This just keeps getting better!

The fun started on Friday so that's where I'll start...

Lukusz and I had made plans to meet at the Den Haag central station. I thought it would be good to meet there so that I wouldn't get lost trying to find the show. Wellll, we met as planned but that doesn't mean WE didn't get lost! We must have gotten on and off 4 different trams and I swear we walked past the same gas station 3 times! hahaha. Next time I'll be the navigator ;)
The band we were going to see wasn't scheduled to play till late but I thought for sure by the time we got there we would have missed the first band...WRONG. (mental note: everything starts late here!!) My first European squat experience was quite nice! The place had a big room where the bands played, with a drink bar and a snack bar, couches and cute dogs running around. It also had a vegan cafe with a bunch of literature, fliers, boardgames, plenty of people smoking various things and more cute dogs. We got warm beverages and yummy marzipan and hung out there most of the night. All in all my birthday-eve was awesome!! Except that I forgot my camera! :(

Now for Saturday...

I woke up to an awesome birthday breakfast (I've actually decided that I'm gonna try to keep this tradition going). Robbert, Ineke, Morten, Timo, and Caroline presented me with a 40% off train discount card, a bag of dutch licorice, The Book of Peoples of the World (I had mentioned that I had seen it and liked it at the book store, Ineke remembered), and an awesome apple pie home made by Ineke and Timo! Oh! and I can't forget the card that Caroline made for me and the streamers :) Thanks guys!

My plan for Amsterdam- I was going to get there early, sight see and wait for Ty to call me when they got to the venue. Well, after I found an english People Weekly :) he called me but our connection was horrible so I hung up, figuring I would just meet up with him later at the show. Jump to 3 minutes later, I'm walking down a random street and who do I see?...Ty, Josh, and Matt x2! So we walked and walked and walked for a couple hours. Crossed over dozens of canals, almost got hit by trams, cars and bikes, walked past the Ann Frank house, and browsed Albert Heijn.


We had to be back at the show by 6:30 for dinner at "Jo's", the restaurant in the venue. We stole Alkaline Trio's table :), ate a shit load of food and drank juice.

Stampot...Josh is so Dutch!!

We hung out in the Bway Calls backstage room thing through most of the show. The room was shared with the guys from The Tenement Kids from Utrecht. At first they were super quiet and I thought for sure they just hated Americans but by later in the night they totally opened up and we were all talking about everything from The Fest!! (we're great recruiters), Dutch love and weed! After the show we; hung out in Alkaline Trio's SUPER AMAZING tour bus complete with Gray Goose on TAP hahaha (wish I could have gotten a pic for Kenny but that would have been way too super-fanish) and THREE lounges, visited the Red Light district x3 while listening to Matt Skiba's personal stories on that topic. lol.




We ate Oliebollen, Poffertjes, pizza and fallafel :)...and a few of the boys ate some "muffins"...

Happy boys getting ready to be even happier!

And lastly, made "agreements" with Tomas about "forcing" a certain band to play his AMAZING definitely-worth-it festival!! So this is my promised effort...come on boys!!

Anyway, after saying goodbye to the boys and then figuring out that Amsterdam Centraal was randomly closed, taking a bus to the AIRPORT, waiting and waiting, training to Rotterdam, biking home, I finally got to sleep at 7am to wake up at 4, take a shower and get ready for my birthday dinner!!

Sunday...

Sometime last week Robbert and Ineke had told me they wanted to take me out for my birthday. :) They asked me where I would want to go but seeing that everything here is new to me and that I would love to experience any new place, I told them I really didn't have any ideas and that they should choose.
They could have chosen some crazy seafood restaurant or fake mexican food but instead they chose Olivia's, and I couldn't have been more happy...sooo good! I got the yummy veggie lasagna, REALLY good! But it gets better! For desert I had an Orange Chocolate, Cinnamon nut, and Figg cream homemade ice cream trio :) I'm pretty sure there couldn't have been a better birthday dessert!!




And then to make things even better...on Monday these came...

Thanks mom!! :)

So, I'm across an ocean from all of my friends, family and anyone and everyone I've known longer than a month but by some crazy miracle I had an AMAZING birthday weekend, I still can't even believe it.

Sick days...

This is what we do on sick days...




plus video chat with "yes-ee-ca" and watching lots of dubbed cartoons :)


I'm currently excited about...

Broadway Calls on my birthday (Jan 24th)
Possible local show (finally...local music)
Going out for bday dinner
PARIS with Lauren!!
Springy time with Jessie poo!!

AND

The International Film Festival Rotterdam- They finally completed the English part of their website so I've been going through the a-z listings of ALL of the films and putting the ones I like in my handy "my favorites" folder! I'm going with Ineke to a few randomly picked shows (we don't know what they are yet) but I might go see a few of "my favorites" as well. There's like a million films and I've gone through and read the summaries for about 100 :0

Feeling Royal...

Updates...

Last night I was watching CNN (yeah I do that now...a lot) and saw this... www.greenschool.org. I'm thinking this is the next place I want to go...after Holland. They have both a volunteer program as well as an internship program. They provide room and board and a small stipend. I'm sure there's lots of people applying, especially because of CNN but I emailed them to see what's up. We'll see. Bali??...anyone down for a visit? Oh and, I'm not kidding.

So today I went to Den Haag for the first time! I also rode the Netherland's trains on my own for the first time as well. I'm happy to announce that Den Haag is awesomely beautiful. I really wish I could have met the Queen but I guess there's always next time ;)

Lauren (same Lauren from Germany...see below) met me at the train station, good thing or I would have gotten totally lost. She lives in Den Haag with her "family" and knows the city quite well...great tour guide! :) We decided to go to Scheveningen first, because it was still pretty nice out and well, the beach is nicer on nice days!

