monday, tuesday happy days!

so, when i left off, i had not yet started the course. well i have now. tomorrow (friday, 27.07.07) will be the first full week of class. because it's not particularly exciting for me to blog at length about the course, i think i'll just jot down my random musings and observations here. with course-related stuff peppered in and about here and there fore and aft.

the course takes place in the new library area of the peace palace, which is also where the international court of justice resides. and some other things too. anyway, the building is really quite gorgeous. the security process is hilarious. basically, you walk through a pedestrian entry-way, where you show a picture id, and then put your stuff through the x-ray machine and walk through a metal detector (totally airport stylez) but the nuance here is that it doesn't matter if you beep. you could be walking through the machine, speaking arabic, wearing an i love al qaeda t-shirt and brandishing a knife, but they would just wave you through. i memories of the SCC. but seriously, a very cool dutch guy (not an oxymoron) named martin works security. we're tight. like mcdorman's pants.

okay, on the topic of. there are two elements of DEN HAAG which hearken back to law school. one is the number of pirie-esque bicyclists i see on the walk to school every day. amazing. a lot of people seem to prefer the incumbant, recumbant, or redundant (i forget what they are called) bikes. i think of it as multi-tasking. (i want to bike and i want lie down. how can i combine these two activities?) the other uvic-ism is that there is a whole lotta teddy D style pant-age here. yes, bubble butts are winning. although, the dutch (on the whole) are not known for being bootilicious, so really, the tight pants are really just tight pants on flat as*ses. definitely A for effort, though.

so, where i'm staying. a quick 411 on the apartment: 1 bathroom, with separate area for showering and for going number 1 and/or number 2. 3 bedrooms (mine has an outdoor space that looks sturdy and will not being the subject of future litigation), 1 big kitchen, 1 big living room (with an organ in it, bought by P.S. at an antique-y store, doesn't seem to work well.) the room i'm staying in (which really belongs to P.S.) is really quite spacious. thanks P.S.!! and L.G. for introducing me to P.S. you rawk like a faux-hawk.

the street (trigggonometrystraat) is really cute. and it's very close to a big park (called clingon park). the area is definitely sweet. there is a pasture of sheep across the main street (wassenstrassenschmassen straat). and the street follows a canal for quite some time, which is really full of algae, but i'll appreciate it more when i'm older. the walk is about 40 minutes to school. i shaved 11 minutes off the time once by walking at my new york breakneck speed. but the conditioning needs to be ramped up, so hopefully by the time i'm done here, i could do it in 10 minutes. wow! along the way to school there is a gas station. a shell gas station. for refueling needs on route to some hard-core sheep viewing. the best thing about this gas station (yes, yes, i will tell you) is that it is it stocks all sorts of regular things but also super massive amazing things. so what did i buy there, you ask? well, a new towel! yes, the selection of towels (bath, hand, face + bath sheets and shower mats) at the shell gas-station is amazing. there were more towel choices than there were potato chip choices. the dutch know what matters. well actually, no they don't - i haven't seen a single sign for ketchup-flavoured chips. but you can't have everything all the time.

so about the class: there are 300 of us, from all over the world. something like 80 countries are represented. there is about 6 or 7 canadians. i actually know one of them. he clerked the year ahead of me. and also worked in new york, at a firm not too far from mine. there are a load of germans and brazilians, as well. the class room is purported wi-fi, but it seems to have anticipated that at most, by 2108 only 30 people at a time would seek to connect to the internet. alas. poor peace palace. now that 300 people are trying to work on their nerve.com profile at the same time, the results of wi-fi are mixed. two other salient features of the class room area (this is a new, very nice modern library building attached to the old peace palace - there's a library upstairs, and a big lecture hall on the main floor.) the "lounge" area has a coffee-lady. shockingly like maria, the law lounge coffee lady. but i can honestly say that the coffee in this lounge makes maria's coffee seem like "ninth street espresso" (wickedtastic coffee shoppe in the east village). which is saying a lot, if you know that 30% of my stomach lining has been stripped away through the consumption of maria's coffee. anyway, suffice it to say i'm not seeking caffeination in the lounge. the other thing (well i just thought of another one, so things) about the lounge: there is one TINY water cooler for 300 people. 1. TINY. 300. PEOPLE. not such a wise move resource-allocation wise. and similarly, there are 6 computer that are actually fully functioning with internet and all in the lounge. but there are only 6. and unlike the wisdom of the grande prairie public library, here there is no time limit for use of the public internet computers. so you can run to the computers at the first 20 minute break and sit there for 20 minutes solid, while a line to people as long as the amazon river forms behind. logistical short-comings, but overall i am thrilled. just to be nominated.

