Hitting the Ground Running

After we got back from Portugal, I didn't have very much of a chance to sink into that after-vacation-depression that always happens. Even though there was a cloud of volcanic ash hanging over Portugal, we managed to get home on Monday afternoon like we'd planned. The night before there had been a lot of discussion about what we were going to do "if" the plane didn't fly, but no one had any good solutions, so it's a good thing we were able to get home. Milja picked me up from the airport on Monday afternoon and I spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking, checking my e-mail, and being completely exhausted, since we'd gotten up at 3:00 a.m. the night before to leave.
On Tuesday morning I was out of bed early again. Milja and I left at 6:30 to take a train to Maastricht for the Maastricht University College experience day that I'd signed up for a few months before. Sitting in the train for three hours on the way to Maastricht, I had my few hours of after-vacation-depression. I was still exhausted because sleeping until 6:30 in the morning didn't do much to help me catch up on the sleep I'd missed the night before. Plus it was gray and freezing cold, and we were sitting in a dirty, empty train.
Maastricht is close to Belgium. Belgium has lots of chocolate. And so, logically, does Maastricht. I've inherited Grandpa Don's love for chocolate, so seeing all the windows full of chocolate helped make me feel better immediately. Besides the chocolate shops there were bakeries, which I've really grown to love this year. It didn't take long before being around the chocolate and the bread, and walking through the streets in Maastricht drove my after-vacation-depression away. It wasn't just the stores that made me happy- right when we walked out of the train station I could tell the city was beautiful. We had to cross a bridge and after walking past more stores with chocolate and bread, we walked through much older streets full of churches and cobbelstone roads. There were cafes with terraces everywhere and little boutiques with expensive looking shoes and clothes. As we got closer to the university I started to get the "college city" feeling. There were students biking and walking everywhere with backpacks full of books, listening to their iPods, and talking on their phones. We were completely surrounded by buildings that belonged to the university- all old and beautiful.

I would say that there were a total of about 40 students at the experience day, probably half of which were German and the other half Dutch. I was immediately interesting because my English was so good (University College Maastricht is taught in English) and everyone wanted to talk to me and know what I was doing at the experience day and how my year here has been. I could tell right away that it was a different group of students than the one I'm used to being around at school.
We spent the first half of the day listening to a talk about schedules, what kind of classes you can take and how they're divided, what the college looks like, and what sorts of jobs and housing are available in the area. Then there was a lunch and in the afternoon we were split into groups to try the "Problem Based Learning" method that they teach at UCM. The "Problem Based Learning" method is based on students having only two subjects per quarter and only about ten to twelve hours of class every week. Out of those class hours, only four of the hours are lecture hours. For every subject you start the week with a lecture from the professor, then you have a discussion about the topic with a small group of students, leave and do research by yourself, have another discussion, and then end the week with another lecture from the professor. What you learn through "Problem Based Learning" then has to be applied to a paper, an exam, etc. At the experience day we had a discussion about whether or not abortion should be allowed for selecting what kind of child a couple wants to have. The practice Problem Based Learning didn't work exactly like it was supposed to, but I did get the idea that I would be able to learn a lot that way.
At the end of the day I couldn't help it- I was picturing myself at school in Maastricht, living in an apartment there, working at one of the cafes in the city, buying bread and chocolate in the stores there.

Wednesday was quite the day for me, because I mustered up all my strength and went to school for a few hours. What a big step... Two and a half weeks is pretty long time not to go to school, and to be honest, after Wednesday it took a while before I went back again. Now that the weather's nice and there's less than two months left of school, there are all sorts of holidays and days when we don't have to go to school like usual.

