Thursdays

I start out every Thursday we have in Maastricht (well, after breakfast and all) with a three-hour Dutch painting lesson. It's kind of furniture painting, I guess - tables, boxes, trays, anything made out of wood. It's pretty fun. I spent several weeks painting on construction paper because I was too inept to work on wood. But I'll hopefully be finishing my first project tomorrow.

My first Hindeloopen project, almost finished!
Also, check out the new haircut.

Our Thursdays end with marathon card-playing nights. We solve the problems of the world through conversation and play pretty much every card game known to Man (besides poker.) Dr. Rust has been teaching us the German national card game, Skat. We've been teaching him Casino and Gin. Dr. Rust also knows about a billion Solitaire and competitive solitaire games. Here we are playing his version of Russian Bank. It's called Zank-Patience - Zank means spite. And oh, is it spiteful. Erik won't play.

Don't let the smile fool you. This is an evil, evil, spiteful man.

Here I am just having won a really fun Solitaire game Dr. Rust taught me. It's called the Switchyard, and you have to get all your "trains" in order. Or your "choo-choos," as Dr. Rust would say. Erik says that Dr. Rust even calls trains "choo-choos" in class. What a weirdo. :)

I shouldn't say too many mean things about Dr. Rust and how weird he is, because he bought us these really cool little cards! They're for playing Solitaire, especially for games that use two decks. They take up less room, so your game fits on the table. They're really pretty - one pink deck and one blue. The face cards are pretty, too. Erik says that they're the Habsburgs - it is the "Empire Deck" made in Austria, after all. The blue card there on the left is just for an idea of scale.