Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Everything has been great here! I got an email from a guy at the school last week who wanted me to go see him so on Tuesday before class I went to visit him. He told me that they started a new program to give OU students a scholarship to come here and that I would be the first to recieve it. Then I had to sign a paper showing that I got it. After that he pulled a camera out of his desk and goes "I got a camera so that I can take a picture to send to OU" I was thinking hmmm this is very odd so he got up and went to find someone to photograph him handing me the piece of paper. I am very interested to see what happens to the picture...we would never do something like that in America so I'll see.
On Wednesday we were supposed to meet for class at the train station which is on the opposite side of town from where we live. We decided to meet outside our houses 10 min. before class with our bikes. So I got ready and went in my houses' bike shed to get mine to find that it was GONE!! I was sooo pissed off and had only 10 min. to get to class and the train station is about a 30 min. walk. All the bikes here have this metal thing over the back tire and we always see people riding on this while someone pedals. We decided to try. It was a HORRIBLE idea as neither I nor the girl whose bike I was riding on had ever tried it before. All I can say is the ride was quite wobbly and very tiring. I saw the other girl the next day and she said "my legs are soo sore" and I replied "well my butt is soo sore!" My instructor for that class always asks me how to say different words. We always walk around town for class to look at different architecture and I usually walk near the front of the group but at one point I was standing in the back and he started trying to figure out how to say something and started looking around then goes "where's my American friend?" It's very amusing for me. All of my instructors look at me when they unsure about a word and often times have me explain the meanings of words to the class.
I then had to prepare the powerpoint for my presentation on Oklahoma that I had to give in Dutch Culture the next day. I wasn't sure if people liked it or not but everyone kept coming up to me the next day telling me how great my presentation was. One girl from Bulgaria who wasn't in class that day actaully apologized for missing it. She said the Turkish girls were telling her how great it was. Odd...but nice!
Saturday morning we met at 9 to head to Amsterdam! We had a great time. We got there around noon and first headed to the Van Gogh museum. For my fellow okies out there I have been informed it is NOT van goo!! Everyone laughs at me when I pronounce it so I spent our walk working on my gutteral g's. The other 3 girls had looked at the map before we left so I assumed they knew where we were going. After walking in the wrong direction for about 15 minutes I took over navigation. If you read my earlier posts you might be thinking thats a horrible idea but I'm actually a great navigator when I have a map. I only suck when relying on my memory of landmarks! Amsterdam is actually a little difficult because everytime a street curves 3 inches it changes street names! If you ever go make sure you have a great map...or take public transportation. No need though...we walked the whole city...it wasn't too difficult. It was a great museum! I saw many of his works that I had never seen images of before and I liked many of them more than starry night and the other big famous ones. They also had all of his works set up in progression of his life so I learned a lot as well. Outside the museum this woman came up to us saying she was from England and had come to see museums and her purse had been stolen and she didn't have enough money to get home and needed 5 euros. Thanks to Dad for being smart about the lady who tried to pull almost the same stunt in NYC this summer I knew better!! After that we headed to the Anne Frank Huis. We had to stand in line for about 40 minutes but it was completely worth the wait. It was so amazing to see in real life what I read about so many years ago. It was nothing like I had imagined. For some reason I thought it would be much smaller than it actually was. It was very moving for sure. After that we walked to dam square to hang out and wait for it to get dark so we could walk through the red light district. The district was very humorous to me. It was completely full of tourists. Also the sex shops were more like tourist shops than sex shops. The girls in the windows were def. interesting...they do come in all shapes and sizes! I was shocked to see the amount of restraunts in the area. I don't think I would be able to bring myself to eat there. Each time I saw the cook I would be wondering how long it had been since he visited one of the girls. I did see an Indian food restraunt called Kamasutra...hahaha! The thing I found most interesting were the amount of live sex shows you could go see. As we were walking back to the station this guy goes "hey girls" so we all turn around and he asked "wanna see a show?" I was like "no thanks!" At the station while waiting for our train some girls from Belgium that we go to school with showed up. It was nice to see them and have some other people to talk to on the way home. We had to change trains in Amersfoort. When we got on I tried to tell everyone that we needed to go to the back half of the train because it was going to split and half was going to Groningen. No one listened to me. The train stopped in Zwolle and and we heard the conductor say that the train would be splitting here so we got off to go to the other part. When we got off I looked at the train and told them we needed to go left but they argued saying they asked someone and we needed to go right. So we took off in a dead sprint to the front of the train. We got there and low & behold that was the part going to Groningen. When we realized this the little man blew the whistle and the doors started to close. We were like OH s*** and took off running in the other direction laughing like crazy people. Everyone was staring out the windows at us because the girls from Belgium were shriking about missing our train. Luckily we made it right before it left. I realized a couple things. 1: I am severely out of shape. 2: I absolutely despise running!!
- comments