Hello again!

it has been a very long couple of days, but we have finally made it to Amsterdam! Two days ago, my parents dropped me off at Nordenberg Hall, which was where we spent our first night before leaving for the airport. We woke up bright and early for our flight from Pittsburgh to Philly, which was only a little over an hour. Once we got to Philly, we had a six hour long layover, so I spent the majority of that time just walking around and exploring the airport. The Philadelphia Airport is absolutely massive and it even has a mall in it! I spent the rest of my time in the airport watching a Netflix documentary about the Redeem Team, the 2008 USA mens basketball team at the olympics, which I finished on the plane ride to Amsterdam. The flight was seven and a half hours long, but because of the timezone changes it was like a 14 hour Long flight, as when we landed it was 8 am. I unfortunately did not get a lot of sleep on the flight, but a couple hours was enough to get me through the early hours of day 1.

There are a couple things I immediately noticed once stepping foot in Amsterdam. Firstly, it is very very flat which is a big change from having to walk up cardiac hill everyday to get to my dorm. Secondly, to no ones surprise, there are an incredibly large amount of bikes. Everywhere you look you are guaranteed to see a bike! After we got to the hostel we are staying at for the next two weeks, we had an orientation and then went on a walking tour of the nearby area and had a picnic. For lunch, we got poke bowls which were very good. After that, we had time to go back to our rooms for a couple hours before dinner. This allowed me to catch up on some much needed sleep. For dinner, we went to a place called Bar Botanique, which is pictured below. It was a very pretty place and the food there was good as well. I can’t wait to explore this city more