I'd first of all like to say "hi," to all my nieces and nephews... Ive seen lots fo cool little shirts here and there but I have no space to pack such things as gifts.
Im sitting in Kents incredible apartment right now in Zaandam, Netherlands. It's on the top floor of an 8 story apartment building that used to be a paint factory. For those of you who dont know, Kent is my old youth pastor from when I was in the youth group at Caring first. He is now a missionary working with the "youth," (18-29 year olds) in the Netherlands, mainly in the city of Amsterdam. Here, we have finally had an opportunity to edit and reorganize all of our photos and the blog. The computers are up to date and the keyboards are in the format that we are used to, plus we have no time limits...
So we arrived here yesterday afternoon after leaving the city of Antwerp in Belgium. We are a day ahead of schedule now because we were able to accomplish all of the things that we were hoping to while in Belgium, (eating original Begium waffles, mussels while in Brussels and also to get an order of fried potatos or french fries from their birthplace in Belgium.)
We explored a little before we headed off to Kents house (in Zaandam, about 20 minutes from Amsterdam by train.) I bought a techno cd from some shop that hand some cool music playing in it. I cant listen to it though because I have no cd player. Im sure everyone will get to hear it plenty. We also got ripped off from some turkish dude in his restaurant. The sign said 2.50 Euro for a sandwhich or a slice of pizza, well my sandwhich was 6.00 Euro and Katies pizza was 4.00. When I asked him why, he said that the proces start at 2.50. Apparently you can get a bread sandwhich or a sslice of dough pizza (no sauce) for 2.50 Euro... I felt lied to... No big deal though, right?
On to a canal tour and shirt searching before we went to Kent's. The problem with shirt searching is that almost every shirt in Amsterdam has some reference to sex and the Red Light District or to Mari"h"uana as it is spelled here. There are some cleaver shirts but none that I would want to wear to school on casual Fridays, actually, none that I would ever want to wear. I finally found one today that has Amsterdam spelled out as f it were on a license plate. I'm sure you'll see pictures of me wearing it later on in the trip... its now one of five shirts I have...lol
Besides the typical tourist thing we have just been hanging out with Kent and Leslie and talking. Today we went and saw some Dutch town that does everything the traditional Dutch way. The make shoes out of wood, they grind chalk and herbs with a stone in the windmills, they make cheese in a traditional manner from their dairy cows in their fields... It's a nice place.
Katie and I went exploring for bit after our outing to the old dutch town. We walked down the Red Light District. I could only go one block. It was sad to see the women there, half naked flaunting their bodies... Some wouldnt look you in the eye, or maybe it was just my crazy beard (which I plan to shave tomorrow.) We met up with Kent and Leslie and we took them out to dinner at an Argentine grill, very excited I was. The food was good but the price well reflected the meal!
So, with our extra day here, we are thinking about mayeb flying to Ireland, maybe Finalnd or even possibly Morroco. Neither of us have been to Africa and we can get relatively cheap flights online. 60 Euro or so. But for now, we will stay ahead, we are leaving tomorrow for Copenhagen. Denmark does not use the Euro, so we will have to get some bills changed... I can imagine this being a hassle, a big hassle. We wil travel to Denmark by train, we will take our second night train getting a sleeper car again. So, our next entries should be in Denmark. If you have not checked out Katie's blog, do so. I posted a link to her blog in an entry before France. And... Ive heard all the jokes baout liking Katies blog more than mine... so no need to rehash them, (I dont want her to get a big head!)
Im off to bed,
Devin, the canal cruiser, Kent's iternet user, the Netherland scouter, the Krav Maga bust outer... lol, yeah I know Ill probably take that off later
We l
