Study Abroad 2017: Week 13: Nov. 27th-Dec. 4th (Amsterdam)

(See photos below)

Hi friends! Happy first few days of December. How's the Christmas shopping going? How's the temperature? Let me tell you...it is absolutely freezing here in Sevilla now. It is about 60 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and high 30's or low 40's during the night. That is cold--I don't care what any of you say. I was spoiled with almost 5 full months of very, very warm weather so my body is not used to this change in temperature. It doesn't matter that I am from Colorado either... I still get cold. And that's that.

Well, my week last week was pretty typical. I had classes, taught the kiddos on Tuesday morning, had tutoring... I did meet up with my friend that I made in Morocco, which was fun. I also had my last real International Marketing class because all we have left is our final presentation which is on December 13th. Classes are definitely winding down. Wednesday night, my roommate (Carly) and I had a wine and Christmas movie night. This was the first time I started to acknowledge the Christmas season. I try not to get myself too excited too early. I had decided to wait until December 1st to listen to Christmas music. I figured a Christmas movie on the night of November 29th wouldn't hurt... it was close enough! Carly then left for Prague the next day and I had a night to myself. I don't even remember what I did so it must not have been super exciting. Carly and I have had a great time living together this semester.

So then on Friday, I left for Amsterdam. My flight was at 12:50pm which was great so I didn't have to wake up super early in the morning. On my walk to the bus station, I started listening to Christmas music for the first time as planned, of course. I was in the best mood. There were also Christmas lights in the stores I walked by... ahh yes, so great. The bus wasn't too packed which was nice and I got to the airport with the perfect amount of time to spare. I have my system down now. I didn't need to check in so I got to my gate promptly. The flight to Amsterdam was pretty simple. It was a 3-hour direct flight. Once I landed, my friends met me at a bus station and we went to a grocery store (YAY). That is seriously a tradition in every city I visit. The city felt very much like America... it was strange after being in Spain. So after going to the grocery store, we went to the liquor store to pick up some mulled wine. It was apparently a necessity for me to try. It is a holiday drink that is pretty much vino caliente (warm wine?). It makes more sense to me in Spanish than it does in English, ha. Oh dear... well, it is actually quite tasty. I would recommend it! So to get to where we were staying, my friend had gotten us all bikes to ride because that's what everyone does in Amsterdam apparently. That was definitely one of my favorite parts. I seriously was laughing the entire first ride. It was wonderful and the air was definitely so much colder than Sevilla, but it was refreshing (at the time). I noticed very quickly that the sun sets super early there. It was already almost dark by 5:30pm. After dropping off my stuff and thawing, we made plans to go downtown for dinner and explore the city some. We had bought tickets for the Amsterdam Ice Bar, as well, which was an exciting adventure. However, I admit we are crazy. It was FREEZING. It said -10 degrees Celsius, which is only 14 degrees Fahrenheit...but boy, it was miserable. They serve you drinks in glasses made out of ice which was pretty cool. But we only stayed in the ice bar for about 20 minutes because it was just way too cold. Then after that, we ventured to a few other places in the city and then made our back to where we were staying. The bikes were great but the worst part was knowing that, after riding the warm metro, you still had to bike 5-7 minutes home in the bitter cold...

