Good morning!

What's up guys?

It's been about two weeks since we last "spoke." In that time, quite a bit has happened. Firstly, last weekend I went to Amsterdam! Minus the eternal bus rides, it was so cool! Amsterdam, as it turns out, has more canals in the city than any other city in Europe. Even more than Venice! When we got there, we went to breakfast and ate the best food ever. Literally, these pancakes were the most delicious thing I've eaten in two months. This is what mine looked like; please forgive the hobo-ness haha, we were just off the bus.

Breakfast eaten, we went on the walking tour, and learned all kinds of fun facts for three hours or so. We walked from one end of the city to the other. That's one thing that I didn't expect- Amsterdam is actually pretty small, but there is a lot of stuff there. We walked past Anne Frank's house and the red light district.  The oldest prostitute in Amsterdam is rumored to be 82 years old, with her own room, and...brace yourself...a two week wait list! Umm....no thank you!

After the walking tour, Hanna (my Norwegian friend) and I went back to Anne Frank's house and met up with a bunch of people we knew completely by accident haha. We all went to the museum and saw the rooms that the Franks and the others lived in for two years. If you haven't read the book, you should.

We got some dinner at a nice Italian restaurant after Anne Frank, followed by a night on the town. It was quite an early night though, because Hanna, this girl Claire, and I were tired. So we went home early haha. The next day, the three of us got up early and went to the Van Gogh museum. It was pretty cool, he was a really talented painter, and the sheer volume of his work is pretty astounding. I mean, he only painted for around 11 years, and came out with 900 paintings, among another few hundred drawings.

We went shopping after hanging out with Van Gogh, and it was a lot of fun! I didn't buy much, but walking around in the stores and seeing the different style of the city. Turns out the Netherlands has more tall people than any other country in Europe. I felt short while walking down the street for one of the first, or perhaps the very first, time in my (adult) life. You know how when you go shopping sometimes, there's that group of shorter, older women (like 50's-60's) that are all together and just hanging out? They usually are at least a head shorter than me, but there, we were the same height. It was pretty weird.

Saturday was shopping day, and Saturday night was the red light bar crawl. That was a good night. We went to five different bars and ended up at a club, just dancin away. I have developed a new appreciation for the club scene since being here- it's pretty fun :)

Waking up Sunday morning was pretty interesting, but once we were on the bus, sleep came pretty easily. Bye bye Amsterdam!

This week was pretty good, but busy as usual. We are getting a lot more work as the semester winds down. I've got another test on Monday for chemistry, despite having just taken one last Monday. Ugh. On Wednesday, Kaylee and I went to the store for Thanksgiving food, and it was snowing! It's been snowing off and on since then too, it's been really nice. On Friday, Kaylee and I made (ok, mostly Kaylee) Thanksgiving dinner for us and around 8 or 9 other people. It was a lot of fun, especially since a bunch of them had never had Thanksgiving before. Christmas dinner is their big holiday dinner here.

I'll put pictures of the snow and of Thanksgiving on facebook eventually, but it may be a while haha. Gotta run, time to study!