Red light, green light?

I am having the worst jet lag of my life.

I've been here four days so far and my sleep and eating schedule is horribly confused. I've been trying to right it by going to bed early and eating at proper meal times but that's not helping. I'm staying off caffeine and downing the vitamin C but nothing's working so far.

I made it to my 9am orientation meeting, but I slept through my first alarm. I never sleep through my alarms. Tomorrow I don't have class until 2:45 so hopefully I wake up earlier enough to do something before class.

I need to go buy an umbrella because its supposed to rain for the next few days. Somehow I forgot to pack one.

Since I've been soo jet lagged, I haven't seen a lot of the city. Yesterday I went to the center for the first time. To get there you have to walk through the "Chinatown" which is really Asiatown. There's a lot of Thai and Indonesian, not terribly surprising considering in the latter case as Indonesia was a colonial possession of the Netherlands.

My friends and I went to a coffee shop (a normal one, not a special Dutch one) and got delicious hot chocolates. They also pointed out the sports bar in which the Catalan boys watch the FC Barcelona games in. There was one on last night and Messi scored 4 goals in their 5-1 victory over Osasuna. Needless to say, that put them in high spirits.

Ok, so they say curiosity killed the cat but I can't help it sometimes. Walking back with my friends from the sports bar, we passed the red light district. Most of my friends have been here all year but our Greek friend and I are new arrivals. One of the boys asked the two of us if we wanted to just go see. We did. I certainly wouldn't go by myself or with just my female friends but with two male friends and a large group of friends waiting for us early on a Sunday night, I didn't mind going to go see.

It wasn't what I was expecting at all. Pictures aren't allowed by the way. The men who were there didn't look particularly seedy. I did notice that we were the only group there. Everyone else was alone, and well male obviously. The women weren't what I expected either. Most looked like they had had too much work done and came out looking plasticky. There were some older women too. Also, being Den Haag, there was no nudity, full or partial. Scanty clothing yes, but everything was covered. I'm told that Amsterdam is much much worse because it's much more famous. Here there aren't many tourists so it isn't as seedy. Funny how that works.

Being that we are all studying Econ, business or politics, we debated the merits and drawbacks of legal prositution. I'm yet to form a concrete opinion of my own yet but it is interesting to see the perspectives of other cultures.

Alright, that was an odd blog post I admit: jet lag and legal prositution. I need to get over the jet lag so I can have more interesting things to write about next time.