Our First Day of School

We started our day off with a crepe breakfast (not homemade, don't be too impressed). We discovered premade ones from the grocery store, so cheap and just as good. After breakfast we headed downstairs, grabbed our bikes and felt like our moms should have been there to pull out the camera and take an embarrassing picture of us. Oh the first day of school.

We pull into the school and proceed to lock our bikes up against a pole (surprisingly there were no bike stands). Sounds easy enough, but within 10 seconds both bikes had fallen to the ground and my pedal had managed to secure itself around the pole so I couldn't move it. It was seriously out of a movie. All of the "cool" kids were outside the front door having a smoke staring at us failing miserably to simply lock up our bicycles. We could not stop laughing. I'm thinking of hiring someone here to follow us around with a camera.

We got to school an hour early so that we could talk to an advisor and make sure that our classes would all transfer back to the U of M. Then at 11:00 we headed into room 1.029 for our very first class. We started joking around, "What if our prof spoke in Dutch, and we found out this program wasn't actually in English". Laughing at the thought, our professor walks in, starts writing gibberish on the board, and is speaking in Dutch. HA. We waited it out for about 30 seconds, until we realized she wasn't going to be switching over to English, and then asked the students behind us what class we were in. Turns out it was some accounting and management course, not Banking Structure and Strategy, which we were signed up for. We proceeded to exit the classroom and asked the class across the hall for some clarity, but they just looked at us blankly. We went back up to the advisor and told her what happened. She looked up the class with us and told us it was in fact on Tuesday in room 1.029 at 11:00, so at this point we are mildly panicking. Luckily she made a call, and we figured out that the class is indeed at that time and in that room, but not until November. This means our class runs from November 1st- December 6th? Fantastic.

Realizing the only other class we had that day was at 2:20, we ran into the square for a few things and then back to our place for lunch. At 2 we headed back to the school (we are only a 2 minute bike ride, it is very convenient), and down to our classroom. Thankfully this time we were in the right place. Not only was our prof speaking English, but he was also Canadian! He also loves profanity, which I will have to get used to, and calling people out and embarrassing them. I think he took a liking to us though, because he shook my hand to display how easy it was to enter a contract with someone and said he'd be over later. I laughed awkwardly and we pounded it. BFF's.

We are now back at home, about to start studying! We are actually SO excited. I miss reading and doing homework. The weird thing is that most of our classes are 100% final, so we'll have to keep on top of things on our own during the year.

That's all for now. Feel free to email us with your life updates as well, we want to know what's going on in Winnipeg!

Life in Amsterdam

We have finally made it to the land of the Dutch!

Our first night was a little rough. Our plane landed at 4:50pm, and the office to get our keys for our apartment closed at 5pm. Thinking we could just get the keys from reception in our building, we decided to take the metro there and figure something out when we got there. We took the metro to where we thought our building was and proceeded to walk around aimlessly until we realized we had no idea where we were going. We stopped this Dutch guy and asked if he knew the address, but he didn't speak any English. Luckily he had an iphone and punched the address into his gps. He showed us on his iphone where it should be (did I mention yet that it was raining?), and we started heading in that direction. I think he felt bad for us with all of our bags in the rain, because he ended up offering us a ride. Seriously the Dutch are the nicest people in the world. He dropped us off at our building, and my friend Frank was there to meet us because he had been keeping one of my suitcases while I had been traveling. We got him to thank the guy for us in Dutch. Frank could only stay for about 5 minutes because he was still on the clock, and we assured him we would figure something out for the night.

Well once inside our building we realized that there was no receptionist. Luckily there was already a party commencing in room 606, and after meeting this guy Sebastian from Argentina, were offered a floor to sleep on. This clearly wasn't optimal as there were tons of people in his room partying, we were tired, and weren't sure when we would get to sleep. We headed up to our floor (the ninth) and asked our neighbours if we could leave our bags in there for the night while we figured out where to sleep. Thankfully Neela (room 904), offered us her floor, which we figured was a much better option. It was about 9pm and she said she was headed into town for a bit, and we were hungry, so we said we'd meet back there later to get back into her room, or one of her roommates should be there to let us in.

