Cheeeezin'

Hi, Loves!

Nothing new here: just another one of the best weeks of my life!

I have continued to be this weird form of on/off sick all week. Some days I feel fine, other days my throat kills, and randomly throughout each day, I sound like a lifelong chain smoker or a prepubescent boy (shoutout: prepubescent Mard and Ani!) or lose my voice all together. But I have yet to be bedriddenly ill, and hallelujah, I have never been more proud of that little kickin' little immune system!

So, Wednesday: I did indeed make it to my big dance party. (Timeframe: two Wednesday's ago!) I grabbed some sweet wine and met some even sweeter girls for a little din-makin'. We met at a one girl's homestay house, which is completely unbelievable. It's one block away from my place and it's small and European and full of character and beyond beautiful. It has a hammock perfectly placed right in the center of the living room. Obviously, my kind of people. We sipped wine, chefed up gourmet pizza and salad and had ourselves a lovely little evening. Can't get enough of these lovelies! (Fun fact: one of them just so happens to go to CU Boulder. Why couldn't I have been drinking wine with her for the past three years?) Once we were wined and dined and liquidblanket-ed we headed to Coco's Outback, an Australian bar that turns small club every Wednesday night, packed with International Student Network kids. Incredibly fun, once again. Drinking happy hour cocktails, dancin' on tables and meeting friendly new faces all the time! A few pictures from the evening:

Happiest when I'm hammockin'

Din din din, yum yum yum!

Pretty ladies

The two Finnish girls that have stolen my heart

Absolutely NOT taking pictures, while drinking wine, while riding bikes.

Most certainly not.

Thursday was Valentine's Day and as you know from my previous post (if you are an avid follower/, congrats!), it was not at all lacking in L.O.V.E. I woke up a little foggy from one too many sips of the Coco's the night before and stayed snuggled in bed. I easily could have stayed forever since: 1.) I was hungover, 2.) I left my bag at Emily's the night before and was ill-equipped, 3.) could only find one sad, lone glove, 4.) it was cold, cold, cold, snowy, snowy, snowy. But I put on my big-girl-pants and my Dutch-girl-pants simultaneously, got out there and hoped on my cutie little fiets! By the time I got to class I was freezing, soaking, and questioning permanent loss of feeling in my right hand. But there's no complaining about getting pretty on V-Day and coincidentally heading to Dance Me to the End of Love. Plus, snow is cold (profound, I am.) but Amsterdam is BEAUTIFUL. When it snows it is nothing short of winter wonderland and I am this little girl from Colorado with big eyes, a rudolf red nose and a smile of my chilly face. So I sat dripping, but happily, in class. And afterwards had a lovely little chat with my favorite new Friesian friend! We both had class at the same place across town, he offered to walk with me, I very happily obliged. He's really great. He told me that soon, when I have a day off, I should take the train to Friesland, he will pick me up and we can drive around town. Supes excited! So now I'm just waiting on a list of places/people that good 'ol Grampie remembers and I'll be off to the north! After my second class I ran to grab a little more wine and met up with a few more completely wonderful people. One of them had an oven (quite the luxury to us student dormers), so we baked brownies (sans ganja, Boulderites), ate chocolate, drank red wine, got a little cozy on the couch, and watched Sleepless In Seattle. I have to admit I missed my cute Momma's super extravagant bundle of pink and red Valentine's prezzies a bit, but I felt so much crazy love that day.

Sidenote: Sweet baby heyzeus, Amsterdam has turned me into the cheeziest human in the world. No pun intended!

So, Friday. What did I even do Friday? Did a little homework (meh), did a little reading (meh), and then because of all the meh-ing, I spiced up life a little by ditching a CIEE meeting, woo hoo! (Sorry, Momma! But you remember senior year... I have a real talent for playing hookie! Haha) Emily and I (lovely girl previously mentioned in pizza making night and museum day) went for some ice cream (I do not have a freezer. I had not had ice cream since America. I couldn't go on). Lucky for us, this ice cream came on top of a beautifully delish waffle and my heart nearly exploded with each bite. After, I played a little wine King's Cup and headed to the Sugar Factory for what was supposed to be a crazy night of shakin' my groove thang. There was some solid bootay shakin but SugarFac turned out a little lame. Can't complain though... I fully appreciated the funky mural outside and sneakin' flasks in bathroom stalls with one beautiful ladyfriend! Always keepin' it classy! :)

Funk

She's a F*cking Lady, obvi.

So I danced all night and slept only a little, only to wake up early in the morning and have to run to an all day workshop where I was expected to be bursting with energy and inspiration. Both Saturday and Sunday were chalkfull of these workshops and I was horribly un-responsible and went out each night anyway (oops!). So I wasn't on my most passionate behavior, but the days still turned out really incredibly. They took place at this amazing little workspace called The Hub. It's a space created solely to inspire social entrepreneurs and it delievered. It's big and open and airy and light, with plants everywhere and comfy hidden workspace nooks (one including a hammock!) and unlimited tea and coffee. I fell in love. Day two was the moment I became a real Dutchie and tilted my head back and swallowed a slimy herring covered in onion. Like I said earlier... can't say I enjoyed it but so glad I got the opportunity to try it!

Thank you, to this lovely Dutch guy, for the herring and for letting me take a picture of him swinging with a flower.

