, or the shows promising "live action" for only 30 euros. Of course there were endless stores of sex toys, including inflatable sheep and cows. Those were amusing. The coffee shops (coffee houses sell you coffee, coffee shops sell you pot and other relaxing agents -- I thought the ones called "Magic Mushroom" were pretty clever) were everywhere, just like McDonald's, and you would see people everywhere rolling up their cigarettes. I guess once it's legal it's no longer that big of a deal. After our Red District experience we had dinner at a very nice Indonesian food place. The setting was very similar to the Ethiopian food I described at some point. You share your food but you get a lot of different dishes, so you really get to sample lots of different meals.

After that we had to find a market so that my lesbian lover could get her gluten-free breakfast meal, since we had to be prepared for our 10-mi run the next morning. We then took a train back to Hoofddorp and called it a night.

Saturday morning we woke up and went for our run through some of the town of Hoofddorp, and then we got out to the countryside. It was very relaxing to be running among canals, and sheep, and cows... and see trees and some windmills at the distance. We got to see a bunch of new subdivision-like places being built... and some small cool cable suspension bridges (just like the "puente atirantado" in Monterrey). We ran super slow for me (I ended up running about 10.5 mi in about 2 hrs, which is really really slow), to the point where my knees where hurting a bit, but still, the run was really relaxing. My legs of course weren't thrilled, especially considering we still had some more walking to do, but oh well.

Later in the morning we took the train to Centraal Station again and walked to see Anne Frank's house. It was very sad to be there and see the rooms where they hid. By the time we got to the actual diary I had tears in my eyes. All this time I never actually knew that Anne Frank had lived in Amsterdam (I imagined she had lived in Germany somewhere). In the museum part they had a quote of some critic of the book saying that he was sure there were plenty more stories like her, but it was probably best that only hers was well known because otherwise we could not really be able to endure living. I think there is some truth to that... especially if we choose not to live in ignorance.

My trip back to Berlin was uneventful and I was really happy to see my man waiting for me at the Tegel Airport. Later in the evening we went for food and drinks with Heike, and she was telling us how when she was in the 4th grade they made them watch a video of the concentration camps and the day the Jewish people left in them were liberated. I can't imagine 4th graders being able to understand that... especially without being left with the feeling of guilt. I can't really comprehend how you could really deal with that...

But... it feels good to be back in Berlin. I promise to reduce the font when I find a browser that will let me. Until next time, I'll leave you with a picture that describes the weirdness of Amsterdam... my lesbian lover and I at the Homomonument.