We decided to walk to McDonald's which we knew would be open late, and after arriving in this little square, we realized that we lived in what many people refer to here as "the ghetto". We were the only white people, seriously. I love our neighborhood though, everyone is so friendly and has been so nice to us.
After eating our McDonald's (which was even better than at home), we headed back to our place. We got there around 11pm, and no one from 904 was home. Luckily 906 was home, and said we could hang out with him until 904 got home. We soon found out that 906 was a huge druggy from Berlin, and we had nothing in common. We did have a good laugh when he told us that he usually pregames at his place, heads to the club at 5am, and stays til 12pm. Haha like we were actually just laughing at him, I was speechless. It was a classic first night in Amsterdam. At around 12:30 we were getting pretty tired, and thankfully 906 said we could just sleep on his floor until 904 got home (we left them a note to wake us up). Realizing this was our only option, we took him up on the offer. Despite all of the drugs he was actually very nice. He gave us his sleeping bag and a blanket, so we both snuggled up on the tile floor in our jeans and sweaters in the kitchen. 904 never woke us up. We later realized it was because they were out partying until 6:30am. Of course they were.

It was 8:30 and decided to head straight to our housing office and get our keys. That went pretty smoothly, albeit we were unshowered for 2 days and wearing the same clothes. Talk about the walk of shame. After getting our keys we figured we should run some errands to give 904 plenty of time to get back home so we could get all of our stuff. We hit IKEA, registered at school, registered with the city and then went back to our place. 904 was home (praise the Lord), we got our bags and entered our new apartment!!
Let's just say that we were pleasantly surprised! Every other room we had seen thus far was a 4 person shared room, very stark and uninviting. Our room was a 2 bedroom, with a separate room for the kitchen, our bathroom had a bigger sink, and a curtained off shower (the others just had a shower head that would get the whole bathroom wet). Yes, we are living the high life. Our first order of business was rearranging the furniture, as we decided we wanted to sleep in the same room. We moved wardrobes, beds, desks, lamps and other things. Men, be impressed, this involved some heavy lifting. Our rooms were also fully furnished, everything we needed for the kitchen, bedding, lamps, pictures, it was fantastic. We completely unpacked and felt right at home immediately.

This is dragging on, so I will just mention a few highlights from the past two days:

• We had three other people offer to drive us when we were lost (seriously the Dutch may be nicer than Canadians).
• Skipped all of orientation, we figured we could orient ourselves.
• We bought a few more things from IKEA to make our place more homey, such as dishcloths
• We accidentally stumbled upon the red light district, went into our first "coffee shop"
• Walked around in the rain for hours trying to get passport photos taken, find internet cable chords and open bank accounts
• Bought bikes!! Much more expensive (and difficult to find) than we thought, but well worth it, as we will save so much money not taking the metro, and we can sell it back when we leave
• Had our first dinner at the apartment: I had a peanut butter and jam sandwich, and Selena had chicken and cheese. Watch out Martha Stewart.

That about sums up our time in Amsterdam so far! Stay tuned for our weekend adventures...

Spain, Italy, Greece

Hola, ciao, γειά σου!

The past week and a half have been quite an adventure. I will try and sum it up in a quick(ish) post. I arrived in Barcelona after spending a cold and lonely night in Iceland at a B&B during my layover from New York. It was so wonderful to see Jill and Kristen (friends I work with) at the hostel, especially because I arrived at 10pm and thought I was going to get mugged finding the place. Immediately upon my arrival we headed off to another hostel where we met up with a group of people and went to a club on the beach. We VIP'd our way in with no lines and were greeted with champagne. We danced, met some new friends, walked on the beach and grabbed a cab home at around 4am. Lets just say it was a good first night in Europe! The next day we walked around the city for a bit and then spent the majority of the day on this amazing beach. I am going back to Barcelona with Selena, so I figured I'd save the sight seeing until then. That night we grabbed a flight over to Milan.

