Days 91-96

HAPPY HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!!

If you all didn't already know, vandaag (today) is thanksgiving! A glorious holiday for giving thanks to the wonderful people and things in your life. It's also a great time to stuff your face with scrumptious Thanksgiving food, from turkey to stuffing to potatoes to pie to EVERYTHING. I hope all of you have the most delightful Thanksgiving plans. Today is going to be an uber exciting day for a few reasons: A. Today is Thanksgiving, so naturally it's going to be awesome. B. I get to miss my Dutch class for our CIEE thanksgiving dinner, which is truly spectacular. C. the marvelous and delightful Clair Miller is going to be in Amsterdam with me for thanksgiving, which I couldn't be more thankful for. D. There's going to be a plethora of food, people, drinks, merriment, and thanks-giving tonight- and that's enough to be excited about as it is. Today I am going to attempt (note: Attempt is the key word here) to make mashed potatoes. The concept sounds simple enough. boil potatoes, mash the potatoes, right? With my luck, they will be a grade-A disaster. Which is why I am going to spend most of my day trying to make some yummy mashed potatoes. Our program is full of big eaters, so I gotta make a TON. We'll see how this goes...

So I've realized that after each blog entry that I write, I always forget some important or particularly funny/amusing story from each entry. Which is why today, in this lovely entry, I will make up for the lost silly events that have transpired over the past few weeks that I have failed to mention previously. I must warn you, the remaining part of this blog will be very random, colloquial (a nice way to put it), and just random. End of story.

I'll start off with my morning today. I had set my alarm to wake up later, by 10:30 or so, so that I could sleep in. But around 8:30 am I hear this "FWAP" noise hit my window, and it sounds sort of wet and squishy. Half asleep and completely confused, I look out my window and see a man with a HUGE sponge attached to the end of the stick, washing my windows. I didn't actually see the man because I typically look like a hot mess in the am- and no one wants to see that! But Strangely, that squishing sound lulled me back to sleep for a few hours. And now my windows are squeaky clean- GREAT SUCCESS. A delightful way to start thanksgiving.

So last tuesday (november 16?) I was biking to Crea Café to do some homework. After I locked up mijn fiets (my bike), I started to walk by the canal to enter the front door. I see about twenty-five people alongside the canal, some with cameras, some without, and I was wondering what all the hoo haa was about. And then I saw the claw. It looked like the Claw from Toy Story at Pizza Planet, where the claw machine/arcade game lowers down and clamps onto one of the squishy alien toys as they all murmer "the clawwwwww........." Except that this claw machine wasn't on a quest for little rubber aliens. Instead, this claw machine was attached to a mini canal/tug boat, and it was fishing at the bottom of the canal for old bikes and other rubbish that had accumulated at the bottom for the past few months. Here are a few pictures of the claw machine picking up garbage from the bottom of the canal.


garbage left over from finding crap on the bottom of the canal.
They do this all around the city every once in awhile, because too frequently people throw their crap, including old or broken down bikes, into the canals. It's pretty gross (hence why you would NEVER want to swim in a canal) but sort of groovy nonetheless.

A few weeks ago (it was a Monday, I think), we all went to tour a squatter's house. It was about to be shut down by the government, but for some reason the people at the squatter's house got the eviction turned around. I actually couldn't understand, and I can't still really recall how they didn't end up getting evicted, but I am quite glad that they did! Three Dutchies showed us around- two ladies and a man- and they have been also squatting there. It was formerly used as a school, an auditorium, and now it's a squatter's location where students and artists alike can come and exhibit their artwork. They even have a mini area for concerts, with a stage, a bar, and everything!

the bar
groovy seating
a view into the rest of the house.

It was cool to see all of this going on. Apparently they have concerts and art exhibitions with cool people and cheap drinks. May have to investigate more into this in the near future...

Ok I hate to also be a debbie downer (wha wha WHAAAAA) but I just checked my calendar and I only have 22 days LEFT in Amsterdam!!! There's so much more to see and to do. There's also SO much homework piling up currently that my last three weeks here will be spent at the library, or at Crea doing work.....super duper. But I do have 22 more days left, which is a decent amount of time, which means that I must live up my last moments here before they all fly by.

One lovely and sweet thing that I have seen not once, but at least TWICE here this week is couples holding hands while biking. I don't know what the duck it is, but I find it utterly sweet and adorable. I even saw two men, with a child on each of their bikes, and the KIDS were holding hands as the men (assuming they are together) biked side by side. One of the sweetest family moments I've seen here. Once again, it cements my love for people. It also proves that there are the best people to watch and observe in Amsterdam. I am really going to miss that after December.

fun Dutch words:

ik feetstend = I am partying
verrast=surprising
When I searched for "turkey" in my Dutch translator, it came up with Turkije, ie the country
aardappel=potato
pompoen=pumpkin

Have a wonderful day today everyone- celebrate lots, give thanks to those you love, and enjoy life!!