Amsterdam has been by far my favorite place that I have EVER been to. It was filled with kindness, beauty, passion and excitement.
Stepping off the train, I knew that I would love Amsterdam. It had this relaxed and fun vibe even from the station. I met up with Jessica and Christian and we ventured to find our apartment. We decided to eat dinner at this tiny Italian restaurant, where you had to have a reservation to eat, but they said it was fine if we ate fast (fast here was about a hour and a half). We then went back to the apartment and met the other 3 people who were staying there and we all went out to the Red Light District.
The Red Light District was so much fun...that may sound crazy since it's known for its prostitution and drug use, but what they don't tell you is about all the FUN people, the beautiful scenes and the cool tucked away places.
We found a great bar that had local people and it had tons of beer, we people watched and I was amazed by how confident the girls in the windows are. It was hard not to stare.
We woke up early the next day and made our way to Jordan neighbor where the Anne Frank house is located. When walking up to the house, you would not even realize that you were there if it weren't for the line outside. I thought I knew a great amount about Anne Frank and her hiding, but in fact I learned more in that hour and a half than you will ever learn by reading and studying her diary. Walking through the downstairs which was a jam warehouse was interesting and very informative. When I saw the bookcase that hid the Frank family and the other 4, I got this deep and heavy feeling on my shoulders. Seeing the original bookcase that actually hid the family is a feeling that is indescribable and stepping into the opening and going up the steep narrow stairs gave me a just a small sense of how hard it was to live there. We unfortunately could not go into the attic, but we saw the original pictures that Anne hung on her wall, her actual diary and loose pages, the list of the Jewish people with each of the Franks' names, we saw videos of her friends and father talking; it was an incredible experience that I would recommend to anyone.
We then went and got onto the hop on hop off bus tour. I learned LOTS about Amsterdam that I would have not known otherwise. I learned things like Napoleon made his brother the king of Amsterdam once her conquered it and that the canals there are man made.
We then did some shopping in an old post office building and then walked around the red light district during day. It was completely different than it is at night. You get to really see the beauty of the area. We then met up with Christian to go on a canal ride!
Riding on the canals gave us a whole other view of the city!
This is one of the canal bridges.
This is one of the more famous bridges called "Skinny bridge" It is a pillar wide and it's said that the workers ran out of supplies and they just made do with the supplies that they had.
This is a ship museum that is on a canal. It was just beautiful!!!
This is a bike parking garage. It holds hundreds on bikes. 3 stories high! Biking is HUGE in Amsterdam. They have the right away when in traffic and they will just run you over if you're in the way!
We did a little more shopping and found a huge wooden shoe to hang out in!
Fun fact: Wooden shoes are essential in Holland because the ground is marshy and always wet and the weather gets cold. Rubber boots would NOT work because it gets so cold!
The next day we got up and just enjoyed our last day in the city! We found the letters and then it was back on the train for 6 hours for another fun week of school!
It hard to believe that I could fall in love with a city in only a short 3 days, but Amsterdam stole a GIANT piece of my heart and I can't wait to return one day to this magnificent city.
I thought it would be fun for the students to make pumpkins and write a little blurb about who their pumpkin was! They has SO much fun making these! And the stories that they came up with were hilarious! One of my favorites was the pumpkin wearing a sombrero who worked at Taco Tuesday and really liked tacos. The stories had a lot of fun and wrote fantastic sentences! I was very impressed with their writing. 
I had so much fun at the Mendoza's house! Lynnie, her family and the Mendoza's really make me feel so lucky to be here and to have made such wonderful friends! 
