This is a post about how I'm never growing up

Today I marinated something. And then I STIR FRIED something. Sure, I marinated it in soy sauce, but I cooked. And cooked vegetables. And RICE. I felt like such a grown-up.

What a farce.

All the bureaucracy at IES keeps telling us about how we're going to grow as people and become independent and come into our own as adults thanks to our experiences in Amsterdam.

I believed them. Case in point: I marinated something. (Let's forget that I had a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast.)

And then I realized, the majority of the evidence of the past two days points to the contrary. Let's establish some truths before I continue, okay? Truth one: I'm an IDIOT. Truth two: In the past 20 years of my life I have left a considerable amount of my possessions in a continuous trail across the United States and now the world. The first time I went to the pool this summer I left my goggles behind, like I did at age 6, 7, 8...etc. I got them back, but whatever.

Anyway.

Last night was one of the most fun nights of my life. I kind of sort of accidentally ended up having a party in my prison-cell of a room. We ran out of space, and decided to go down to Leidsplein, which is basically the young-people fun capital of Amsterdam. Let me tell you, you haven't lived until you've biked through the streets of Amsterdam on a crisp autumn night.

There was no place to lock our bikes to left, so a couple of us locked our bikes together to make them impossible to steal. Or at least really inconvenient to steal. Then we checked out a few bars, dancing and chatting, until we found the one. I could tell it was the one because I saw something familiar. Projected across an entire wall was the Penn State-Alabama football game. It happened to be that I was with some people who went to Penn State or grew up in PA and was raised on Nittany Lion football, so we went in and screamed and yelled along with the Dutch who really could have cared less about the game but enjoyed getting excited with us.

When it hit 4 a.m. there was no way we were biking back. So we caught a cab (for future reference, never do this, cabs are terribly expensive in Amsterdam. It sucks.) and got back to the apartment. I dug into my purse.

NO KEYS.

This is what went through my head: "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Not having a key was going to be expensive and an unimaginably huge pain. I was so mad at myself and baffled as to how this could have happened. So I took a tram to Leidsplein with my friends to get my bike, and went to unlock my bike with my spare key.

And there were my keys. IN THE LOCK.

I actually shrieked, "I'M AN IDIOT BUT I AM SO HAPPY!"

If I hadn't had my bike locked to another I would have gotten my bike stolen in two seconds flat. So lucky.

So there it is folks. I may be learning to feed myself, but I am going to be doing stupid things like that probably for the rest of my lifetime.