Long Awaited Update

Well, there's been demand for a new post (and I have been slacking) so I shall deliver!

First of all, Le You:
Friday the 13th the college hosted a party at a club (Le You). Originally we (Allison and I) weren't going to go (because it was 15€ and I'm cheap) and we went to a bar near campus instead. It was LAME, we met two other American students there and when they left for Le You we decided to go with them. Good idea, we got there at just the right time, there was a HUGE line but since there was a veco (VEsalius COllege, my school) party, we were VIP and got let in with a couple other full time students courtesy of another student who came out from inside. It ended up being only 10€ and that included a drink, woo! I don't know about other European clubs, but this one wasn't full of creepy men like American clubs, everyone just seemed to be dancing to dance. That was refreshing, very nice to see. Most importantly, we had a BLAST and stayed until about 3am despite the fact we had to wake up at 8am for our first ISA excursion...

Ghent!
If you're following closely, you'll have noticed that this trip took place on Valentine's Day, which hasn't been exciting since 3rd grade when everybody gave everybody else cards and candy (I really think that should be reinstated at the college level). Anyways, as it was an ISA excursion it was just us ISA folks, Allison, Maren, Dallin, Becky, Sabine and myself. Ghent is lovely, complete with castle and canal. We toured the castle first, it seemed to be mostly used as a prison, people were brutal back in medieval times, the torture methods were horrific. After that we had lunch...at pizza hut...I've had quite a bit of pizza on this trip. Then, we had a city tour and eventually arrived at the Alijns Huis, a museum of folklore, or everyday life in Belgium over the years. Life in Belgium didn't seem too different from life in America in the 20th century, which isn't that surprising since the early 20th century was a time of mass-immigration and the Europeans brought their culture with them. They had some interesting board games though, one involved little yodelers in leiderhosen climbing on a mountain, it didn't lie flat though, it stood up and the yodeler pieces straddled the 2D mountain...basically, I want to play it. After that we wandered around for a little bit and Sabine bought us some traditional Ghent candies, Becky calls them Ghent nose candies, they're cone shaped raspberry flavored candies with a gooey center, they taste like pure sugar with a little bit of flavoring. Then we headed home for Valentine's Day dinner with Regina, Rachel and Kreesta.

We met up in the Grand Place but couldn't decide where to eat. Eventually we ended up at a nice Thai restaurant, it was delicious. When we were done eating and waiting for the bill, this man comes up selling roses, he was a little sketchy and the roses weren't great. Nonetheless, Dallin buys EIGHT of them, one for each of the girls...yes, 8 girls (including Sabine) and 1 guy, that's our main group, poor Dallin. All in all, it was a lovely Valentine's Day.

Next weekend was Amsterdam with Madame Delsemme's art class. This class consists of 8 kids from Bentley (a school in Boston) Regina, Rachel and another girl, Marian. Allison, Maren, Dallin, Sabine and I tagged along. The Bentley kids did not make the best first impression on our tour of Brussels, so I was skeptical. They have to take the class, their program covers the cost for all the trips, so they're not necessarily taking it because they want to. Despite a bad first impression, they're not bad. Marian, on the other hand, has no social skills at all. She purposely separates herself from the group and she has a tendency to be very short with people, she also can't seem to take a joke. She's engaged after 3 months of dating her boyfriend she found online, he's the topic of most of what she says. Even Sabine isn't fond of her, and it's Sabine's job to like students...that's a sign. ANYWAYS...Amsterdam has quaint houses, lots of canals and more bike's than you could ever hope to count. Unfortunately, I couldn't label most of the major landmarks if I went back because Madame Delsemme talks FOREVERRRRRRR. If she just said, "This is the Old Church, it was originally called St. something until the protestant reformation when they were anti-Catholic and iconoclasts..." something along those lines, I'd know what's what, but that doesn't happen. She talks for about 15 minutes on each landmark, it's impressive that she knows so much, but it's intolerable to listen too, especially since English is her second language. By the time she's done talking, I've forgotten what the landmark is.

We had a jam-packed schedule, leaving at 9am on Friday and going until 10pm that night. We saw one of the churches, either old or new, dam square where the old town hall/palace is (it has unicorns on it, which is just plain cool), the university court yard, an example of Amsterdam school of architecture style, the Amsterdam Historical Museum, had dinner at an Indonesian restaurant (west indies trading company, that was Dutch) and went to the Van Gogh Museum, which was one of my favorites, I love Van Gogh. They had a special exhibit displaying a number of his night time paintings, so I got to see the real Starry Night, which is one of my favorite paintings. Silly me, I thought that the cyprus tree was a church for a long time...until I saw the painting in person, actually...After that the Bentley kids had arranged to go on a pub crawl, Rachel and I came late so it took us a while to find them and we weren't officially part of it...but it was still fun. After a few bars, some members of the group wanted to partake in some usually illegal activities that are legal in the Netherlands, so we began a quest to find a coffeeshop. Success of course, there's one almost every 10ft afterall (the smell is [not] lovely). It was the Dolphins, really cool interior I have to say, a coral-like wall, a few fish tanks and TV screens displaying an aquarium (like those shots of a burning log in a fireplace, but with an aquarium). It is essential that you know that NO, I did NOT partake in any activities, unless you count sitting inside a coffee shop partaking. Also important to remember, it's legal (as if you could forget, we're talking about Amsterdam afterall). We walked home after, following my directions. It was a long walk but we got back just fine, thankyouverymuch.

