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Adventures in Netherland
I hear everyone has been worried about me cause it took so long for me to make contact with anyone. Well, let me start from the beginnig. First of all my flight from DC to Amsterdam was awesome thanks to Tim! Business class is the way to go...I have so much else to talk about that I dont want to spend all my time raving about how awesome it was so I'll just leave it at that.
So I get off my plane in Amsterdam, remember I'm wearing dress clothes including heels because of sitting in business class, go through passport control. So easy, didn't ask a single question just stamped my book and sent me on my way. So found baggage claim, no problem thanks to Tim's awesome map of the airport, and hoisted my 40 lb pack onto my back and grabed my suitcase and headed to the open. At this point I see ALL of the of the places to buy a train ticket and all the places to head below the airport but CANNOT find a ticket booth with an actual person in it. So I decide that JUST MAYBE I could buy my ticket from a machine...ummm NO the machines were in dutch and dutch only! So all of a sudden I look up and I swear the heavens opened up and shined a light and the extremely large ticket booth with people inside...I swear that wasn't there ten minutes earlier! So I drag my millions of pounds to the counter and tell the guy that I needed to get to Leeuwarden with only one stop. He printed me out a ticket and an itenerary and showed me where I changed platforms and so on. I then asked him how to work the phone booths since I had already been there and couldn't make it work. He proceded to tell me that I was supposed to put the phone card in the machine...I'm thinking no way dude, that won't work. So I went to the phones and decided to call the girl that was supposed to pick me up in Leeuwarden and tell her what time I was going to be there. Let me tell you, its not as easy as just putting the coins in and dialing the number. I found a nice guy to explain it to me though so all was well.
I then headed down to find platform 3...who knew I was looking for spoor 3? When I thought that I had found "spoor 3" a very very cute boy to ask...ya know....just to make sure. He explained to me that the next train would be the one I needed to get on. The funniest thing though, in most places when you are waiting on a train and another one leaves usually there is some sort of beep to warn you to move away from the tracks. Well here this little guy steps out of the front of the train and blows a whistle. I had to work hard to control my laughter. I made it through my train change and on to Leeuwarden. There was a girl at the station waiting to pick me up. We went and picked up the other guy from the ESN and they told me I needed to go get money to move into my dorm. Well guess what, my stupid bank screwed up and the atm would only give me 100 euros...very far from the amount i needed. So after an hour in the housing office they let me move into my room. Gaby and Mark took me to the supermarket to buy some food...very hard to buy food when you can't read to labels to see what kind of food you are buying!! Anyway they translated for me so it was nice. They took me back to my building and I met some of the other students living there. There are two rooms downstairs me and a german guy and everyone above us is german as well except for one guy from india. They all seem nice so it should be fun. I then decided to walk to my school to get my internet turned on in my room. After my 20 minute walk I found out that I needed to bring my laptop with me so that the guy could "configure it". Well crap I thought, I guess I'll figure it out tomorrow. So I woke up this morning and and headed back...this time with my laptop. As I was heading back I was following the river like I was supposed to and I guess I forgot to curve w/ the rive because before I knew it I was in the middle of apartment buildings. AAAHHHHH, where am I?? So I start heading the other direction....my next thought was HOLY s***, I'm in the middle of a freakin' forest!! So I look up and see some buildings way in front of me that look sort of familiar so I started walking towards them. I got to them and thought oh I guess I only THOUGHT they looked familar...crap!! So I continued walking and walking and walking....and well you get the picture. Eventually I see a gate to a park that let me know where on earth I was, at this point I was at the halfway point between my apartment and my school. You have no idea how excited I was to see that. So I got back to my place and looked out my back window and realized that those buildings that looked so familiar to me earlier are the buildings that I can see way off in the distance out of my BACK windows and I came up to my building from the FRONT...hah! So anyway, it has been already been some adventure and its only day 2!!
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