Amsterdam! In All its glory!

Amsterdam is fabulous, and I'm actually sad to leave tomorrow morning. The weather has been gorgeous-- hot, sunny, blue skies. Yesterday, my friend Rachael (who I am traveling with for the week or so), and I met up with two other girls from the program, Heather and Rachel (Rachel goes to Haverford and we're friends there, too), and we covered quite a bit of ground. We visited the house where Anne Frank lived when she hid here during World War Two. Very intense, but beautiful all the same. Incredibly how intact everything is. Whew. We then headed to a park and hung out for a bit, before going to see Van Gogh's work at the Van Gogh Museum. After that, we saw the Heineken brewery, where Heineken beer originated. It is now a fun museum with lots of interactive activities. Coolness. After a nice nap, we met up for dinner, before walking through the Red Light District. That was quite the experience. I had heard stories of the women who stand in the windows, but it was quite different seeing them in person, standing in their minimal clothing and smiling at passersby. Wow. It's also funny cause there are "coffee shops" everywhere, that have horrible coffee...but lots of marijuana options. It's so funny to me mostly because Amsterdam is such a quaint town, with a canal and bikers, and then there's the Red-light District with all these sex shops, sex shows, and prostitutes...and then people can be seen just randomly smoking weed, whether in these coffeeshops, or even just in the park, openly! ha.

Oh yes, about the biking. People bike everywhere here, so that's quite the sight....in fact, there are more bikers than residents! whoah! I took a bike tour today, which was fun. We had a quick historical tour of the city, before heading to the country side to see a windmill (occupied now by a family, in order to preserve it), and a Dutch clog and cheese farm. There were cows! I pet one! Ha. After the tour, I sat in the sun and people-watched, while I listened to some music. I really like time on my own, so it was nice, cause Rachael went back to the hostel and I got to just chill. I mean, I love hanging out with other people, but sometimes it's just nice to be on my own. I really realize that now, after being abroad. I found it funny, too, cause there were all these naked children running around, and swimming in this shallow pool in the center of the park. I wanted to take their pictures, but I thought that would be creepy. ha. I just wanted to capture the innocent fun of their playtime in the pool. I felt so happy just watching them splash around in such a carefree way and wanted to capture that...maybe to share that with others, or merely to remind myself of that calm moment, sitting in the park...or just cause pure innocent fun is so rare these days. I find, in general, that I really like to capture moments on film. and I suppose it's for a lot of the reasons I listed above. But that's definitely one of my favorite pasttimes...taking photos of moments...candids, people taking pictures of things-- beyond just the traditional smiling photos. Oh, and also, I love taking pictures of weird mannequins, cute old couples, and just things that are different and unlike anything I've ever seen before.