A lot has happened since my last update, so this will be a long one. Last weekend, I traveled to Amsterdam to meet up with my friend Elisabeth for our birthday (which was also Easter!). We had a wonderful weekend full of lively activities and leisurely moments. I adore Amsterdam, although the constant onslaught of determined cyclists whizzing past me at 100 mph had me a bit on edge as I wandered through the city. My good friend Liz happened to be in Amsterdam at the same time, so we had a lovely surprise meetup at a coffee shop, where we got yelled at for attempting to smuggle in bagel sandwiches. I learned lots of important facts in my exploration, my favorite being that tulip bulbs used to be so sacred and valuable that one would be worth more than a townhouse in the city centre. 

We did the classic Amsterdam things, like sampling cheese and taking a canal cruise, but we also found some cool experiences slightly off the beaten path. One of those was a storytelling night at Mezrab, where 6 professional storytellers told funny, embarrassing, delightfully embellished, heartbreaking, inspiring stories about a wide range of life events. As someone who greatly enjoys the craft of storytelling, I was inspired and engaged the whole time. Being involved in a place like Mezrab, as an organizer or a storyteller, would be a dream job for me. It’s cool to see the community and fun that a unique space like that can create. 

Instead of paying for entry to the iconic Keukenhof tulip gardens, we rented bikes and rode through 25 km of the surrounding area. It felt like some kind of magical teleportation through different lands, as we pedaled through fields of swaying technicolor tulips and patches of forested shade, navigated between eclectic shop facades and grassy dunes, and paused to take in the view at the beach and a lakeside cafe. I hadn’t ridden a bike in a long time, but I felt a deep sense of nostalgia remembering how I spent so many summer nights in childhood riding my bike at the college campus near my house. I would listen to music on my iPod Shuffle and think angsty thoughts about my vastly complex 8-year-old life. I never imagined that 15 years later, I’d be riding blissfully through the Dutch countryside. 

The birthday festivities concluded with a potluck dinner in Belfast. The word potluck might evoke mixed reactions if you grew up in the American South, but let me assure you that this potluck was the height of class and deliciousness. Offerings included leek and potato galette, balsamic onion cheese, and a mocha raspberry cake made by yours truly. It was so lovely to see my friends chatting and laughing effortlessly with each other, even though they had only just met. I felt a great sense of gratitude for the community I have built since arriving in September. Before arriving, I worried that it would be difficult to find people my age to connect with, but I’ve been lucky to find kind people around every corner in Belfast, and my birthday dinner was a nice celebration of that. 

I’ve also been continuing to enjoy occasional solitude–donning funky outfits to read in coffee shops (getting creative with the same clothes I’ve had here since September), cooking up a storm (I need to be eating at home after all that traveling, but it doesn’t have to be boring), exploring new walking routes (I discovered a pond with swans and a view of the hills!), replacing phone use with books and crafts (just finished Wuthering Heights for the first time), and finding cool events to attend (it turns out Belfast has a monthly storytelling night called Tenx9)!

Last but not least, work has been getting busier after the lull of Easter Break. Last week, fueled by matcha and excitement, we moved our belongings out of storage and into our new office space at The Crescent Arts Centre! It feels so nice to have a stationary home after floating through the last month in a combination of working from home and borrowing spaces for meetings. We’re not even close to being unpacked, but we’ve spent our first week here analyzing feng shui, rearranging furniture, stepping over boxes, and enjoying being together again. Yesterday, I built my first IKEA bookshelf! I’m feeling like a real Bob the Builder in the above photo, where I’m in what we were calling “bookshelf jail”. 

The school workshop team has spent some time reflecting on our practices and developing some new methods to try based on our observations. This week, we had three workshops, where we put our new ideas to the test. We were all a little rusty at the original format, which made it slightly difficult to incorporate new aspects, but I think a lot of the changes worked. For example, we decided to change the order of the collaborative writing of Chapter 1. Typically, we write the story line-by-line, finish with a cliffhanger, do some light editing, and lastly, vote on a title. In the new format, we write the story, stop before we get to a cliffhanger, vote on a title, edit, and put the cliffhanger in last. In the past, we have often struggled to get a good cliffhanger sentence on the first try. Our hypothesis was that by asking students to vote on a title and edit the story first, they would be able to better synthesize the plot and reflect on cliffhanger ideas, instead of feeling the need to impulsively decide on one before fully grasping the arc of the story or the concept of a cliffhanger. It has worked really well, which emphasizes the importance of continuously evaluating our practices, even when we have been doing them a certain way for a long time. Small changes like that can make a significant difference in the success of the story and students’ resulting sense of pride and confidence in their writing abilities. The above photo includes today’s cliffhanger, along with my expert illustration of the story’s events. Check out the full story here. I only have one month of working left, which makes me so sad! I am really going to miss the workshops and spending time with my Fighting Words colleagues.