Scheveningen actually feels like Coney Island minus the rides and the trash and plus some really big palace looking thing...






Then, after we realized we were not going to find the perfect veggie burger in Scheveningen, we decided to go back to Den Haag where we found almost the perfect veggie burger which I forgot to take a pic of. That was followed by lots of sight seeing...

Jess, this felt like London.


And this guy's into peace, see that?


See the fourth flag? It looks like it has hearts all over it, super cute, but I think they're actually tulips.


The Binnenhof and Hofvijver, more prettyness.


Notice the colors of the Dutch flag...


Pretty gold thing...


So, after looking at all of the Queen's old beautiful palaces and stuff...

Too bad some dude wasn't using it!


Upon getting home I was greeted at the door by Caroline who was extremely excited about something. And don't think she didn't tell me alllll about it...in dutch :) After walking in I quickly figured out what I had JUST missed (I stole this from Ineke's blog)...


Robbert made this for dinner tonight, it's called "rice and beans". But, that name doesn't do it it's deserved justice. It's SUPER good. Might have been the best thing I've eaten since I've been here...or maybe just the closest to my kind of "home cookin'"
(too my crew at home, this would definitely qualify as a really good "Gabe surprise" minus the tofu and mustard)

Shell (like the gas) headquarters are in Den Haag and Shell's real name is Royal Dutch Shell....just in case you were wondering. (my dad, as well as wikipedia taught me these things)

Dutchness...

Do this! Right now, pretend there is a plate in front of you with a nice big juicy steak on it or for you veggies out there maybe a little gardenburger riblet. Anyway, now how do you eat it? Like pretend to pick up your fork and knife, cut it and then take a bite. Please pay attention to which hand you are holding your fork with and if it stays in that hand throughout the cutting and eating process or moves to the other hand.

So, on my second day here in Rotterdam I was taught the proper way to eat. You see, Dutch people eat like this...



The fork is always kept in your left hand, even while bringing the food up and into your mouth. This makes me feel like I'm forcing myself to be left handed. But, now that I'm Dutch (lol)...I eat like this too :)

Tonight I was talking to another American girl about all the "weird" or different things we noticed about the Dutch (or maybe European) culture. It was really cool to be able to talk to someone that understood how these little things could be so weird. Paying to use the toilet, paying for a cup of water, left handed eating, no ice, warmish beverages, lots of sweets :) and cheese, and way more that just aren't coming to me right now. Keep in mind, I still totally love it here, even with all these new weirdo things I'm having to get used to :)

Anyway, on to other things...

My lovely, big, bright room :)....


And my lovely, BIG, comfy deck...


And this is what you see when you turn around...


look down and see our backyard...


This little one looked soooo cold!!...


I'm not so sure Morten was all that happy with me taking pictures of him...


This wasn't no canal or little stream...this was a FROZEN LAKE!!...




Now MAYBE it's worth 800 dollars if you can do this with it...


My first Dutch windmill...


Timo and his fancy etiquette...


And finally, Rotterdam...



And now for your Dutch lesson (on the left is how it sounds in Dutch, right is English)...
Lekker = many different forms of "good" and "yummy"
Donkuvel = thank you
Pindakaas = peanut butter
Chocolate pasta = Chocolate spread (Nutella)
Kip = Chicken
Hack = ground, as in ground beef
Mondag = Monday (not sure why I remember that one)
Ik = I
Pusay = Kitty
I start my dutch class tomorrow (Wednesday) night. Hopefully it goes better than Spanish...probably wont though.

Note: I should probably add "and Kinder Chocolate" to the title, after "Nutella".

Finally! soooo many pictures.

I've been in Europe more than a week and this is my first blog post...that's not good :/

Anyway, everything is great over here, I'm figuring Rotterdam out pretty well. I live very close to downtown and my comfy old dutch bike gets me around pretty well.

I'll let pictures do most of the talking...

We had to change trains in Utrecht on our way to Koln so we walked around a bit. After I took this I went to my first Dutch "coffee shop". (note to my parents: I didn't smoke anything!:)


My first meal in Germany. mmmm fries with mayo, one of the many things I love about German and Dutch culture!!


Jetlag maybe...or just me being myself, the party pooper!


This isn't a great picture but I like it because you can see the cathedral in the background.


My new camera has a fireworks setting...this is what it looks like.




Right after midnight (Me, Jessica, Melissa, Lauren)


Hohenzollern Bridge's lock fence.


Fuzzy and foggy Koln.


German bar scene.


This is what you get to look out and see after walking up 500+ of the smallest coldest steps in the whole world.


It took me a few seconds to figure out what they were and then another few seconds to talk myself out of buying 3 of them to send home.


Here's Jess trying to get our lock to lock on the fence.


And here's our lock, unlocked, with all of our names on it (I made a wish and threw my key into the river).


And now for Rotterdam...

On the walk back from the train station we saw this. What a cute gift!


I took a walk around the neighborhood and found this. Apparently this is the first time in years that it's been cold enough to skate on the canals...lucky me!


This is my house (the one with the motorcycle). See the Heineken sign, I can get a beer two doors down!



And just in case I want to go to mass, a Polish church across the street.


My first bitterballen...yummy, Lekker!! :) (I wish I had a picture of my first Oliebollen!)


And last but not least, my new Dutch teacher. Her name is Caroline and she's very patient with my pronunciation :)

I'm going to try to start updating this more often with news, new words I've learned (I start dutch class this Wednesday), and pictures of everything.