I LOVE AMsterdam!

Friends and Family Come to Visit!

March 5^th-8^th

Monday was probably the most stressful workday I have had abroad so far. In my Gender and Sexuality class, we didn’t have anything major due, but we had to provide an outline to our teacher on our final paper topic, which was extremely difficult to narrow a topic down for a 25-page paper. On top of that we had this extremely long and tedious writing assignment due for our Dutch Identity class. It consisted of three parts, with each part fairly extensive. I definitely should have started this WAY before Sunday night and Monday because it was extremely stressful to finish it on time. I was up until about 4 am on Monday working on it, and then immediately after my first class I went to my new favorite caf� Zappos worked for about 4 hours in between classes in order to finish it. It needed to be submitted by 5pm and I did the impossible and even submitted it a tad bit early, and was able to go and relax for an hour or so before the long three-hour class. After class on Monday night, I quickly rushed to meet Jillian and her dad and brother for dinner down in Leidsplein! They were eating a late dinner and luckily I was able to meet up with them. It is so nice to have friends and family in town – to see familiar faces.

Tuesday we had was our Dutch Art class and all I had to do was a little reading. In class today we were going to visit the Rijksmuseum, which is probably one of the most famous in Amsterdam. It is so nice that we have museum cards that our program provided for us, we get in free to almost every museum in Amsterdam! Jill’s dad and brother actually met us at the museum and went along with us as our teacher gave us a simple tour. After class we went back and got ready to go out to dinner. Our good friends from Penn State also arrived in Amsterdam today, Kevin and Jimmy from KDR so I was extremely excited to see them as well. We all met down in Leidsplein for dinner and drinks. We ended up going to this Argentinean restaurant – most of us got the fajitas and the boys got steaks.

Tuesday nights are very quiet in Amsterdam, so we were pretty much the only people in the bar, but even though it was just us we always have a good time no matter what! After awhile of being there we all decided it was time to go home and get rest for tomorrow and tomorrow night!

On Wednesday I decided to be the tour guide for the boys!! I set up a whole plan for them for Wednesday, what to see, what to do, where to eat, and everything. They went to the Anne Frank House early, and since I had already done that with my dad I ended up just meeting them outside after. I biked down, which was huge mistake because the weather was TERRIBLE it started to rain and was just a miserable day. After they came out of Anne Frank I took them just down the road to the famous pancake bakery, I had been there also but it’s so good I wanted to go back. When we got there, the sign on the door said it didn’t open till 12 and it was 11:15 at this point, so we had some time to kill in between. The boys were so excited to get some good old fashion pancakes, they all study abroad in Italy where no such thing exists. We all got savory and sweet pancakes, and the meal was so good I could go back and eat there a million times. After brunch we decided to go to the Heineken Museum. I had already done this as well, but I decided to go in with them because I think this might be the only museum I actually enjoy. It is so interesting because you always see someone you know randomly in there. The boys ran into some girls from Florence, and I actually ran into some girls that go to Boulder that I knew from mutual friends. It’s so interesting to hear people’s reactions when they find out that I am studying abroad here. A lot of people are like, “wow I didn’t even know you could study here.” The general consensus I get from people, is how much they love the city of Amsterdam, which I completely agree, it is so amazing! After we were done I went back to our apartment to get ready for dinner with Jill’s family, it had been a long day. I rushed quickly down to Leidsplein to meet them for dinner at a very nice seafood place.  We all went down to Rembrandtsplein to our favorite Wednesday nightspot Coco’s!

Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands