Problems with Facebook and Holland.2

Facebook: So now one superpoke option is (or, if there are infinite options, then one that has been applied to me) is "prayed for." I do appreciate/need prayer. But facebook is a very interesting way of letting that be known.

And my notifications have told me that I'm now owned by someone else as a pet. This is unspeakably distressing on multiple levels. A) Who I'm purportedly owned by (an old boss-ish person). Goodness, I hope this is a mistake! B) There is an owners manual; don't worry, I didn't check it out. C) A pet, for crying out loud! I don't even like them when they're really animals.

Warren: "How are the people?"

The Hague: Last night I went to a pub in the square outside of the Hague (the friend I'm visiting works there and we met his friends [note: all of my friends out to get interesting jobs in lovely places to entertain me while I'm visiting]). As I laughed and talked with all of his friends (interestingly enough, they were all men), I was absolutely entertained.

So the first guy was a philosopher working as a statesman (what a beautiful thing). When I told him I study political theory, we immediately went to a discussion of Plato, Augustine, and Calvin. Imagine my position! I really don't like Augustine being coopted by Protestants. This isn't fair! The thing was, this dear man wasn't even a Protestant! It took me about a half an hour to figure out where he stood on God (and you know, I have this procedure down to a science; it certainly shouldn't have taken me that long). God is a concept. What does it mean to exist?, etc. This poor man was a materialist who didn't allow at all for the existence of anything unprovable. The thing is, he was over-extending the bounds of reason by refusing to allow for the possibility of faith beyond reason.

The second guy was a piece of work: he was the most American-loving man I've ever met, anywhere. He would sing American "numbers" that I'd never heard of. Plus, he was conservative. He'd heard I was, too. So he had to check it out, and his questions came with literally no introduction: What do you think about Iran? Should we bomb them? Are you against abortion? Will you vote for McCain? Do you like Bush? (Imagine how hard it is for me, with my half-formed political opinions to answer.) Are you against gay marriage? (at this point, another guy had to repeat all of the questions: "Wait, I want to hear if from your lips: 'Are you against abortion?...' I felt like some sort of trapped rare animal that they were all poking at.) What do you think about Dutch men? (Me: "They're extraordinarily tall." He wasn't!) Then, my friend piped up: "She's against sex before marriage." And the second guy said, "You're against sex before marriage?!" Oh my, at this point, I couldn't take it any more. I agreed that I was and then noted that it was inappropriate for them all to discuss my stance on this matter. (Goodness gracious, this point comes up all too frequently now. While drinking several evenings ago, I proceeded to badger someone I'd only met a couple of days before to "start acting like a real Catholic and stop sleeping with her boyfriend." Repeatedly! This is so embarrassing--from a recent convert to a life-long Catholic. People who are prudes at heart probably shouldn't drink.) Well, back to the second guy. Our conversation ended on the potential that he would be visiting the U.S. (when doesn't a conversation end this way?). Anyway, he said, "I will call you. We can have a hamburger. That would be romantic." I hope he was being sarcastic. I don't think he knows that he loves the U.S. way more than I do, and that while he's renting a car to live out his dream of driving from one side to the other, I'll be traipsing about Europe.

The third guy was the only non-political person present, and I got him toward the end of the evening, when his speech was already slurred. He works for Shell. I brought up the drilling in Pennsylvania (I guess that's supposed to be top secret, but we all know it in PA). He wouldn't discuss it at all. I guess he signed some sort of confidentiality agreement. I hate those. I guess I do support people not telling me what was in them, because I would disseminate that information as quickly as possible to as many people as possible, but, nonetheless, I found it boring that he wouldn't tell me. He said after a couple of more beers, but the thing is, I was fairly certain he wouldn't be speaking English (possibly not even Dutch) at all at that point. So, to change the conversation, I asked about the environmental impact of drilling for Pennsylvania. Alas! He couldn't discuss that, either. To which I said, I was pretty sure that means it has a very bad impact and shouldn't his duty to me as a person override his duty to his company? To which he replied that if it were that bad, he would tell me. Therefore, I surmise that it is middle-bad.

Aww. The last guy of the evening was super cute (by cute, I mean endearing) and shy, and his English wasn't that good, which is, I'm guessing, why he was shy. OR it could have been that his English was good, but he was just shy. I didn't get beyond the basic questioning that began every conversation from him, because the clock was about to hit midnight (figuratively speaking; in reality, it was much later) and we didn't want to miss our train. But I couldn't leave him out of the story because I liked him a lot, and because he was also conservative, and because I introduced him to the idea for the first time that living near where you work is a conservative value (it scares me as to what the state of conservatism is in Holland since he'd never known that).