Here one week

I've been here one week. So far, so good. I think we're starting to get on a normal sleep schedule, though it's not easy.

We had dinner and drinks with some of Gen’s schoolmates last night. Elsa (France), Sansui (Hong Kong), Juey (Mainland China), Klaus (Germany), Sofia (Peru). [By the by, I could have butchered any of those names and spellings, and I'm sorry if I did.] We spoke English, slowly, and simply using our foreign speaker voice, which I perfected during my stint in Aruba and countless phone orders of chinese food and all my thousand or so Dell customer service calls. For a change of pace, I tried to use a contraction like shan't but couldn't think of a usage. There was much talk of the magazine The Economist. Much talk. I’ve never heard so much Economist talk. Like when architects get together and talk about deconstructivism and cladding.

Sansui told us about a friend who had a funny experience in Germany when he asked for a “dry martini, please” and the German bartender gives him 3 martinis (drei martini).