Jane and Cailin drove me to Boston early on Monday. Everything started out smoothly and I was on the plane by 4:30 for a 5 o'clock flight, but by 5:30 we still had not moved. Due to mechanical failures, we stayed in Boston until 11:30 that night. Too bad, except I did get to see the Red Sox and Celtics play, so a fair trade-off.
The plane was pretty much empty, but obviously, I had the shrieking baby one row behind me. Not just a crying baby mind you, but a hysterically-screaming-everytime-I'm-about-to-fall-asleep baby whose parents did absolutely nothing to stop the racket except look around and say "she doesn't like travelling". Well Mr. and Ms., neither does anyone else after listening to your child wail for
7 hours.
Nonetheless, I made it to Amsterdam by noon on Tuesday. The driver who was supposed to pick me up was nowhere to be found, but luckily Felix was waiting for me.
We had dinner that night at a "Dutch" restaurant. The Dutch have a nasty habit of colonizing places around the world, forcing the natives into slavery, and then stealing their food and customs and calling them their own. I, for example, had a traditional Indonesian chicken dish. Those sneaky Dutchmen.
On the way home I got to drive, which was a little frightening, given that there are no such things as stop signs and bikers are everywhere. I mean everywhere; in Amsterdam there are huge parking garages filled with just bikes. (was that the correct use of a semicolon? Mama? Gr. Ann?)
As for work:
My first two days have been spent getting familiar with competition law and the specific case. All the other interns are already law students and nobody understands how American colleges work, so there are a lot of confused people wondering why a kid who can't speak Dutch, doesn't know the first thing about law (let alone competition law), and who isn't in law school, is working at Freshfields. But being a foreigner isn't all bad, I was half an hour late for work today and just blamed it on that damn befuddling Dutch train system (worked like a charm).
I have my own desk, the firm pays for my lunch in the firm cafeteria every day, they bought me a pass so I don't have to pay for the train, and they took a few of us out to lunch today. And there is an in-house bar that we all go to for cocktails after work on Fridays. So all in all, could be worse. (Breadloaf, I'm looking at you).
I don't have very much else to report because basically all I've done is go to work and come back home and sleep.
I think were going out in Hilversum (the town I'm living in) tonight and then I'll see more of the city this weekend.
A few more pictures:
Hope everyone is well, give my love to Gr. Jim and Tanny and anyone else who doesn't read this.
-Connor
