Holland Stuff

Well, I'm here now, and trying to get settled. This whole moving thing is tough. You go to a new place, learn it, make adjustments to fit in, make friends and get used to life there. And then right when it is starting to feel like a home, you get shipped off to the land of dirt and sleet. I'm not feeling up to doing much at the moment. I sleep a lot and do my reading, but don't typically feel up to going out. Which is sad, cause I'm meeting lots of really nice people here, the containers are all international students of about the same age as me and they are all really fun and nice. Maybe its missing my friends, both US and UK. Maybe its that I'm not dancing, and being physically inactive is making me lethargic. Maybe its the intense amount of shame I feel for not being bi(or more)lingual. Maybe I'm depressed from the crappy weather and lack of sunshine. Maybe its intimidation from all the work I have to do this semester making me feel like I shouldn't do things that aren't school related. Hmm... I know it was hard to get used to England and I was really bummed out there for a while, and I know how badly I want to go back there now. I wonder if I'll miss Amsterdam that much when I have to leave.

Ha. Yeah right.

Well, I need to get you caught up on life here. Looking back I did have a few stories I was supposed to write. One was Jo Takes On Ikea. That one was pretty much answered in the last posting, showing the before and after pictures of my room. I can do amazing things with Ikea. And it was Ian and Jasmine's first time in an Ikea, so that made the journey extra special, showing them all the magical wonder of the Swedish. You know what is hard though? Shopping in a Swedish store in Dutch when you only speak English.

Well, about finding the school. Jasmine and I went on Saturday (last Saturday, I'm really behind here) to find the University. Now, I'm good with maps. And Jasmine knew where on the map the school was. So she showed me and off we went. It was a pretty day so we were good to walk. Which was fortunate, because the place on the map was not where the school was. And the street our class building is on is too small to be on most maps. So we wandered. We found museums. We found a music hall. We found lots of things named for Rembrandt. We discovered that babies here are Ginormous! But we did not find the school. This all took actually a few hours. Starting to give up hope, we began to walk back towards Centraal. Well, we were on the corner waiting for a light, and there were some boys passing out some flyers. Figuring they had to be locals, we went over to ask directions. That's when we met the angel Gabriel, or, as he shall henceforth be know, "That's Awesome!" Why the angel Gabriel? Go do a Google image (or, a Google afbeeldingen, for those Dutch out there) search or open a Bible, you'll see this dude. Really tall. Really blond. Ringlets. Pink cheeks. Really really tall. It is a shame this guy wasn't born a girl, he could rule the world (or at least the Miss World stage). Jasmine and I are still in shock by how straight up pretty this boy was. Now, why is he named "That's Awesome!"? Maybe it was his favorite English expression (we hear time and again that they learn a lot of their English from American tv) or maybe he was blinded by Jasmine's beauty (it happens to the best of them) but for whatever reason, every time we spoke we got at least one "That's Awesome!" Talk about a confidence boost. I had no idea everything about my life was that awesome. But, good to know. Well, he directed us...
"We're looking for Nieuwe Doelenstraat"
"That's awesome! That's right by the University."
"We know, we are looking for the University."
"That's awesome! I'm a student at the University!"
"So are we, that's why we are trying to get there, we're looking for our classroom."
"That's awesome! What do you study?"
"We study performance."
"That's awesome! Like theatre and stuff? That's awesome! I study law! Awesome! It's over there, by the big horse. Well, it's not that big. Ok, go to the Huge horse and turn right. Ok? Awesome. Turn right at the enormous horse. So Awesome!!"
...and we went about our merry way, to find our place of learning, and to marvel at the sheer prettiness of our Dutch Gabriel. We are still amazed.

Well, we found our school. Hooray. The building used to be a house of wealthy tea merchants, and they would open the place up and have auctions. And it is right on the canal so they could load the tea directly from the boats. Now it has a theatre and some rustic (read:ghetto) classrooms. But it is in a good location and people seem really friendly. Well, they love their theatre. Now, I know I have been more than spoiled by CSPAC. But, well, every time someone talked about the theatre, they talked about their wonderful beloved amazing theatre. Aaaaand I chuckled once or twice because I thought they were being ironic. And I was not the only one chuckling, let me add. Cause, well, it is barely more than just functional. But, it is really cool they have a theatre space at all, it is fairly big, and I'm excited to get to use it for my internship.

A quick note about walking in Amsterdam. Don't bring a map. If you try to follow a map you will get lost. Something about the perspective here is way off. If you are walking, and you look down at your map to see the street name you are looking for, by the time you look back up you need to turn around because you passed it. This is the smallest place ever. Your best bet is to look at the map at home, know the area towards which you need to go, and if you have any sense of direction just wander in the general direction and BAM you are there 10 minutes before you thought you would be. Enjoy.