i have found a few awesome near-school spots. like edgar's coffee shop. i don't know if it actually has a name, but it's run by this amazing guy (edgar) who wears a self-appointed uniform of a short-sleeve button-down shirt with the dutch version of dockers. he runs the cafe with his 3 daughters. he makes yummy lattes. the only thing i've had to eat there is a chorizo baguette -- i had it for lunch 3 times already. i will probably have it for lunch about 10 more times before i leave. the other place that's not too far from school is "smoothie company" - i've had two "lime + berry" smoothies. delishhhhiooosooo.

so the set-up of the course is that we have 1 "general course" professor -- this year it is prof. reisman of yale university (who teaches 15 lectures + 3 seminars) and then each week there are 2 other professors (who teach 5 lectures and 1 seminar each). they teach special topics. right now, we have prof. cataldi (relationship between international and domestic law) & prof. pinto (use of force in international law). so starting monday, we'll have prof. reisman and two other professors for the week. the professors have all been great. prof. reisman is exceptional. and used bono in an example but pronounced it BOW-NO, and admitted he had never heard of u2. & that is why i have a professorial crush on him. he's awesome!

a few notes about my school-mates. i have met some super awesome, smart people. this course attracts people at all levels of their career - from judges to law students; from government officials to professors; from researchers at n.g.o.s to associates at law firms. it's very cool. the breadth of experience and knowledge is amazing. the lectures are in either english or french, with simultaneous translation into the other language. i have to say i've been doing better with french than i thought i would. when the discussion gets really substantive, i have to use the translation, but i'm actually not doing so bad at all at understanding the rest of the french lectures. so far the people i've gotten to know the best are O (iraqi-american from detroit rock city), E (australian lawyer in dubai for the royal family), D (irish lawyer in england working for the good of mankind), E (norwegian law research/grad student in oslo), K (pakistanti professor in lahore), J (dutch graduate student in england) -- there is also a guy (i'm not sure where he's from or what his story is but ... ) --- he looks like philip seymour hoffman as the character of truman capote. & today (friday, 27.07.07) he was wearing one red and one green sock. and i love him.

here's the abc after-school special:

Manndag: i went home & kicked it with P, C, and A. we watched "the big lebowski" and had pizza for dinner. super!

Dinsdag: i went to the open-air street market with O > i bought some awesome dried strawberries & mixed nuts. yummmmers. O and i were going to meet up with E and D for drinks. but we had issues calling D's cell phone. it took us half an hour to find a public pay phone. the pay phone we did find did not take creditcards -- but did take some sort of smart chip card which is apparently too cool for north america. anyway. finally we fished out enough change to use the phone and then we tried dialing every possible combination and permutation of D's phone number. a very pleasant sounding woman speaking dutch kept interrupting though. i know, i know -- so pushy, the dutch. we finally gave up on meeting up with E & D, and O and i went to get some middle eastern food. it was yummy. i did get locked into the bathroom at the restaurant. the lock was really sticky. i had a moment of panic before i realized that i was not helping my situation with clammy hands. anyway, after what felt like 10 years, i escaped from the bathroom. and then O walked home (he lives 5 minutes from the central area we hang out in) and i started my 40 minute walk home. upon reaching l'appartement des quatres, i joined my beloved flat-mates to watch scrubs (with dutch subtitles)