Saturday morning, we had tickets to the Anne Frank house. It was a very humbling experience and I am really glad I went. It was weird to think that that place is where a young Anne Frank hid out for almost 2 years... it seemed very empty and lonely. I can't even imagine. It was very powerful, though. After we did that, we made our way to this brunch place to meet one of my friend's friends who is actually from the Netherlands. Her name was Femke and she did an exchange program in high school at my friend's school and that's how they met. She was so amazing. I enjoyed talking to her... she had a wonderful accent, hardly noticeable, and spoke incredible English. We ate at this place that is very similar to brunch places in the US, which made me super happy. I cannot wait to have brunch in America... but this meal helped me to push through for the next 3 weeks. The concept of brunch doesn't exist in Spain--¿qué pena, sí? (what a shame, yes?). Anyway, after brunch we went to the Red Light District... I don't really recommend it unless you are big into tourist shops (revolving around weed), coffee shops (which are actually places to smoke weed), and prostitutes. This section of the city was definitely not my favorite part of Amsterdam. I finally found a semi-normal place that at least had post cards. We then had to say bye to Femke, sadly, because she was going back home to a town outside of the city. We were going to go to the tower where there's a swing on top, but we were all chilled to the bone. So we decided to go back and hangout at my friend's place for a little. It took taking a hot shower and almost burning myself with how hot the water was, but I finally warmed up. We were fearful to venture back out, but we had to because I was only there for a total of 48 hours, so we bundled up and set out on our next adventure. We visited this place called the Foodhallen, which is an indoor food market. It was super cool. There were so many different food trucks, but indoor. I'm not sure what you would call them... Then, there was a live DJ and a bar in the middle of everything, of course. It was packed... but there were Christmas lights so it was really pretty. We finally found seats and I had this Mexican bowl type thing. It reminded me of Illegal Petes or Chipotle... I guess I was trying to get everything from home that I could while I was in Amsterdam. It is so much more similar to America than in Spain so it was definitely a plausible thing to do. After dinner, we went to this classy whiskey bar. I haven't tasted much whiskey in my life (if any) and I was unsure if I could even drink whiskey because it is usually made from barley, which is gluten. But I guess when it is distilled, it removes the gluten. I decided to try it and see how I felt. I had a whiskey with ginger ale. It was nice. I drank it nice and slow and we met up with a couple of my friend's friends so we had a nice little group and lots of good conversation. We were there for almost two hours. My stomach did hurt afterwards, but I still don't know if it was from dinner or the whiskey. All day, we had talked about going to this pancake place because the Dutch are known for their pancakes. Well, we forgot to check the hours of the pancake place and, because we talked for so long at the whiskey bar, it closed before we got pancakes. I was devastated. We went to a different pancake place but they of course didn't have gluten-free, so I didn't get anything. 😥 After that, we went home and went to bed.