We arrived in Milan at 12am only to find out that a cab ride to our hostel would be 100 euros (flying into small unknown airports on the outskirts of town is one of the many perks of flying with ryanair). Thankfully just two steps further we were greeted by a much more economical option: a greyhound type bus for 6.50 euros each. We hopped on and then got dropped off at the train station in town. From there we decided again to ask a taxi to take us to our hostel, as it was late and we were not sure how safe the city would be. The cab driver proceeded to tell us it was a 2 minute walk, and not to bother using him. We were very thankful he didn't take our money, and headed towards the direction he had pointed. After about 20 minutes of aimless walking at 1am (with our 20kg backpacks) through the side streets of Milan, passing some creatures of the night, we were about to give up. Thankfully we found the street and got into our hostel at 1:30am. We set our alarms for 6am, bid farewell to the beautiful Milan, and hopped on a train to Cinque Terre.

We arrived in Riomaggiore in Cinque Terre at around 11:30am, the last of the 5 towns. We checked into our hostel, which ended up being tucked away up a few staircases and behind a few buildings (classic Italy), and proceeded to prepare ourselves for the famous hike between the 5 cities. We were told the hike would take between 7-8 hours to complete and were determined to finish the whole thing the first day. The hike was AMAZING. Cinque Terre is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in my entire life. We walked along the edge of the ocean, through quaint colorful little towns, along mountainsides eating grapes off the vine and through forests that resembled ones you would find in BC. I will try and post pictures, but they will not even do it justice, you will have to go see for yourself. I am proud to say that we completed the hike in only 4 hours!! I would also like to point out that we were running on 4 hours of sleep. Let's just say we were quite pleased with ourselves. We got to Monterosso (the last town) at 4pm covered in dirt and sweat, but felt so satisfied. After a good cold shower, we ended the evening with dinner, I got pesto Gnocchi and ate every last bite, and then gelato. The next day we went back to Monterosso (by train, not walking) and spent the day on the beach. This was my kind of holiday. We left Cinque Terre the next day by train and headed to Rome.

We got to Rome around dinner time and decided to go see the Colosseum right away because we heard it was beautiful at night. Seeing it was crazier than I ever imagined, way bigger in person and more beautiful than in pictures. We decided to grab dinner at a restaurant that gave us a view of the Colosseum, and dinner consisted of pasta and gelato again. When in Italy. The next day we hit all of the tourist spots. The Vatican, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Forum, the Pantheon, etc. We walked to every single one, so we really got to see all of Rome. That is something I love about Europe, you can walk everywhere, which is a good balance for all of my pasta and gelato. Rome was beautiful, but a day and a half, and 300 pictures later, was more than enough.

Next we caught a flight down to Brindisi in Southern Italy where we would catch our ferry to Corfu. Stumped on what to do for the day (it was a small port town and we were tired of walking from the previous day in Rome), we found the closest hotel and paid to lay by their pool for the day. It seemed like the best way to kill the day, until we realized there was NO food to be found. Seriously, none. Not even a vending machine, and the hotel was in the middle of nowhere. We laid by the pool until 4pm, until our stomachs were eating themselves, got showered and called a cab to bring us into the city. Our plan was to head to the Ferry and just grab something around there, but our taxi driver had a different plan in mind. Once he realized we hadn't seen any of Brindisi, he gave us a tour of the town. He dubbed himself the "taxi dj", and serenaded us with some old school songs as he showed us the city. If I can figure out how to upload a video I'll give you a little taste. One of our stops included a fresh fish market, where all of the locals were bartering for the days catch of fish. Our last stop was this beautiful restaurant right on the water, where we each ordered our own pizza and got gelato for dessert. I figured it was my last night in Italy, why not go all out one last time. Then we boarded our Ferry at 9:30pm, and tried to prepare ourselves for a 6 hour overnight ride. At around 10pm I was getting restless, so I put on my ipod and started to dance (while sitting). Jill, feeling a dance battle coming on, put her ipod on as well and proceeded to join me. We synced our music so that we had the same song playing, and danced our little hearts out, entertaining many fellow travelers around us. My ipod eventually died, and we tried to catch a few hours of sleep.

