AmsterDam!

The past few days haven't made much sense really. What with the ridiculous time changes, massive amounts of walking, and partying it up as only Amsterdam knows how, I'm kind of whooped. You see, in Lancaster, PA it's 10:30 AM, in Amsterdam it's 4:36 pm, and here in sunny India it's 8:06 pm. Quite frankly my body doesn't know what to think. Now for stories of Amsterdam:

ORANGE, Orange, everywhere. Orange hats, banners, shirts, troll dolls, ties, wigs ect... Holland's futbol team is kicking it's way to the finals. There was such a great sense of teams and unity. It got me thinking about how divided the USA is, we don't even have a decent national team. In fact our idea of sports is fighting against ourselves, the rest of the world isn't even invited.


I stayed at my new usual hostel "The Hans Brinker." Their motto is "It can't get any worse, but we'll try". This slogan actually got Nancy into a bit of confusion ala Absolutely Fabulous. One day after frequenting a coffee shop we decided it would be a good idea to draw on the walls with crayons. I kept mine fairly small and simple, Nancy went a lil' ape shit on the walls. All the while Derek sat on his bed looking at us in awe of out idiocy. The next morning the cleaning lady came in and it went a little something like this:

Lady(in dutch): Yadda todadda yadda yadda yadda!! No!

She said this as she pointed towards Nancy's bed. We looked around playing confused, like we didn't know what she was talking about. Then she made a gesture of writing in the air and yelled NO! Nancy apologized profusely while I continued to play the confusion card. Then she started counting us on her fingers,

Lady: 1. 2. 3. Yes? us: Yes mam...3 of us Lady: Oh, so sorry sorry, so sorry. She walked out of the room, and we never heard a word about it again. I'm still none to sure what happened.

My birthday was AMAZING. It started with our new roommates singing to me at 12:01 am "happy Birthday" In Finnish. The next day we were all pretty exhausted so we spent hours in a cute little cafe, called saloon, near the hostel. There we drank numerous coffee delights, and played board games. We also met Mike and Jo (yo) the most beautiful young bartenders you are likely to find. Later that night my old friend Lex took me to see an improv group called "Boom Chicago". It was hilarious!I even got a big birthday shout-out from the cast. We ended the night at our favorite falafel place. Speaking of falafel, it's pretty much the only thing we ate in AMsterdam, mmmm falafel. Afterwards I headed down to the hostel nightclub to meet with Nancy and Derek. At which point we tried to teach the Finlander how to speak some American slang. "I'm hella hungry Yo" He sounded mildly like he had down syndrome.

And now here I am in India, one day earlier than expected. I sometimes struggle with dates and times. My ride here thought that I arrived a day later than I actually did. Last night I got off the plane, took a rickshaw to the general area that I thought their apartment was at, then wandered the shanty towns of Mumbai. I had all of my bags and it was HOT and HUMID. I eventually had to cave and get a $100 hotel room nearby, so much for my budget. I'm not positively sure how long I am staying here. I figure I'll stay til' it's time to go, then I'll leave:)

Miss you all!