Sunday morning, we got up and made breakfast since we were staying with my friend who had a communal kitchen. Then, my friend and I went to Hillsong church. I was soooooooo excited to go... I have missed going to church so much and my heart just needed to be with other believers and people who wanted to sing praises to Jesus. It was at the Amsterdam theater right next to the water. It was beautiful. The service was in English but there were Dutch lyrics under the English ones, which was so cool. People were so welcoming and asked where we were from and were so fascinated by the fact we were Americans studying abroad. I felt so special. The worship and sermon was both great and just what I needed. After that, things flew by. The service ended at almost 1pm and my flight was at 5pm. Yet, we still needed to eat lunch, see the famous letters in Amsterdam, and possibly go to the Rijksmuseum. We only had time to go to lunch and barely see the letters and it was almost 3pm. I started to realize we really should head back to get our stuff because I needed to be at the airport by 3:30pm. Well... we didn't get back to my friend's place to get our stuff until 3:35pm...so that is when things really started to get stressful. We still had to bike to the bus stop to catch the bus to the airport and we just missed it. It is now 3:50pm. We decide it's better to take an Uber, but the Uber couldn't find us and kept rerouting. So we jumped on the next airport bus instead. It didn't help that Amsterdam is not a small airport. I started realizing that I could miss my flight. I checked my gate and the security line wait time online. It said 15-20 minutes when I first checked which was not great. Also, the bus said it wasn't going to get to the Airport until 4:30pm and that is when my boarding time was. We couldn't do anything at that point though, and luckily the bus arrival time changed to 4:20pm and that is when we got there. Once we got there, I told my friend a rushed goodbye and started running. I ran through one part of the airport after another. I finally reached security which was really close to my gate and there was a pretty short line. It was 4:25pm (I run fast). I did ask to cut someone that looked nice since I was still scared the line could take awhile. At first, she said she was worried about what others behind her would think, but the people behind her heard me and said they were okay with it, thank goodness. Well... if the security had been similar to the Sevilla security, I would have been fine. But of course it had to be complicated. They had a fancy scanner and a lot of automatic machinery I have never seen. You had to put every bag in a bin (even your suitcases and big bags) and send it through the machine. Then, if there was any question, it was sent to on a conveyer belt where the security guards had to take each bag and open it up and go through it. Or there was a second conveyer belt where things were cleared immediately. So, side story. We had bought peanut butter for the weekend and my friend didn't want it. Well, I love peanut butter but they don't have it in Spain, and even if they do, it's very hard to find. So, I decided to try and bring it with me. However, it was the all-natural stuff, so it was more liquid than not. I was nervous it wouldn't get through but my friend said to at least try because the worst they could do is throw it away, which is what would have happened to it anyway. Well, my bag got put in the search conveyer belt line, and I was beating myself up so badly because I was guessing it was because of the peanut butter. That's not even the worst part. Something happened, and they had to stop the entire security line for some reason. I had at least five or more bags in front of mine that needed to be opened up and searched and it was 4:35pm. My gate closed at 4:45pm... it had said on my ticket. I was feeling sick to my stomach. I started checking new flights from Amsterdam to Sevilla that were later that night. I was thinking I might have to wait until the next day to go home. That is not a good feeling. I still don't know what happened but that security line was not moving. Tons of guards were coming over and talking to this one lady. I felt the color drain from my face. I told a security guard my gate closed in five minutes, but of course he said one minute and then forgot about me. The lady in charge of checking the bags that go through the machine was watching me--I could tell. Well, it was 4:43pm and the line finally started to move again, but there were still five or six bags in front of me that needed to be checked. A couple came up behind me and said something to the security guard in a different language and the security guard grabbed their bags and moved them to the front of the line. That's when I was like, "Nuh-uh." And I was desperate to get anyone's attention. The lady who had been watching me (the one in charge of the x-ray scanner for the bags) saw me panic and asked me which bag was mine. I showed her and she luckily grabbed someone and said they needed to help me. Bless her heart. Finally, two minutes later--so at 4:45pm--when my gate was closed, they grabbed by bag to search it. Well, she asked me if I had an umbrella in there... um, it's Amsterdam where it rains almost every day. Yes, I had an umbrella. However, I had a big camping-type backpack and I had no idea where I had the umbrella. And she wouldn't let me touch it. She said if I touched it, the process was void and they'd have to start all over. I was so antsy. She was at least nice, but she ended up having to dump out literally everything to find it. Then, she did a nice thorough search of it as I was thinking... "I PROMISE THERE IS NO BOMB OR WEED OR WHATEVER YOU THINK THERE IS IN THERE." Then, she had to check the top of my bag for my chapstick...which, sure, I guess it's a liquid, but she didn't catch my two bottles of lotion and peanut butter. Ugh. Finally, she said she was finished. All my stuff was sprawled out all over the table--including bras, shoes, socks, and everything embarrassing. I started stuffing stuff in as fast as I could. It was 4:51pm. The lady asked me when my flight was and I told her it was five minutes ago. She goes, "Oh my" and starts helping me the best she could. As I took a glance back at the security line, it was empty. Of course--so my timing of going through security was apparently awful. Also, there had been two lines and if I would have been in the other line, I would have been through so much faster. People that I had cut in line had already gone through. Once I packed everything back in my bag, I sprinted to my gate. I could see it from where I was. As I arrived, there was still a lady out front and she sees me arrive and goes, "You're late." I was gasping for air and I go, "I know... there was a hold-up in security. Please tell me I can still go on." She waved me through the ticket line where I scanned my ticket and ran through the jetway. There was another worker exiting, heading my way, and she goes, "Just in time." I was thinking to myself, "You don't know what I've been through, lady." But she was right--I was just in time. In fact, I was the last person on the plane.

So as a summary, I do not recommend you ever doing that. I did make it home however and have learned my lesson. I would prefer to wait nine+ hours in the airport like I did last weekend than to go through what I went through to get home.

But, I guess there were lessons learned this weekend and I can still cross Amsterdam off my list. I was hoping Sevilla would seem much warmer compared to Amsterdam but it seems like it is colder here too. At least we have more sun here than in Amsterdam and we could use some rain because it is so dry, pero bueno. Hope you all have a great week! Enjoy some Christmas shopping, music and movies!!