I dig.

Pretty people inspiring pretty ideas

The working all weekend aspect mildly messed with my week. I went into Monday feeling like it should be Saturday and a long week of full on strugglefest followed. But there were a few really great highlights that made the week incredible:

• Field trip in my Dutch Social Policy class on Monday. I love field trips!
• One of the (almost)founders of AirBnB did a little presentation in Socionext on Monday: super interesting.
• Finally got to catch up on sleep Monday night. Heaven.
• No classes on Tuesday and was lucky enough to have a lovely Dutch boy tour me all around his gorgeous city. He showed me the Amsterdam Public Library (love!), strolled me around, pointed out all the must eats/must gos/must sees, and introduced me to a delish white beer. He's really wonderful, the day was really wonderful.
• Got another tour on Wednesday (from an actual tour guide this time... Although, DutchBoy, you gave MuseumMan a run for his money!) I now know everything there is to know about the Jordaan area and ate a magically delish (and free!) goat cheese sandwich.
• Hosted a little Ladies Night at my apartment on Wednesday night. Flowin red wine and red lipstick! We ended up at Coco's and danced the night away per the ushe (ps. I don't know how to spell the abbreviation of usual? ya know, the ushe!)
• Walked/Fiets-ed around like a zombie on Thursday due to the devastating combination of extreme lack of sleep and abundance of booty shakin'. But through my half closed eyes, it was a gorgeous day and I didn't stop smiling.

Ladies journey to the Coco's

Makin' friends with Coco's Bouncers, yeehaw!

And yesterday was one of my favorite days here. Emily and I finally had an entire day to do completely aimless wandering. We've enjoyed mini wanders every chance we get the past three weeks, but having literally no plans and no expectations for the entire day made all the difference. I woke up, stopped at her house where she fed me delicious pancakes and coffee (thanks, love!), we stopped at the CIEE office to print something and found magical little Amsterdam books and novels, and then we were off. Headed towards Vondelpark. Every single person has told me I'd love it, and every single person was spot on. Before we even reached the magic, we took a detour to snap a few photos in front of an amazing wall of red graffiti and as we were shooting away, Amsterdam made all my dreams come true. A magically sweet girl rode toward us on her fiets, toting around a magically giant, magically beautiful DOG in her magical fietsbasket. We asked to take a picture of her and her pup, and begin the nicest human in the world, she happily obliged and even hoped off her fiets in order to get pictures of us riding her PuppyFiets. I was ecstatic. And I spent as much time as I possibly could petting her babydog. His name was Dogo and I couldn't pull myself away. She literally had to say, "Okay, sorry, I really have to go now" and actually start riding away in order to get me to stop lovin' up on her Dogo. My heart will be his forever. So thanks to Dogo, I was the happiest. And then we got to Vondelpark and my heart burst. It was beautifully sunny (rare occasion... I even wore sunglasses!). There was grass and ponds and trees and fresh air and birds chirping and tiny children climbing tree houses and playgrounds and laughter and DOGS EVERYWHERE. Ladies and gentleman, it was an oasis of everything I love. So we purposelessly doodled around, talking about how incredibly happy we both felt. When the cold finally tore us away we found a posh little cafe, drank fresh mint tea and flipped through our newly discovered "Cool Amsterdam" book, highlighting our future adventures. Our stomachs were growling, and insisting upon devouring some good ol' bad for you American pizza, so we fiets-ed our way to a cozy little Italian restaurant. Definitely no pizza hut. The fresh focaccia, garlic butter and margherita pizza were better than we had been imagining all day. Smiling as usual, we walked away only to stumble on more loveliness. Holy WholeFoods of Amsterdam! It was beautiful, our eyes were twinkling. We walked away with gorgeous bottles of cordial to splash with the wine we would soon be sipping. (Bonus: Marqt takes American credit cards! This may be the death of me...) 

DOGO! Be still my beating heart.

Forever Fietsen

Vodelpark, I love you.

Bouf! Shwankay!

<3

From there, we got a little artsy with the makeup, dressed a little funky and made our way to Paradiso for Sonic Acts. It was definitely interesting. For the life of me, I can't remember who said they wanted their art to assault the senses into delirium, but thats all I could think of during these performances. I wish I had gotten a little more sleep so that I could have enjoyed it a bit more (assaulting acoustic/visuals and exhaustion don't mix well), but I enjoyed nonetheless. Plus, I just like the feeling of doing something with no assumptions or expectations and enjoying it no matter what the outcome is. I think Emily wholeheartedly believes in that as well, and I makes me all giddy for the adventures we will surely get ourselves into.

Sonic Arts and GLITTER GALAXY PANTS!

So today I woke up, still feeling the heavy weight of not enough sleep in both quality and quantity. I'm tired and all I want to do is snuggle. Preferably with my babydog. So I'm takin' it easy today: going to get a little homework done (turns out, I'm still in school here?), do a little leisurely reading, listen to acoustic music, drink water instead of wine (haha). And tonight I am venturing to my two favorite Finnish girls apartment for a relaxing evening of cheese and wine (to wash away the water, haha). Just what I need.

I hope you lovelies had a wonderful week last week and will have an even better one to come.

I miss you, guys. I love you, guys. xo. <3