Asterdam and Carnival!!

i know i know i know.... i haven't posted in a while! I apologize! but here I am now. :) Last weekend we went to Amsterdam for two days. Since it is so close, we figured we would probably be back sometime so we went for a quick trip. We all went at separate times so Cam, Jill, and I went first because we were ready. We hopped on the train in Maastricht to Amsterdam. About halfway through our two and half hour train, the lady came on the speakers to tell us that if we were going to Amsterdam central (we were) that we needed to get off the train and go to platform 8. Well i was the only one awake at this point so i woke Jill and cam up and we went to platform 8. The sign said Amsterdam Central so we went to the platform but the train wasn't there and so we went back down where it was warm. When we went back down, it said Rotterdam Central and we were thoroughly confused. We got on the train anyway thinking it would stop in Amsterdam.. that was dumb. We ended up in Rotterdam and had to take an hour train back to Amsterdam. Stupid intercom lady! But we got there eventually but were the last ones. o well! We walked around a little bit before heading to our hostel. We just wanted to see the city a little bit! We made it to our hostel after running into the rest of our group. We were staying in the Shelter City Christian Hostel. It looked nice and it was pretty inexpensive. When we got there, the reception told us that it was hostel night and they would be giving a free dinner and dessert night. Well of course we went! Free food! duh! so we went to the hostel night and got to meet some people. One girl from Korea that was traveling by herself around Europe. One girl from America that lived in New York for a while and then moved to Amsterdam because if they work at the hostel, they can stay there for free. Just clean and cook and free room and board! Pretty cool. And then a couple of German guys that would talk in German and snicker to each other every now and then. They made me laugh. So we had a free meal and then stayed for dessert. We watched Rob Bell's "trees" video. It was interesting to us because that is pretty much the first taste of other people in Europe that talk about Christianity. I enjoyed it a lot. And Rob Bell? apparently universal! haha. But we had dinner and dessert and then met the rest of the group at a bar. When we left there, we split up because everyone wanted to do different things. Jill and I saw a Mexican Cantina right next to our hostel. We had been craving margaritas for dayss. So we went in! We got margaritas, chips and salsa, guacamole and some sangria. It was wonderful. We loved every second of it! We were so excited. And everything was delicious! After that, we met everyone back at the hostel and crashed. The next morning, we woke up and had breakfast and Jill, Cam, Decker, Ellen and I all went to the Anne Frank house. That was incredible. We actually got to walk in the annex and see all their rooms and videos of friends and everything. Probably my favorite part of Amsterdam. Such history of real people and such difficult circumstances. After that, we met up with everyone and started the New Amsterdam tour. We love these tours. They are free and so good! SO we started the tour and left early because Jill and I really wanted to go to the Van Gogh museum. SO we broke apart from the group and headed to the Van Gogh museum. Pretty cool at first but we were definitely expecting more. Haha So after that we were going to meet up with the group again. But we waited and we must have been early so we never saw them. So we just got on the train to head back to Maas. We made it fine and were glad to be home! We liked Amsterdam but it is always good to have a home base!!

Carnival!!!

So Carnival. haha it is so fun. They always tell you it is a big drunken Halloween for three days. That is about right. You start seeing costumes as early as Thursday when it starts on Sunday. We were riding the train back on Saturday and had a parade down the aisles of the train because of people celebrating carnival! Sunday we slept in and got dressed to go out. We went to the Vrijtolf which is downtown Maastricht. So many people and everyone dressed up. We were all freezing and we were told not to wear coats or people would get mad at us! So there we are in cheap costumes in weather in the thirties. awesome. haha but we got used to it and then just froze again. There were these things that were like funnel cakes but just balled up. They serve them with powdered sugar. We called them dough balls and i'm not entirely sure what the real name of them are. But they were selling them for 1 euro a piece so we ate those alot. We were also told that nothing would be open. Not the grocery, not clothes shops, not restaurants, nothing. Well mostly it was true. Restaurants are open because they want the carnival business. All shops are closed but on Monday, the grocery was open. We were soo excited to have good food. We had been eating out because we stupidly didn't get groceries before carnival. But we did! and it was great! we stopped eating kebabs and pizza. and ate sandwiches and salads. soo much better. The ending day of carnival we all went down to the square again and watched everyone in the town sing and be sad when the lady of carnival came down. We went out dancing and came home to catch the early train to paris!! :)