Saturday, another full day. Left around 9:30 for our boat tour, I'm a big fan of boat tours, especially when I'm not freezing (and I wasn't). There's a housing shortage in Amsterdam so many people live in houseboats. I enjoyed seeing those, I'd live in one. It was very difficult to stay awake though and I definitely dozed off a couple times, I think everybody else did too. After that we saw the Our Lord in the Attic museum, an example of a Catholic church hidden in the attic of a merchant's house. The protestants in Amsterdam outlawed public Catholic services, so they had to hold mass in these kinds of churches. It was pretty neat to see a full fledged church in someone's house. Next was lunch which included a very awkward conversation between Maren and Marian...oh well...then the Rijksmuseum. I've had my fill of audiotours, I don't have the patience for someone to describe 2 works of art to me for 5 minutes, especially on a trip with Madame Delsemme. Hence I stopped listening to the audio tour very quickly. I definitely preferred the Van Gogh museum to the Rijksmuseum, but it still had highlights, two huge and very ornate dollhouses, for example. They were decked out with mini-china meticulously decorated plates and mini-silver cooking utensils. They were symbols of status, not toys, and apparently cost more than some people's real full-size homes. I also saw Rembrandt's most famous painting, Night Watch, which I was completely unfamiliar with. It was massive and I tend to like large paintings just because the only place you really see them is in art museums. That was the end of our planned activities for the day, the Bentley kids and Maren headed off to a tour of the Heineken museum and the rest of us ended up ice skating. The ice badly needed a zamboni, all the bumps and gashes made me very precautious, but eventually I got over that. It was fun. Afterwards we had some tasty mini-pancake-like pastries for a snack and headed off to find Maren, which proved difficult, but we found her. Italian for dinner and there was a mouse in the restaurant, which surprisingly didn't phase me at all. Maren wanted to go to the red light district, the rest of us didn't go in, but the outer wall, if you like, was quite graphic. The rest walked around for a bit, visited a souvenir shop, and went back to the hostel. Everyone had been in a weird mood all day, Sabine was pretty loopy (she fondled the 3D chest of a coffee cup) and Dallin was thoroughly annoyed. Maren had been pretty pissy the whole time as well. It spoiled the evening a little bit. When Maren returned from the red light district she shared her new self-discovery with us, that perhaps prostitution is disgusting and dehumanizing. I'm glad she felt that, because I can't believe that any prostitute truly loves their work and that there's nothing else they'd rather do. If there is such a thing as universal truth, that's one, prostitution is evil. The Dutch don't endorse drugs and prostitution, they tolerate it. Their theory is that it's going to happen anyways, might as well have it safe as possible. This tolerance has turned into a legitimate business market, every other store is either a sex shop or a coffeeshop (which don't sell coffee, apparently it sounded better than "weedshop"). Of all the places I've visited thus far, I think Amsterdam is the first I couldn't live in. If you ignore the sex and drugs, it's lovely, but those two things are unavoidable.

Sunday (finally), aka Jewish day. We started off with the Anne Frank House, my other favorite museum of the weekend. It was very moving and I'm so thankful I can live in relative safety, without worrying for my life everday. They lived there for two years until they were betrayed. The saddest part of the whole museum was a picture of Anne Frank's father returning to the empty house after the war, his entire family died in the concentration camps. After that happier things, the tulip museum, half of it was the gift store. Regina gave her speech for class, a single tulip blub used to sell for 10 times the annual income of the average family back in the 1630s, ridiculous. After that lunch and then, continuing on the Jewish theme, we visited a synagogue. It was freezing, and again Madame Delsemme talked for a good 20 minutes, but it was very pretty. Not as pretty as gothic Catholic cathedrals, especially the ones in Italy, but still pretty. Next the Jewish Historical Museum. It was also interesting, apparently there was a large settlement of Portuguese and Spanish Jews in Holland back in the day. Some were very rich and the others were very poor. After WWII they were not supported by the community at all, which is awful. When Israel was established, many left to live there. I'd never thought of the timing of that before. Israel was founded in 1948, right after WWII, after the holocaust, of course Jews are going to immigrate to the promised land after their homes and lives have been destroyed elsewhere. We then learned about water levels in Amsterdam, courtesy of Madame Delsemme, in a metro station with big water-level-indicating tubes inside. Apparently there was a huge flood in 1953. That was basically the end of the day, we were all itching to get home after such a long weekend so we grabbed our bags and got on the next train. On the way back I learned there's a red light district in Brussels, clearly visible from the train. The girls stand in windows, you can go window shopping for a hooker. Sabine, in her loopy state on Saturday night, was saying how it was odd how they stand in windows, but then she said "well, I suppose you look at shoes in the window before you buy them" which was funny at the time, but in retrospect it's awful. The fact that a human being can be compared to a pair of shoes like that is awful. I guess prostitution is legal in Belgium too.

Sorry for the painfully long post, but I had a lot to catch you up on. Lindsay and Erin, I hope this is an adequate distraction for you.

-Lauren :)