Today was our first day in the Netherlands, and it certainly was exciting. We landed at around 5:00 in the morning (11:00 Pittsburgh time), went through customs, and waited for our guide to meet us at the Airport. Once she arrived, we took the train to our hotel and dropped off our luggage, and then we split into our teams and went on a scavenger hunt around Amsterdam. We got to see a bunch of different locations, like this Catholic Church I took a picture of. The Church bells were ringing when we got there, which combined with my sleep deprivation and jet lag made this an almost surreal experience. The other places we saw were pretty interesting as well, but we couldn’t spend much time at each place due the need to finish the scavenger hunt. After that we had lunch, followed by checking into the hotel and our welcome dinner.

When doing our scavenger hunt, I got to become decently acquainted with the urban planning of Amsterdam, which is much more focused on pedestrians and bikes rather than the car-centric cities back home. This, of course, makes navigating the city as a pedestrian both easier and more fun, as it allows for much more freedom in where you can walk. I almost wish that the cities back home were more like this, as it would make navigating for people without a car (such as myself) much easier. However, from an engineering standpoint, I understand how this would be difficult. In order to make our infrastructure like theirs, we would have to almost entirely redo our current infrastructure, which would cost a lot of time and money. Because of this, it might be a good idea to limit how much we’d plan on redoing our infrastructure, as it might be more cost effective to spend some of that money on improving what we currently have.

Overall, our first day in the Netherlands has been an exciting, yet exhausting experience. I look forward to the rest of the trip, learning more about this country, and finally being able to rest tonight.