We arrived in Corfu, Greece at 5am and were greeted by the Pink Palace bus. I am not even sure what to say about this hostel, except that it was a once in a lifetime experience, as in I will only ever go there once in my life. We did get to see some amazing beaches and explore the island of Corfu on quads though. What an experience. I had never gone quadding before, but I'd like to think of myself as somewhat of an expert now. We were given 50cc bikes and were flying around these tiny little streets on the edge of the cliff, overlooking the ocean, and dodging oncoming traffic. It was terrifying, but so worth it. We went to the highest part of the island, a secluded beach, a cute little cafe and through a bunch of small towns. This was probably one of the top 3 things I did over the past few weeks. We also ended up meeting a lot of friends from Dubai, Canada, the UK and Australia at the hostel and got to experience some authentic Greek cooking. I also have turned the brownest I have ever been in my life. I seriously looked like a different race. It was then that I knew it was time to get out of the sun, so I bid farewell to Jill and Kristen and headed off to Berlin to meet Selena.

Seeing Selena was SO nice. I was getting a bit homesick at that point, and seeing a familiar face was just what I needed. We rented bikes for a day in Berlin and she showed me around to all of the main sites. Seeing the Berlin wall and the East Side gallery was amazing. There is just so much history in that city, and literally just full of stuff you read in textbooks. We then spent the evening at Harry Potter 2! Ha, we needed a little piece of home, and we figured a movie theatre would be just the thing. Then we headed off to Amsterdam.

I will start a new post for Amsterdam! If you made it this far, you are a trooper. Apparently talking too much translates into typing too much...

New York, New York

Hello friends!

We have finally gotten settled in Amsterdam and have internet in our apartment. I am going to post a few of the blogs that I have written and have been unable to post over the past few weeks. Enjoy!

August 6/2011
Jay and I arrived safe and sound in NYC Friday night, and let me tell you it is hot. It only got worse as we got into the city with all the people and cars, but we're so happy to be here, even if we're sweating at all times of day. Luckily Selena has AC in her apartment (which is this amazing student housing building in Brooklyn), so we've been able to sleep.

Yesterday we walked for about 5 hours showing Jay the city. We went through Central Park, The Museum of Natural History, showed him the Plaza, walked down 5th Ave, the New York Public Library and went for dinner at this amazing little Italian restaurant. We got lost in the park it was so big, and Jay got someone to draw our picture. He was really good, except that he made us look too skinny (I know, who would complain about that), but it looked like 12 year old versions of ourselves. To kill time while we were getting drawn, Selena got a guy who gave $1 jokes to come over and entertain us. He was not funny. Worst $2 (I felt bad only giving him $1, even though that's all he asked for and his jokes sucked) I have ever spent. Dinner was also amazing. The restaurant was a classic little Italian place in Greenwich and we all got a pasta dish. After that, we ended the day at this little bakery with the most AMAZING cheesecake. We shared three pieces, and all felt sick after, but we figured we deserved it after all of our walking.
The day ended with Zoolander in Selena's apartment, because we were all too tired to venture out again, and because Zoolander is hilarious. "What is this, a centre for ants??" (If that line makes no sense to you, go rent Zoolander)

Here are some pictures:

Today we have a bit more sight seeing planned (Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge) and then possibly go to the Hillsongs church tonight if we can find it.

Monday I am off to Amsterdam, Jay is headed home, and Sel is finishing up her last week at RBC. I'm not sure when we'll be able to post again, so just keep checking back.

Cheers!