We started our day off with a visit to a town called Zaandijk Zaanse Schans. It was a quiet town filled with old windmills. These windmills allowed people hundreds of years ago to automate various parts of living, even before electricity. Some mills would pump water from the canals, maintaining the water level and enabling people to move water easily. These mills were used extensively before the widespread adoption of steam power in the 1850s and 1860s during the Industrial Revolution. They could saw wood, make paper, grind grain and much more. These mills are very sustainable, as they produce no excess CO2, does not harm the local life, and works without intervention. These mills are a great example of ethically taking advantage of nature.

Our other site visit was to the Anne Frank house. It is one of the most important historical site in the Netherlands. Before World War 2, There were 160,000 Jews that lived in the Netherlands, with almost 100,000 of them living in Amsterdam. The Anne Frank house allows us to see an inside perspective from a victim of the Holocaust and the horrible things that they went through. The Frank family lived with 2 other families in a very confined space where they could not make noise or have the lights on for much of the day. They lived in constant fear of being taken away by the Nazis, and when they finally did, only Otto Frank survived. The exhibit that is now present in their old house tells the story from the restrictions place on the Jews, the first rounding up of families, the hiding, and the family being found by the Nazis. It is quite hard to digest.