I LOVE AMSTERDAM. I'm serious. It was the greatest city ever.

NO, not because of DRUGS. It's because everyone there is friendly, and it's gorgeous, and there are canals and tall skinny houses and bicycles everywhere. Every restaurant and coffeeshop is cool and ridiculously decorated - fishtanks, walls painted like a jungle, live music and everyone gets up and dances. Every shop has hidden corners full of crazy old records and books and vintage clothes. Flower markets and museums and outside exhibits everywhere. The people are nice, everyone eats waffles covered in chocolate, and in the middle of all this medeival-town-looking setting, there are tons of neon lights advertising, um, sex and drugs. The contrast is bizarre.

I didn't act too crazy in Amsterdam. You don't need to. It's cool enough on its own. We left Thursday night. It was funny because obviously, we almost missed both trains, and everyone was on different flights. Our flight over was great. There was a drunk guy who kissed my friend then threw up all over a bunch of seats and passed out in the aisle, and all his friends were yelling that they didn't know him and the stewardesses dumped coffee all over him, so that was entertaining. Then we were scattered around in different seats with lots of American kids and all these Dutch businessmen, and we talked life and American politics and European politics, it was fun. One told me about how he got harassed in America last year so much on his vacation (he is Pakistani) that he left early. It was really interesting to hear about it from someone else's side, because I had no idea that was still going on. We got there and kind of just went to bed cause it was 1am, but we were in an 18 person room in our hostel, and there was a bar downstairs, so it was loud and everyone in the room was just BREATHING weirdly so I couldn't sleep. So then the next day we went to the Anne Frank House. It was really sad - everyone was crying. It was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. It was so crazy to see the door with the bookcase in front of it, the pictures that Anne hung up on the walls still hanging there, all that. It was also sad to see the pictures hung up of the Franks and everyone in concentration camps and Jews being marched by on the street right outside the house, the street we were just standing on.

We met a guy named Steve at the Anne Frank house. Steve worked for a Christian group and he was in his 30s, and he had just gotten back from Uganda doing missionary work. Afterward (there were 8 of us), we went out to get coffee with Steve. He bought all 8 of us lunch. He was just a guy visiting Amsterdam alone, looking to meet people just to talk about different things, keeping an open mind. He bought us all lunch, then said goodbye and left. He was so nice - if I'm ever traveling alone, I hope that I might be so outgoing in meeting people and talking and exploring with them. I bet he's had a lot of good travel experiences.

Anyway, then we went out and shopped and walked around, and went to the Sex Museum at night, which was sort of funny. The next day we went out to breakfast and went to the Van Gogh museum, which was really awesome. I went to a tulip market, then we went shopping and I FINALLY got some sneakers (nice), which was good because it was pouring rain. I've been looking for sneakers for so long but they never had my size in Perugia (feet too small). At night we went to a hilarious bar and this marching band was playing in the street because it was some guy's birthday, and they had all these African drums and they all MARCHED into the bar and he had all these women dancing around him and marched up to the loft and we were all dancing and the drummers were like hitting everyone and it was really weird and funny. Sunday morning, I woke up early and took a walk by myself. I went to this outdoor aquarium exhibit and found the public gardens, which were really beautiful. They had a rock garden and a "Mexican garden" (?) and a river with trees and paths and pine tree smell everywhere. They had indoor greenhouses too: a palm house, a California house, a tropical rainforest, a subtropical climate, and a desert. They even had a butterfly garden :) You could walk from one to the next and feel the difference in the air. Then I met up with another girl and we went to the Tropics Museum, which is where they have exhibits of all the former Dutch colonies in Indonesia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. They had lots of lifelike stuff, artifacts, video games and reproductions of houses and whole villages that you could walk through. They also had this bizarre room full of totem poles and weird lights that was crazy. The museum was HUGE and really cool. Then we sort of just shopped at bookstores and markets and ate again, and went home the next morning. The food there was amazing. All I ate all weekend was chocolate covered waffles, apple turnovers and falafels. Lots of ethnic food there - we even had Mexican food. We stayed in the Red Light district, so these people would come and try to make us go to sex shows. We saw the prostitutes in the windows. It was actually sort of funny - they like, hang out, talk on the phone, eat soup, do their nails, read the newspaper in their underwear. If people stare at them for a while, they come over and signal prices through the window. It was so weird. Our hostel was funny because there were people in it sleeping all day, but I sort of tried to avoid being there because there were 18 other people in the same room. Oh well. It wasn't the greatest hostel ever, but I love hostels anyway, so it was fine.

Anyway, Amsterdam was awesome. Now I'm back. There is only one month left before I leave here. It's strange. I feel like I haven't even gotten to know Perugia yet - I've been so busy running around and just sleeping when I am here. Since I ran out of money, though, I will finally have some time to hang out here and relax and see some little towns around here - Cortona, Assisi, Gubbio - and revisit Florence and Rome. And then, I'll go home. When you live somewhere else for a long time, it's weird. You miss being home, but you feel like you shouldn't - you feel like you should act like you act when you're on vacation, loving every second and seeing everything, but you LIVE there, so you have to learn to deal with real life too. But at the same time, you learn to really like that feeling of detachment, that feeling of freedom when no one you know is even on your side of the world. It's a funny lonely feeling, but I can see why some people can't sit still and have to keep traveling.

Movement is addicting. I learned that the first time I went to Greece. Every place I went to seemed to make me think harder, feel deeper. When you go somewhere, everyone tells you: look, listen, move, explore. Pretty soon, you can't stop looking. You can't stop moving. No matter how much I loved any one place in Greece, every time we packed up and boarded a boat to leave, I had that feeling again. Excitement. Movement. It doesn't matter if you loved the place you're leaving; once you feel it once, you just can't stop looking for new places to love. Even at home, we schedule our lives to death. Clubs, gyms, dinners, coffeeshops, classes, jobs, bars. Sometimes I get the feeling like my life is a series of appointments, but I don't like it when it's not scheduled like that. Today, I stayed in my room for a couple of hours reading and almost went nuts. Finally, I went to a coffeeshop - still reading, but feeling better because there was more to look at, more to see, the feeling like I was going somewhere new. It's interesting to think about. It'll be interesting seeing how I react to spending a month in Perugia, as I have only spent two full weekends here so far, and the new things I'll find around here when I can't sit still.

That's enough rambling on for now, I guess. I have been on the internet far too long. I am having this sort of bizarre day though, so I don't want to go home. My stuff just keeps falling apart. I picked up my umbrella; the handle fell off. My roommate picked up my mug; the handle fell off. I broke a glass. I lent my other roommate my key and she somehow BROKE IT IN HALF. Water came through the bottom of my shoes because, you guessed it, they are falling apart. I got little rips on my jacket. I think my desk is going to fall down, as well as my bookshelf, and I do NOT want to be there when that happens. Sooo maybe I will stay in this lounge for a little while.