Today we started working in the morning... then ate lunch outside... then realized that being around 80 degrees, it was much to nice to be inside.  Maya and I then ventured to the beach and decided we could work more later.  It only takes about 40 minutes by bike to get to the North Sea and the beaches are really nice.  There's lots of shells too!

We got there pretty much without a problem but my bike decided to start falling apart.  It's an old squeaky bike but gets me where I'm going and has been free to use so I have no complaints.  Leiden is extremely safe too but the one thing that is a problem is bike theft, so there's not point to have a nice bike anyways.  Soon after we got to the beach and it seemed lots of people had the same idea we did to enjoy the weather - the nice weather that's been far and few between.  Today is by far the hottest day though.

After being at the beach for a while, we decided that ice cream was definitely needed and it was a great choice though when you order ice cream, they put the scoops directly on top and make zero effort to actually get the ice cream inside of the cone.  This is one thing that we cannot figure out since I thought the whole point of having a cone is to have a good proportion of ice cream to cone.  I don't want to eat my cone plain!

From the beach we biked to Leiderdorp to go to the kayaking club house.  This was quite a trek because it was past both the university and our house.  After arriving, Fabian and Justin were great and took us for a quick trip after we arrived late - it took a bit longer than anticipated to get there.  Maya and I are now LEVITAS club members (that's the name of their club) but we cannot paddle alone because we don't have enough time here to be certified to go on our own after instruction.  Since the guys have been patient with us, Maya brought Fabian an apple - his favorite food!  After a short trip, probably about 4 1/2 km, we ate dinner, which was great as before.  After eating, Maya went to a game night with her frisbee team and I went back out on the water, this time with a different boat.  For our first trip, we used pretty stable kayaks and today we used some more 'tipping-prone' kayaks.  One time I almost tipped too - just for the record, putting your hand on the water's surface will not push you back up since water is not a solid..  After dinner, I was given the "Joe" to try out.  It was a much boxier of a kayak and I had to wear a skirt.  Some of the members were playing kayakpolo so I got to see what that was like.  It's a pretty popular sport at the club.  These kayaks are shorter and meant for 'bumping' and more like bumper cars.  It's very difficult.  My sunburn was starting to get to me at that point, and it was already after 9pm (fyi - the sun was still up too) and thought I should get going.  I wanted to do a little work since we left kind of early to enjoy the weather.  -- it is supposed to storm tomorrow unfortunately.

Once I got home I was super tired and then couldn't get my key to work in the door.  Fortunately Mrs. Kramer's son was home to let me in.  I think it was another blonde moment... :)

Tomorrow Tiffany will officially graduate with her masters (one the students we've been hanging out with and also from California) so we are going to go out for dinner to celebrate.  Otherwise for the rest of the week, let's hope that this weather will come back soon!