Amsterdam

Before I get into my adventure about Amsterdam, I just first want to say congratulations to the Etown Men's Soccer team for entering the rankings at #24 this week. With 12 wins and 1 loss, they are having an awesome season!!!(of course it happens when I'm here!! haha) Anyway, my first trip outside of England was an eventful one. I had terrible problems with the National Express coach buses getting to and from the airport in Birmingham but were not going to dwell on the negatives!. The flight from Birmingham to Amsterdam is only about 45 minutes, which is basically the equivalent of flying from Washington D.C. to New York City. I met my three Etown amigos (Tom Kropp, Allan Craven, and Mike Galanek) at the hostel in downtown Amsterdam on Friday night. Our hostel was interesting, as we were actually staying in a room with 5 sets of bunk beds. The room itself was very small and there wasn't much room to have personal space but it wasn't too bad for 3 nights. The cool part about it was that there were people from all over the world. Our roommates consisted of 2 Germans, 2 Norwegians, and 2 Brits. Also, for one night we had two other American roommates from the BCA program in Barcelona where Mike, Allan, and Tom are studying. The nightlife of Amsterdam was very lively. While I was there, we were able to see the house that Anne Frank was in when she was caught by the Germans. We also went to the Red Light District and saw Dam Square (main square in the city). One day we caught a train to Rotterdam, which is another large city in the Netherlands. An interesting fact about the Netherlands is that it's basically under water. It's similar to New Orleans in the fact that most of the city is below sea level(there are many canals in Amsterdam, as you can see in the picture in the top left). There was no problem with the language barrier, as everyone we encountered spoke perfect English. All in all, it was fun trip and nice to see some of my friends from Etown. Stay tuned for my next post, which will be about the England national soccer teams World Cup qualifer against Belarus!!!!