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Hello and welcome back to Oosterdam Day 12! We’ve reached the end of the journey, folks! Today is our last day of blogging. I can’t say I’ll miss the frantic 11:59 pm speed-writing, but I’ll sure miss Amsterdam.
Our day didn’t start until 2PM today, so I decided to grab a lovely breakfast with Jack and pay a visit to the Rijksmuseum. Our breakfast was a little on the pricey side, but it was so beautifully presented we really couldn’t complain. A work of art (foreshadowing), truly. After breakfast we caught a tram to the Rijksmuseum, had our tickets scanned, and began a comprehensive, 90-minute long audio tour.
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Back during our pre-departure meetings, I had done some research on Rembrandt and his artworks for one of our culture presentations. Rembrandt was a prolific figure during the Dutch Golden Age, one of the biggest names in Dutch art history next to Van Gogh. Almost all of his works are housed at the Rijksmuseum, which is why I was a little disappointed when I found out we wouldn’t be going. But lo and behold, an opportunity! Jack and I spent the next two hours walking around, following along with the guided tour but also, taking our time, perusing the exhibits, and rating every cabinet we came across on a scale from 1 to 10. Needless to say, we do not have similar tastes in furniture.
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Time was cut somewhat short, so we opted to head back around 1:35. And then we got lost in the museum. I swear, museums are designed to trap you inside of them. It got to a point where Jack and I were literally running from room to room, through centuries of paintings and sculptures and whatnot, crashing from still-lifes to portraits to landscapes and on and on and on until finally, we found the exit. We got caught in construction and made it back a few minutes late to the Tony’s Chocolonely presentation. There’s a brand of chocolate here in the Netherlands that prides themselves on their sustainable farming practices. Indeed, the production of cacao is characterized by unethical farming. Child labor is especially common in Côte d’lvoire, a country in West Africa. Farmers there get paid a mere $0.71 a day, which is half the poverty line, and a third of what’s considered a living wage for a farmer. They have to resort to indoctrinating their own children into the family business to stay afloat. This is child labor, not just child work, as kids are pulled out of school to work in extremely dangerous conditions. This is the industry that supplies us our favorite cacao products, like chocolate, coffee, and cocoa powder.
Tony’s seeks to do things differently, however. They source only from ethically grown cacao, and pay extra money to lower child labor prevalence, reduce deforestation, and increase overall profits for cacao farmers. Their chocolate is delicious (naturally), and so far they’ve partnered with over 15 thousand farmers, reducing child labor by ~40%. They’re not quite big enough to earn themselves a seat at the Big Cacao table, up with the other giants like Nestlé and Hershey’s, but they hope to grow their industry in the coming years. I really enjoyed this presentation, to be honest. Tony’s was another one of those things I did research on, so it was really interesting to see their approach to ethical farming. The speaker was captivating and knowledgeable, and answered all my questions with confidence. And we all got a complimentary chocolate bar.
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We paid a visit to the Tony’s Chocolonely superstore for some more chocolate (you can make your own chocolate bar there!) and then went to an Indonesian restaurant for dinner. My free time I spent with Jack, walking around and talking about things like the heat death of the universe, the Taiwan-China political crisis, recursive division, rising factorials, the Demon Core, FLL robotics and on and on. He’s a pretty interesting guy.
Oh also, the food was so good.
Anyway, since that’s pretty much the end of the day, I’ll do some closing thoughts and acknowledgements about the trip. I’m really happy with the experiences I’ve had and the people I’ve met over the course of the past two weeks. Thank you to Frank, Dr. Bursic, Sophia, Dasha, Max, and CIEE for coordinating this trip and making all of this possible. I am sure to look back fondly upon these 14 days as I remember my freshman year of college at the University of Pittsburgh.
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