I go through some sort of a mild panic attack about how I am not accomplishing anything for about three or four 30 second intervals every day, usually while I am in lecture. They pass quickly, and I am distracted by picking lint off of my jacket, drawing daisies on my notebook, or tapping my feet to the rhythm of "another one bites the dust." However, the frustration I draw from being frustrated with myself is pretty fruitless. I am always wanting to improve myself in the same ways, with the same methods, which never work, and every time I beat myself up over it. Perhaps it is time for this project of constant improvement to grind to a screeching halt. I’m done! I’m good enough! I will neglect to read or recognize the names in the East Asia section of BBC until the end of time! I will never take the recycling out until it starts to smell bad!

I've had a series of conversations lately with Paola and Luigi and Jessica about this elephant in the room otherwise known as graduation. Here in Maastricht I've been in a very strange space because I feel like I am doing absolutely nothing to make the world a better place--everything I do feels completely self interested. Whatever convictions I had developed in India seem to have disappeared. I've bought my fair share of clothing most likely made in sweatshops, I take full ten-minute showers, I even found myself throwing away an aluminum can the other day. Whenever I say things like that out loud, I am confronted with plenty of perfectly sufficient rationalizations for this kind of behavior--we college students are "preparing to do good for the world," or "you deserve this break, you work hard the rest of the year," or "I would do something, but there's just so little time!" Pick one, order a beer, and relax unmolested by conscience. I'm just being cynical, I'm not nearly as upset about things as this would suggest.

I really do convince myself that I'm happiest when I'm running through the countryside--I'm fortunate enough to have a park composed of woods and sheep pastures on top of ahill overooking the whole valley. About a month or so ago, I bumped into a group of maybe forty or fifty runners. I joined them, and soon realized that it was more or less a senior citizens' group--but they tend to be pretty hardcore--we run maybe eight or nine miles every time we go out. They all make fun of me in Dutch, but I go along because they know the way around the most incredible countryside. We were running along one gorgeous stretch of woods next to the river, when all of a sudden the forest fell away into a barren field of fallen trees and overturned earth. One guy in red spandex shouted "Hey guys, this is the golf course I'm building, isn't is fantastic?" and proceeded to take us on a running tour of his new development. He even showed us the "eco-zone" the Dutch government required him to make--a pathetic little outcropping of scrawny saplings held erect by chicken wire. "You know, we want all the badgers and things to have something to nibble!" I think I was expected to coo in appreciation, but it was all I could do to keep from spitting on him like I would the spawn of Satan. Oh well.

Speaking of the spawn of Satan, I've became acquainted with a bunch of air force guys who are stationed at a NATO base across the border in Germany. They apparently come out here to party hardy and promote the already excellent repuation Americans have abroad. However, they're genuinely nice guys, it seems. For some reason they wouldn't believe me that I'm not Dutch--apparently not having a Southern roll to my speech qualifies as a Dutch accent? In any case, I have to admit I was flattered. I like the way Dutch people sound. Ironically enough, van Sant actually means "from sand"--which is a complete coincidence with respect to my nickname. The other people we met that night when we were out dancing was a big group of Mexican law students. I can actually understand their Spanish and they can tolerate my grammatical imperfections--perhaps they even think it's charming. (Yeah right).

Unfortunately the homepage for this thing is now in Dutch. The novelty of the language has not worn off for me; when I hear people speak loudly on the bus I have to suppress the instinct to say "bless you." The supermarket always proves to be an interesting endeavor; everyone here has had the experience of attempting to buy milk and coming home with a carton of "vla," or pourable pudding that comes by the quart. Any theories about why Americans are fat are disproven by that and the swimming pools of mayonnaise the french fries are served in.

I've been a little bit frustrated lately (and well before) with my inability to follow things through and polish things off, check 'em off the list, hit the nail on the head, hit the bullseye, shoot fish in barrels. I can't ever finish what I start. Somehow I manage to convince myself that here I don't have enough time to do everything; but we all know that is a huge lie. If I feel the slightest ambivalence towards something, I selectively forget it; rendering me a very passive aggressive person via e-mail. And unfortunately my cyber-obligations are a little heavier from across the Atlantic. But anyway, I was just thinking that it would be nice to lie on my deathbed and have a nice, neat list of accomplished tasks or songs or a finished book or a couple of nobels hidden under the mattress. Being spread too thin is the downside of eternal enthusiasm. Actually, lately I'd even been somewhat anti-social and irritable--and then I was diagnosed with Shingles, about 60 years ahead of schedule. It's pretty arcane, like having typhoid or scabies or something.

Last weekend we rented a car and went "hiking" in Luxembourg. The trip turned out to be a lot of very random driving and bizarre stops--I managed to have a cultural faux-pas at nearly every gas station...ran into a bunch of British guys who were tracing the Band of Brothers with their young sons, and were continuing the noble cause by helping damsels in distress figure out how to use the pay-by-credit card mechanism. We ended up camping in...a public park of sorts, probably illegally, but had stroop-waffle s'mores with plenty of spaced-out philosophical rambling by the campfire. Waking up in the woods, I realized how much I actually love nature; that the magic of it isn't all attributed to the spiritual nature of camp; I am genuinely inclined to the bush. Sort of. The Luxemburger public park bush, at least. The next day we decided to take the scenic route back to the car, and quickly found ourselves very far from the middle of nowhere and even farther from the rental car. We decided to follow our guts and ended up bushwhacking through private property for quite awhile; hopped over a good number of barbed wire fences to finally traipse through the park with our huge backpacks as old men roller-bladed by.