Lots and Lots....

On the morning of the 26th, I got up to help Carlijn's friend Fifi move out of her parents house and into her brand new home. It was really interesting. In Europe it is very commonplace to find re-dunk-u-lous-ly steep staircases - Especially in homes. Fifi's room in her hold home was on the 4th story attic. 3 steeps flights down, we had to take the larger things like the bed and mattress, tables, chairs etc.. by hand carrying them through the streets to her new home. At which point we had to climb another steep staircase to get to her new apartment. It was worth it. It is nice meeting the people here and creating some sort of relationship with them through our common experiences. Carlijn has good friends that are good people. Fifi treated us to some food in the park where we spent the rest of the afternoon playing games and talking back and forth before we went to go meet their friend Laura where she worked (In a hash boat). Laura completed her University work and now has a degree in psychology. As a congratulations celebration, her friends (myslef included) went to her favorite bar LUST bar. It was absolutely neat inside.

On the 27th, my sights were set on finally seeing Amsterdam. In the morning on saturday's in Utrecht, there are huge community markets. Selling cheese, snacks, cloths, really nice knock-off designer watches...whatever you want. It is also called the Bloemenmarkt - or the Flower market because millions of fresh flowers are brought into the city to be for sale. You can hardly move through the streets. After spending much of the morning laying around for some much needed relaxation, it was time to head to Amsterdam after dinner. Carlijn and Fifi opted out because they still were far to tired to do anything, but Carlijn did take me to Eelco's home where I rode with him to the train station. A trip from Utrecht to Amsterdam takes about 25 minutes and only costs 6,50 Euros for a two way trip. We met with Wouter and Marlinna at the train station and they came with us as well. We walked for what seemed like forever before making it to our destination near the center of Amsterdam. Several friends were getting together because all of these people have one thing in common. Sziget. Sziget is a music festival that is sort of like Europe's Woodstock. It's a week long music festival in Budaphest, Hungary. Even though I was a little nervous to try and be extremely social, I soon found a groove and met Ana and Ana. These two girls were from Germany living in Amsterdam for school - this allowed me an oppurtunity to utilize my German - see Dad, I did use it at some point in my life. We also met with several other people, a man from Greece, a man from Portugal, and a few other randoms all of whom were extremely wonderful! Finally, we left the party and went to see Davida's boyfriend in a pub up the street. He worked there. After she got to see him for a short while we headed back towards the train station. Mind you, this was now at 3:30 in the morning. We missed the intial train that we needed and had to wait for the 4:17 train placing into our beds just after 5 am. 

Waking up this morning around noon because of my lack of sleep from the night before allowed me perfect time to go with Carlijn to the Utrecht World Music Festival. It poured the entire time. We really only stayed 1 and a half or 2 hours because the humidity was terrible once the rain finally stopped but, we did get to see a latin music series and a Moroccan musical series - both of which were very interesting. 

The "I miss you bug" hit me today - wishing I was home to see you all! Miss and love you a lot!

Taylor