Thursday was Hemelvaard Dag. I'm not really sure what kind of holdiay that is, but it meant that we didn't have school Thursday or Friday. Thursday afternoon I had my first race of the track season, and my first race after Portugal. Originally I was going to run a 3000m race, but the coaches had decided that I should try 800m to work on my speed. Wednesday night and Thursday morning I managed to get myself incredibly worked up. An hour before we had to leave for the race, I was so nervous that my hands were shaking. Because it was the first race after Portugal I put all of this pressure on myself to run really well. The results ended up being just okay, which I was disappointed in. I ran a faster 800m time than I ever have before, but not by as many seconds as I had expected. Plus, I'd forgotten how hard it is to race 800m. You're uncomfortable the entire time that you're running- it's like one long tortorous sprint. I don't deny though, that it probably was good for me.

Again, I didn't have time to wallow in the fact that the 800m didn't go exactly how I wanted it to go, because right after I'd cooled down from the race, Milja and I went to pick Antea up at the train station. When I went to Texel a month or so before, Antea and I had decided that she would come to Akersloot for Hemelvaard, because after that we couldn't think of a time when we'd be able to spend a weekend together again. There was a minor incident where Milja got a cramp in her toe and had to pull over on the side of the road for ten minutes, but besides that we managed to bring Antea back to Akersloot without any problems. We didn't do all that much on Thursday night: drank tea, looked at pictures from Portugal, walked on the beach with Misha (the puppy), and watched a movie on t.v.

Friday morning I had to bring my bike to the bike shop to get fixed. It wasn't really broken, but I'd somehow ended up with a flat tire, and since I didn't want to walk an hour back home, I'd ridden my bike anyway. Apparently that wasn't a very good idea, but nothing the bike mechanics in Akersloot can't take care of. Once we'd dropped my bike off Antea and I took the bus and then the train into Amsterdam. On one hand, it was beautiful there because for the first time since September or so the sun was shining and it was warm. On the other hand, the garbage workers in Amsterdam were on strike, and there was garbage everywhere. It was disgusting. We didn't want to sit down on any benches, or stand in the square because everywhere you looked there were piles and piles of garbage. Even the side streets had canals and apartments overflowing with garbage.
Instead of going shopping right away like we usually do when we're in Amsterdam, Antea and I had decided to go the Albert Cuyp market which is a market that they have every day in Amsterdam. It took us about half an hour (and a few added minutes of being lost) before we got there, but all the walking ended up being worth it. I know I should probably stop, because I always bring it up- but walking through the market was another "Europy" moment. Everything was super cheap, and a lot of it was completely worthless too, but it was fun to look at. We walked through the food part of the market more than once because there was so much to look at: nuts, chocolate, fruit, vegetables, fish, Turkish food, Vietnamese food, stroopwaffels, ice cream, and fresh smoothies.
When we'd seen everything there was to see at the Albert Cuyp market we'd had enough walking, so we took the tram back to the street by the Dam where you can shop (I always think of Dad when I see or ride a tram because I remember him warning me more than once about how fast and silent they are: a.k.a. deadly). Our attempt at shopping was pretty weak, because both of us were exhausted from walking around the market all morning. Instead we ended up spending most of our time in this store called "Rituals" with all these expensive lotions and creams that smell really good. I don't know how we made the connection between lotion and living in Amsterdam, but we ended up talking about what it would be like if we were both going to college here, and all the things we would put in our apartment (expensive lotions included- forget the fact that we would be dirt poor).
Around six o'clock we were ready to find someplace to eat, and we dragged ourselves all the way to the Leidseplein for dinner. Ever since I went with Milja and Anita to watch flamenco dancing on the Leidseplein I've been wanting to go out to eat there, because the atmosphere is so gezellig." It's the perfect mix of tourists and Dutch people. You don't feel like you're in a trap of people taking pictures and trying to see everything in five minutes, but you can still enjoy being around everyone speaking different languages and sitting on the terraces.
Way earlier in the day Antea and I had decided that we wanted to eat foreign food for dinner. Walking up and down the long street with restaurants by the Leidseplein we had a lot to choose from. There was Turkish, Thai, Indian, Chinese, Japanase, Vietnamese, and Italian food everywhere. We finally picked a Chinese restaurant with lots of people inside and a medium priced menu. There's nothing like sitting down in a comfortable chair and being served good food after you've been walking around Amsterdam all day. We were so grateful to the waiter every time he brought us something, and we spent a good couple of hours sitting in the restuarant. When we were done it was only about 8:30, and we spent some more time walking around. There happened to be an H&M still open with way cooler clothes than all of the other H&M's we'd seen that day, which meant shopping a little bit more, and then eventually taking the train back to Uitgeest where Milja picked us up (whoops- it happened again) and brought us home.

