I have arrived! 5/27/2014

After being in transit for nearly 12 hours, I have finally arrived in Amsterdam! I began my journey by bidding farewell to Philadelphia as I plowed through a mountain of crab fries at the airport, while the lady across from me picked at some trail mix and grapes. As I boarded the plane to London I stumbled when a man asked me about my Nike "trainers", giving him only a blank stare. I quickly recovered, ate some food plane, slept for about two hours, and landed in the UK, my motherland. After a quick second flight I was in the Netherlands!

For the past two weeks I had been stressing about my transportation options once I arrived in Amsterdam. I decided to be adventurous and take the train. I was feeling uncharacteristically bold and I asked a man speaking English at the baggage claim if he could tell me a little bit about the train and getting to central station. He ended up waiting with me after he had already gotten his bag, helping me purchase my ticket, riding the train with me, and helping me find a cab at the station that was not going to rip me off. This gave me a little more faith in the human race.

For the first week here, we're staying in the Stayokay Zeeburg Hostel. We get free meals, free wifi, and really nice rooms. I already blew a fuse out in our room with my hairdryer (stupid) and I've already misplaced my room key. Figures. We spent our first evening sampling traditional Dutch pancakes on De Pannenkoekenboot  (the pancake boat). The architecture here is a mix of traditional brick (in the more central parts of the city) and very modern. Most apartments and houses are very square with large glass windows. Sustainability seems to be huge here as well.   Solar panels, recycling bins, and bikes are everywhere. Today, after orientation, we learned some Dutch phrases and ate a light lunch at a bar called Roest on the beach before embarking on a walking tour of the city. Amsterdam is very walkable and pretty small so we managed to see a ton in just 2 hours.

We finished the walking tour at a bike shop, where we all had bikes waiting for us. American people tend to be significantly taller than Americans, as do their bikes. Most of us can barely touch the ground form our bikes despite the seats being completely lowered. Five of us started to head back to our hostel on the bikes and obviously got lost in the pouring rain. Tomorrow we're taking a boat to two different cities in the Netherlands, and we start class on Thursday. Here are some crappy iPhone pictures I took on the walking tour today. Oh yeah, we ate raw Herring, Which is apparently all the rage here. Enjoy!