Life’s a Beach!… Except in Amsterdam, then it’s a Canal

Sending love from Amsterdam this week!! 

 

The last few days have been filled to the brim with non-stop action. Starting on Wednesday, we got up for an early morning bus ride from Bonn to Amsterdam. Here’s a breakdown of what happened after arriving in Amsterdam a few hours (and a bus ride nap) later.

 

Day 1:

Canal Tours!!!!

We got on to what we liked to call a water bus cause that’s basically what it looked like.  The boat cruised around the canals of Amsterdam and we all took some pictures from the deck on the back of the boat. The canals are really cool because they basically run along most of the streets in the city, so they’re kind of everywhere. Houses not only line the sidewalks framing the canals, but are even on the water too! They kind of look like the houses from that kid’s show PB&J otter…. don’t lie, we know you watched it too.  

 

 

 

 

Ok, we think you get the point. There are lots and lots of canals. The last photo in the collection is a shot of the only view of multiple bridges! If you look closely, you can see there are bridges inside the bridges as the photo moves back and there are 7 total from this view. It’s like a bridge inception! 

 

The next highlight of Day 1 was our visit to the Anne Frank House Museum (with an extra bonus of a glimpse of the real life David Hasselhoff who was also at the museum!) 

The museum was truly an eye opening experience. It was crazy to look at history so closely and to know that what happened in the House of Anne Frank and the 7 others who hid there happened less than 100 years ago. The tour led us through their kitchen areas, bedrooms and bathrooms, and showed us their secret hidden doorway. We also got to see the original copies of Anne’s diary that were preserved. Unfortunately we were not able to take photos inside the museum but here’s a photo of the front of her house!

 

The Annexe is the building in the middle of the photo 

And here’s Laura’s sneakily captured pic of David as promised. Don’t be ashamed if you really only recognize him from Spongebob like we do. 

 

 

Day 2: 

Company visit to “Fabrique,” a well known design firm in the Netherlands. 

Next stop: 

Visit to the Van Gogh Museum. This museum has the largest collection of his paintings in the world. 

 

 

Sneaking pics with the masterpieces….. They run a tight ship at Van Gogh 

After the museum visit, we traveled as a group to the North Sea, where we had class and worked on a project that would be completed the next day. We also took torches and walked to the beach as a group, fearful we were gonna burn our pony tails off but no worries, all our hair is still un-scorched. 

 

Day 3: 

Beach Runner project and Class at the North Sea!

After an early wake up, we took our beach rovers out to the sand to test them out and have a race! Our weird creature came in 4th out of the 14 projects…. not too shabby for two girls who aren’t particularly experts on propelling some trash across the beach. Yay!

Photo of our hilarious professor and his fashionable red beard/scarf/whatever you want to call this. 

Our creature

 

Our award winning beach cruiser… lollzzz

 

 

 

Last but not least, we closed out the 3 day excursion with some SPECTACULAR pancakes from a restaurant that literally makes nothing other than pancakes. These are not like normal american pancakes, but more like crepes if we had to describe them. They can seriously be ordered with anything on them, and thankfully we had someone from our program to translate the menu because it was strictly in Deutsch. Help. Here’s some pics of a few of these crazy creations.

 

 

 

And here’s some other snapshots of fun things we found in the Netherlands! 

 

 

Stairs of DEATH at our hotel. Literally the steepest stairs we have ever seen. They might as well have had a fireman’s pole to slide down because if you got too close to the center of the stairs you would probably vanish into the center of the universe. 

Amsterdam is known as the City of Bikes…. and they really aren’t kidding. Here’s a parking garage just for bikes… wait wuuttt?

Playing around at the I AMsterdam letters. 

 

Until next time!! Tchuss! 

LOVE Y’ALL!!!

Kelsey & Laura 

 

Wait Whaaattt? 14 Weird things you learn while living in Germany

Howdy! (weirdly never really say that at home but missing it here) 

So it’s been almost two weeks since we made our hop across the pond to Bonn, Germany. So far, so good. We started classes this week and have already taken a quiz in German class, and have started projects in our Studio courses. Since we have been here, we have quickly adjusted to small differences of daily life. There are so many things you don’t think about during the middle of your every day, so when even the smallest adjustments take place, laughter is the only way around them. 