The next morning was get up and go- again. I was out of bed at 7:30 to run, Antea had set her alarm clock and was just getting out of the shower when I got back, we ate a fast breakfast and were in the bus by 9:00. We'd bought online tickets for Madame Tussaud where both of us had been wanting to go all year. The reason we hadn't gone all year? Tickets were 20 euros and turned out not to be worth it. It is incredibly cool seeing all of the famous people almost in living flesh and blood (wax) but it only takes about an hour to see all of them and take your picture in various poses standing next to them. Add in the fact that there are mobs of tourists walking through all the pictures you're taking, pushing, and driving you absolutely crazy, and it totally wasn't worth the 20 euros. At least now our curiousity is satisfied.
Since we'd started out the day as tourists, Antea and I figured that we should just keep on going the way started, and bought tickets for a boat tour around Amsterdam. If you ever happen to be in Amsterdam, and then you happen to decide you want to go on a boat tour, then you're in luck. There are lots of companies that offer boat tours in Amsterdam. We picked a one hour boat ride for eight euros, and this time we weren't disappointed. Since we'd already spent the weekend in an "if" mood (if we went to school in Amsterdam, if we lived there) we added "if" we lived on a houseboat, or in a huge flat along the canal to the list. Even though we'd already walked by most of the places that we road by, or heard about the places, seeing them from the canals gave us a new perspective that made everything much more interesting and prettier than usual. We spent the whole ride enjoying how sunny it was and talking about "if's."
Antea and I had plans to meet Milja around 2:00 because Milja and I had tickets to see Sound of Music (yes the musical!) in Dutch and Antea had to go back to Texel. By the time we were done with our canal tour it was only about 12:00, so we sat on a terrace for a while and drank coffee. It was incredibly busy though, and there was still garbage lying around everywhere, so the atmosphere wasn't very nice. Eventually our legs were rested enough that we could get up and walk again, and we decided to walk to a shopping mall in this old church building that I had just noticed and was all of a sudden dying to go into. On our way to the old church/mall (which was about a block away) we came across this group of men in blue shirts, and one in a karate outfit. After they called us over to them, we found out that they were all at a bachelor's party and the man in the karate suit was the bridegroom. For his bachelor's party he had to have 2000 kilograms of women kiss him on the cheek. Before I got used to the whole Dutch-cheek-kissing thing, I never would have agreed to this, but now I'm a natural, so I stepped right up on the scale and gave him three kisses. We'd done our good deed for the day, and made it the rest of the way to the old church/mall without anything else exciting happening.
After we'd walked around the mall for about five minutes and gone to the bathroom there (it took a while for us to get in, because between the two of us we only had fifty cents, which meant we had to walk through the gate at the same time like we were one person- it might have looked a little weird) we went and sat at the Dam waiting for Milja. She found us there and took a picture, saying that we'd found the most touristic place to sit in all of Amsterdam.
This time it was extra sad saying goodbye to Antea, because we both knew that it was the last time we had to spend a weekend together before we have to go home.

The fact that we were going to see Sound of Music- the musical that I spent hours and hours watching over and over when I was little- made me feel better. Milja and I made it just in time, because it turned out to be further walking to the Theater Carre than we thought. The musical was good, and just the same as it would have been English- except it was in Dutch, even all of the songs. There was another thing I could cross off my to do list- seeing a musical.
We walked back to the central station again, and in the nice weather Amsterdam was so... alive. Everyone was outside sitting on the sidewalks, boating in the canals, ordrinking a glass of wine by a cafe.