bitchy_merlin | things! and other things! (Reply)

It has been an eventful past few days! There has been Much Drama chez Orange Kitchen: J has a friend over, who's sleeping with Z. This wouldn't be a problem, but they've been having Really Inconsiderate Sex for nights (and days) now, and Z's roommate, A (one of the Turkish girls who arrived in February), is really tired of it. And I can't really blame her, considering a) they do it, literally, at all hours of the day and b)they are, in fact, clearly audible from the next room over.

A spoke to both Z and E (J's friend) about how uncomfortable their fucking made her (she phrased it nicely, though). Z's response was shocking, frankly: "This is Europe. Get over it." (E's was to ignore her. Not much better.)

LET ME SHOW YOU ALL THE LEVELS OF HOW NOT IMPRESSED I AM.

Anyway, even with the "involvement" of the new student manager, Jorrit - he's nineteen, wtf! - things have escalated to the point where A is moving out of he room and switching to Hanna's room. Z can now do whatever the fuck she wants without fear of recrimination. I'm definitely not a fan of A just upping and leaving without another confrontation, but it's just a muddle all-round. :/

So that's one side of the proverbial coin. The other side is that I've been really bad with food lately. I've definitely gained weight. I'm definitely not happy about that. I'm trying to be better, but let's just say results are... mixed. Fuck.

But moving on because i'm on exchange goddammit, and I'm damn well going to blog about more interesting things than my fucked-up relationship to food. Today, we had our Dutch Studies lecture in Groningen's one synagogue (built by a Protestant architect from Friesland who had never designed a synagogue in his life); the lecture was about Jewish culture in the Netherlands, which sadly appears to be almost non-existent. There are fifty-five Jewish people in Groningen. WHAT IS THAT EVEN?? And no female rabbis; it's all very Orthodox around these parts, so I'm told.

After the lecture, we went to play Manhunt in the Noorderplantsoen. IT WAS AWESOME. BRB, laughing FOREVER at Hanna's terrifying yells of RAGE as she chased Modestas out of the bushes. Hell hath no fury, indeed.

Finally, last night, something really interesting happened. A bunch of us went to watch the Hunger Games movie (which I would have enjoyed a lot more if I'd read the books, I'm sure), but that's not the interesting part. After the movie, Hanna kind of buzzed off on her own. I put it down to just wanting some privacy or something, so I left the others to find a bar and went back home. I met Hanna as I was locking Diderot up in the bike shed.

"Are you ok?" I asked once we were inside the front entrance. "You seemed kind of angry."
"I'm not angry," she said, "I just had a panic attack."

I didn't know what else to do, so I hugged her - and she burst out crying.

"Sssh," I said, "sshhh, it's ok." And I mumbled little reassurances and rubbed her back as we sat on the steps outside Albertine and she told me about how her boyfriend back in Finland is being kind of a douche, only not really, because he suffers from depression(and we've all been there), and things are just really messy right now. Raw feels all over the place. I don't know if I was much help; all I did was sit and hug her... I guess something worked, because she seemed to feel better after a while and we went inside.

I've never done something like that before. I felt more... grownup, somehow. I will be here in whatever capacity you need me.

This post is disjointed because it's a collection of things that have happened - and I need to write about them so that someone remembers that they have happened, and so they mean something for more than a moment. This week has been busy, and it's only Wednesday. Let's see what tomorrow brings.