Netherlands: When in doubt smell it out / Moooommm, the telepathy broke again

The Netherlands was great! (we get two four day vacations, so I went to the Netherlands with two friends for the first one). But 'fun/normal' stories are never fun so I've got two small anecdotes for your pleasure.

#1 - When in doubt smell it out

In my program we stay with host families and one of the 'perks' is that we can do one load of laundry a week with their machine/soap etc. Laundry in Europe is really expensive and people try to use dryers the least amount of time as possible so I've been trying to be better about not washing everything I own after wearing it once. So, the day before I was going to leave for the Netherlands, I realized that I have like no clean clothes....at all....I've worn all my shirts like three times, my pants like a million,

(for Disney channel lovers)

and everything's starting to smell like I've worn it a million times, but I can't ask my host mom to do laundry right then and there cause then everything would have been wet. However, my friend was like it's totally cool, when we get to my cousin's house (we were visiting her cousin who lives/studies there) you can do laundry. So I decided to take practically my entire closet's worth of dirty clothes all the way to the Netherlands...where I ended up not being able to do laundry. Thankfully, I was able to borrow shirts from my friends but it was still pretty rough. When I got home Sunday night though, I was like I NEED to do laundry right this instant, of course it was no problem, my host mom was like totally, we'll put it in right now and then you can use the dryer for the things you need to do tomorrow. So we all sit down to dinner, I recount everything I did on my vacation, it's all good. Then when dinner ends, and my 12 year old host brother and host dad are still in the room, my host mom whips my laundry out of the washer (the washing machines are generally in the kitchen in France) and is like sorting through my stuff, like "oh do you need this pair of underwear for tomorrow"....but at this point I was just so happy to have clean clothes lol



#2 - Moooommm, the telepathy broke again

On the way to and from Utrecht, we had to take three trains which was about 6 or 7 hours. The way there was no problem, excitement of the trip and all that jazz but on Sunday we were all definitely ready to be home in our beds. So on the second train our assigned seats were all in different train cars but one of my friends was like maybe the seat next to you will be empty like I'm just going to sit here until says something. I was in total agreement, like I can't deal with anymore strangers today, So we're getting closer and closer to the time the train is supposed to leave and no one has asked her to move but she's getting kind of antsy and saying like maybe I should move. So she finally goes, like the train is full, I'm going to go find my seat, just as this rather attractive guy (conveniently around the same age) comes up the row. And this is the type of situation where when you're on public transportation and see that one really attractive person you're like there's no way in hell am I that lucky, he's not sitting next to me.
A picture to have in your head, to fully understand the situation:

(I know he's not Irish, but still)

And he goes, in an Irish accent, 38? to my friend Clare...and she's like yeah, I was just moving it's all yours. And, having heard us talking about wanting to sit next to each other, he goes oh that's okay, we can just exchange seat numbers. She was like oh thank you so much, like it's in blah blah car or whatever and I was like telepathically sending every signal in the book...to no avail. He left and I was like...pourquoi, do you secretly hate me? It was great to sit next to her though; we had a fun train ride...and to be honest I wasn't smelling so great in my less than clean clothes.