Third item on my list of promised stories. My visit to the red light district was... different. The night before Ian had to leave, Jasmine and I wanted to take him out to a nice dinner, as a small thank you for being our hero. So, we took the bus to Centraal and went walking. And what we found was the red light district. Now, I was expecting culture shock of the palpable kind. I was expecting to be overwhelmed by crazy images and shaken by a feeling of alienation and foreignness. I mean, I'm a good Catholic girl, I am pretty conservative, this experience by all means should be shocking. Yeah, it wasn't that shocking. I mean, we didn't exactly go in to a sex show or anything, that would certainly shake my foundation, but we did walk around the streets for a while. And, well, it just wasn't that scandalous. Other than when you stopped to really think Wow, all these girls are prostitutes. But they kinda just look like bored hot girls in bikinis. I was expecting graphic gestures, maybe some dancing about, some nudity, a pole dance here or there. What I got was chicks sitting down looking only slightly amused. Just, yeah, kinda hanging out, looking around. I kinda wanted to give them a book or something, I felt badly they were so bored. But yeah, not scandalous. At most I felt a little awkward because I didn't know what to do with them. Do I smile? Do I pretend I don't see them? Both seem funny. I went for the smile approach. I mean damn, they are really really good looking (apparently the day shift is where it gets skeevy, but at night, my goodness I wish I was stacked like those hookers! And Dutch people are really friendly so it seems rude to avoid eye contact. You can't just pretend they are not there.) Of course, I am pretty sure I scandalized poor Ian. I kept pointing out how cute this one was, that I wanted that one's shoes, that I wanted to talk to one, did he like that one's hair or whatever... poor boy kept his eyes fixed ahead. Whether that was residue of his puritanical British upbringing (I mean if I'm demure you can't even get me started on the British, the land where people apologize for apologizing), or whether he was looking for more points towards his impending canonization into boyfriend sainthood, or whether he thought I was setting some girl trap for him, enticing him with half naked ladies only to then flip that on him once he looked (Why are you looking at her? Aren't I pretty enough for you??! Do you think she's hotter than me?!!? Well why don't you just ask her out since you would clearly rather be with her than me!??!?!) I'm not sure. But despite my enthusiasm (seeming fascination) with the sexy hookers, he would not check them out. His loss. Jasmine was walking behind us so I don't even know what she was thinking. Perhaps my failure to blush at the spectacle embarrassed her so that she didn't want to walk with us, but she is from Bangkok, land of the lovely lady boys, so I can't imagine that is the case. (Added to the list of life goals: find a window girl and just ask her what the deal is, make friends with a Thai lady boy).
If you are my family (I'm talking to you, mom) please don't be too scandalized that I went there. It was a necessary intercultural experience.

And the final promised story, Everyone has a crush on Jasmine. Well, that story pretty much answers itself, yes? There was the guy on the ferry who wanted to take her back to his cabin to watch tv. Well, the second encounter happened at dinner--

Oh wait! I forgot the eventful part of the red light district story! Ok, so we were ready to leave the pretty bored ladies to go get some dinner, and we started down a side street. And walked into an impending fight. Some group of guys were yelling at this other guy, something about something, insults were traded, then one brought up something about someone elses mother AND his sister, and then pretty much it was time to throw down. Well, soon to be saint Ian kinda threw himself in front of me to protect me (which then I kinda felt odd that I had the same reaction to do to him and Jasmine) and we turned around. And that was our story about how tough and street we are, navigating the rough cities of Amsterdam. (further side note: my toughness precedes me. Jasmine and I were at a welcome party Friday night at the bar next to our containers. We were meeting some kids from all over the world, and were getting into a conversation about where we each came from. I mentioned Baltimore and DC (I tend to say DC first, because if anyone knows any town in America they most likely know NY, then LA, then DC, and later I get into the specifics of Baltimore) and they started going on about hearing they were bad neighborhoods, and I must be really tough, and I must be one of those girls who looks little and sweet but will kick your ass... I love that I give off the tough vibe! I don't even need to go into my firing range prowess or my swords... Ok, and we're back in to the gay Afghani story!

Well, the second encounter happened at dinner once we left the red light district. We found a little bar with a nice little menu and went in for food. Did you know you can smoke in restaurants in Amsterdam? Well, it is illegal, but apparently you still can. That was more of a culture shock to me than the window girls. Anyway, we ordered our food, and it was yummy. Now, this place was really fun. The kind of place where they don't rush you out so they can give your table to someone else. In fact, we tried to leave for a while and they just wouldn't let us. Nope, everyone was too busy drinking, talking, and dancing to the early 90's American/British pop music they were blasting to get us the bill. Especially our adorable waiter. Every time he came over there was some comment about how beautiful Jasmine was, or he wanted to show us his blacklight nail polish, or tell us how great Amsterdam was (it was at this time he explained he was from Afghanistan, and how it was bad there because he couldn't be open about his sexuality, so he came to Amsterdam which is known as the most gay-friendly city on Earth. And he asked me if I knew about Afghanistan. Not sure if this was because I am American and he wanted to make sure I knew we had been fighting a war there for nearly a decade, or if it was a comment about his opinion of American geographic education, or if we were meant to share an anti-Al-Qaeda moment together, or what...), or pull us up to dance with him. There are some pretty hilarious pictures of Jasmine and I dancing with him, and of him kissing Ian, but I need to find out whose camera they are on. It was awesome.

Well, those are all the stories that were promised. Before I go, some quick notes on life here:

Public transportation is faster, cheaper, more reliable, and altogether more butt kicking than UK public transportation.

There are "bakkerijs" everywhere, and they are amazing.

Produce is once again normal sized! Hand fruit is no longer golf ball fruit. Seriously, the sugar snap peas here are the size of my index finger.

Weather change. What US weather does is a week, UK weather does is a day. What UK weather does in a day, NL weather does in an hour. Just on our walk to school we will start out warm and sunny, then it will sleet. Then it will rain. Then the temperature will drop. Then it will get overcast. Then it will sleet again. Then it will be massively cold and windy. Then the sun will come out. Is the world going to end soon?

Dutch peanut butter is Amazing.

There are no plants here that are not from bulbs. I have three plants, and within one week they have all bloomed. They are really pretty and smell really good too. Ian is babysitting my UK bromeliad, while mom is babysitting my like 9 plants from my apartment, so it is nice to have plants here too, one of my favorite reminders of home. I miss all my apartment plants!!

Ok, keep sending me good luck as I try to feel at "home" here. I have lots of nice people around me, and a lead on some dancing, so I should be alright. And I get to go back to the UK in 3.5days!!!!! Not that I'm counting...


Shout out to the Dutch language. I will learn you a little. Get ready.