My First Week In Amsterdam Part I.

So, it's been a really busy, semi-stressful, and overwhelming past week. But, I think thats normal for moving to a new city and getting adjusted...particularly with an international city that has all of its quirks and cultural norms one from America has never experienced before.  I also feel like I have been here for two months...time has gone by really quickly and yet really slowly at the same time.

I'll start from the beginning.  Before I left, I was super excited to come to Amsterdam. It was a strange feeling because although I was going some place new I was not that nervous for some reason.  I think it helps that I have two friends from home here. I was ready, nonetheless, to finish a great LONG winter break and head out on a 5 month adventure.  Note to self: when in doubt about the weight of huge duffels or suitcases, schmooze over the lady or man behind the check-in kiosk.

When I arrived in Amsterdam, my study abroad group CIEE set us up to stay in a hostel for 2 nights since the dorms were not ready and they wanted to start orientation.  I had stayed at this same hostel, StayOk (a student hostel), on my Travel for Teens program a few summers ago.  Everyone had a TON of luggage and then cramming it into a tiny hostel room with 4-6 people in each bunk-bed filled room, you can imagine the difficulty had moving around and such.  My body-bag of a duffel sat on the little, unnecessary table. To even try and get to your clothes took some serious effort, and after the first hour of trying to find a spare shirt flying around my larger bag I gave up. I also was not smart by having a huge duffel (the body-bag mentioned earlier) NOT on wheels, and in Europe since everything was built way before the invention of elevators today people are left carrying  (or dragging in my case) their shit.  Orientation was good, but I think if we all came 2 days later to just move into our dorms rather than move around a lot with heavy suitcases it would have been a little more relaxing and put everyone at ease about temporarily moving to a new city.

I finally moved in to my dorm on Tuesday (Jan.26th).  It is GIGANTIC!!! Holy guacamole it's like two or three times the size of my room at home.  I live in Plantage (french sounding) Muidergracht (a word that I cannot pronounce like the Dutch do...more on that later). There is a cat named Felix who lives in my building to get rid of the mice. Amsterdam has a mice problem because of the canals and the way water attracts the rodents. Not a fan of rodents or cats, but Felix seems to be pretty chilled out most of the time. He likes playing with my shoelaces when I am making breakfast in the morning. The Plantage area in Amsterdam was a plantation years ago. It is a part of the Centrum (center of Amsterdam) which is an incredible place to be in Amsterdam and I am really lucky to have gotten housing here.  Plantage is sort of an island off the main core of Amsterdam (yet still considered the center) where there is a zoo, a lovely park, many small cafes and indie movie theaters, the Portuguese synagogue, and where the UvA (Universiteit van Amsterdam) business school is located.  I also forgot to mention that my room faces a canal, so I have a great view out of my giant windows.  There are a ton of swans and ducks that sit right below my window and all they do is squawk and squawk at all hours...kind of funny because at times they sound like screaming children.

After getting situated in the dorms, we also needed to go to ISN orientation. ISN is the International Student Network. Here, all the international students studying in Amsterdam for the semester were placed in to many groups and each of the groups had to two Dutch students leading them.  In these groups, all of the CIEE kids were separated (except for my group haha) so we could meet other international students. In my group, there were students from Italy, Denmark, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and other awesome places.  The Dutch facilitators showed us around a bit and pointed out their favorite places to hang out.  They organized dinners and lunches for the following two days so we could have people to eat with, which was nice!  The ISN orientation ended last night with a giant party at this club. I picked some ISN stuff that I wanted to go to and ditched others to take care of a few things as ISN consumed most of the past few days if one participated in everything. I ended up wandering around on Kalverstraat, a main shopping street, yesterday looking for a pillow. I probably will never go to Kalverstraat on a Saturday again as it was insanely crowded with locals and tourists who were furiously shopping--definitely worth going once and experiencing, but now I know never to venture there again.  I also happened to pop into this department store called V & D, sort of like a Macy's or a Nordstroms, but BETTER! Attached to the department store there is a market called La Place.  There they have three floors of stations of the freshest food items I have ever seen. There was a panini guy, a person pouring freshly made smoothies, a salad maker, an incredible bakery, a person behind a grill throwing whatever one chooses onto the open flames, I mean there was just everything one could ever want and it all looked fantastic.  I ended up stopping in at at My Dabba, a cafe around the corner from Kalverstraat, for a delicious sandwich and a coffee because La Place was too overwhelming with all of the incredible looking options. What is strange is that no one tips after they eat at a restaurant.  Or, if they do, it is a nominal amount--nothing on the order of 20% so I am wondering how much waiters and waitresses get paid if nobody tips to the extent that people do in the States.  Oh, another thing, the coffee is DELICIOUS!! America fails in that department.
My new friends and I have been checking out many pubs and bars around the centrum area.  There are so many that I have no idea how they all manage to economically make it. Kriterion is the one we have been digging the most. Its a 5 minute walk from our building and a ton of students hang out there because of the cool atmosphere and cheap beer.

Anyways this is getting to be an extremely long post and I will post again in a few minutes to break it up so people aren't reading 20 pages at a go (if indeed people are actually reading this).  Hope everyone is good back at home!!

peace, love, and 'dam this is a pretty cool place.

Top Blog Names That Are Not Good To Use

1. Two Bongs Don't Make A Rijk(s) (as in the Rijksmuseum, the art and history museum here)

2. The Grass is Always Greener On The Other Side of the Atlantic

3. A Potlood of Pencils (potlood is pencil in dutch)

4. Try to Pronounce that in Dutch (everything is insanely hard to pronounce)

....to be continued