 

1. In the US, when you knock on a door and prepare to open it, you expect to turn some sort of handle, right? NOT IN GERMANY!!!! Doorknobs basically don’t have a purpose. It’s just a fake out…. push or pull….. but figuring out to push or pull isn’t so easy when you don’t know what “aufziehen” or “aufstosen” means. 

2. Milk has the shelf life of 2 months without refrigeration…. that’s just not normal, y’all. 

3. Hair dryers here will suck the life right out of you. Just kidding, but they really do eat your hair if you aren’t careful. Both of us have already fallen victim to the terrifying fan within them. 

4. Learning the bus routes is sink or swim. You get there early, and they show up late. You show up on time, and they leave you. 

5. Splenda, Sweet N Low and other types of wonderful fake sugar don’t exist here. You like sweetened coffee? Too bad. Two sugar cubes and some warm milk is all you get. 

6. Guns in this country are like unicorns. They are frequently talked about, but have never been spotted. 

7. Taking a casual stroll to the market? Watch out for that car there parked on the sidewalk…. 

8. They have more strict laws on internet usage than they do on underage alcohol abuse. A 12 year old with a beer? Probably ok. Watching a miley cyrus music video on youtube, forbidden. 

9. You stop to try out your first german Schnitzel. Don’t choke! Water is not free. You will pay 2 euro or die. The choice is yours. 

10. Texans are like celebrities, and when people hear we are from Texas, the first things they say are “Pow Pow!” (their sad attempt at making gun sounds) and ask about the Mavs and our boy Dirk.  

11. Do you like oatmeal? How about when it’s cold?…. cause that’s the common way to eat it here! Cold oats for everyone! (aka cardboard unless you put sugar on it) 

12. You want to learn to speak German? Throw everything you learned from 1st-12th grade english class out the window. Grammar here translates to the worst english ever, and the letters are all different sounds. V sounds like F, W sounds like V, Z sounds like Tsss, E sounds like uh, and S sounds like Z. How’s that for a little mind boggling tongue tie?

13.Things that don’t exist in this country: Grape Jelly, Pop Tarts, Netflix, Pandora Radio, Pencils, Abc.com, most videos on youtube, decently priced tennis shoes (Nike Frees are the equivalent of like $200 US dollars!!), public restrooms, Stick deodorant, to-go cups, Mexican food, and people who don’t smoke. (Seriously, like 8 out of 10 people smoke here. Statistic courtesy of Laura Dobbs.) 

14. Wedding rings go on your right hand ring finger. After a few odd looks directed to Laura on the bus we assumed it was just our American Vibe, but now we are fairly certain that shiny Aggie ring of gold is a little mistaken for something else. Everyone says you always pour your heart and money into your spouse…. I guess in this case they are still right. Thanks & Gig Em!

Since we last blogged, we have officially made our first German friend! Shout out to our boy Brian, the german student that lives in our basement… otherwise referred to as our troll. (As a term of endearment of course.) He helps us with our German homework, escorts us to all of the local hot spots, and is great comic relief at dinner time. Needless to say, we owe a lot of our laughs here so far to him. 

Here are some photos of a few things we have seen/done since our last blog post! Tomorrow we are taking our first train ride to Brussels, Belgium. Fingers crossed that we don’t screw it up and that we make it to the right stop! We will update you with endless instagram pics of chocolate, waffles and beer (hopefully all three at once)….. and whatever else we find in Brussels that we don’t know about yet! We hope everyone back home is doing great!

Thinking of our friends and family always, 

Love, 

Kelsey & Laura 

 

 

This photo shows why it’s a good thing we walk have to walk everywhere… 

 

At the top of one of the hills in Bonn, during our 6 mile class hike. 

Some cute stuff in a little store we found

Trying out the whole selfie thing. Standing in front of a cool church at the top of a hill.

Photo of said cool church at the top of the hill….

Weird but really cool grave yard we saw

 

Ceiling of the church we went to

Hi from our Hike! 

Good thing shoes are supposed to get dirty cause it was muddy all over the floor!!! Cool leaves though!

 

Giant gummy bears found at HARIBO shop. Quick Fact, HARIBO brand is manufactured in Bonn!! 

 

The heads of two martyred Christians. Cassius and Florentius were buried in Bonn, and their remains still are found here today.