Amsterdam! And the last night in Edinburgh.

The end of my exams were both dreaded and highly anticipated. Dreaded because I knew that when school was over, that meant I had to go home and anticipated because as soon as I finished my last exam I was off for one last jaunt to Amsterdam.

In my head I had an association of Amsterdam with sex, drugs, and rock and roll but it turns out that while the city does have those things, it has much more as well. I arrived late on Monday evening and met my friend who had been traveling for 10 days. We met up at our hostel and after a brief walk around the area of our hostel (called Museumplein, where all the notable museums are located) we went to bed. Tuesday morning we put on all our layers to brave the cold during a nearly 4-hour walking tour of the city. This was the best thing we did over the three days in Amsterdam! The FREE tour was advertised in the lobby of our hostel and left from Dam Square (the city center). Our tour guide was a recent graduate of McGill University who, after not knowing what to do with her psychology degree and having a dad from the Netherlands, moved to Amsterdam and became a tour guide! She was very knowledgeable about the entire city and my friend and I were happy to see areas that we may not have found on our own! The tour included the infamous Red Light District, the canals, Rembrandt's neighborhood, the Dutch East India Company, and a bunch more! The tour ended at an authentic Dutch restaurant. I had no idea what typical Dutch food was, and I'll probably never eat it again, but when freezing and tired from hours of walking, mashed potatoes and carrots smothered in gravy topped with an enormous meatball or sausage hits the spot surprisingly well. After the waistline danger zone, my friend and I went to the Anne Frank House. For any of you who haven't heard of The Diary of Anne Frank, it is the story of a Jewish girl and her family who were kept in hiding for two years during World War II when the Germans were occupying the Netherlands.  It was fascinating and scary and heartbreaking to see the "secret annex" where Anne and her family were hidden and to hear her father's testimony as he was the only survivor of the Holocaust.

After the Anne Frank House we spent a couple of hours walking around, window shopping until 7pm when it was time to meet up with a tour group to learn about the Red Light District. This was a super interesting outing. Women actually do stand in windows, under a red light, advertising their bodies. While safer because it is legal and regulated, prostitution is still an uncomfortable idea. More than anything it was just funny to one minute be avoiding eye contact of scantily clad women, and the next passing a cute boutique or a church. Yes, the oldest church in the city is smack in the middle of the Red Light District....right across the street from the ritziest restaurant in the city. While I will add photos that I took of the city at the end of this post, I will not be adding any of the Red Light District because we were warned that the sex workers are known to come out of their windows if someone tries to take their picture, and they will chase you and smash your camera...yikes!

After a good night's sleep we set off to see the van Gogh museum. However, the museum was under construction so we were directed to the Hermitage where a van Gogh exhibition was being held. The Hermitage was a long walk and we saw the biggest canal in the city that the majority of the trade used to come in on. Very cool! Alas, when we got to the Hermitage , the entrance fee was way out of our college student budget so we kept walking. That afternoon we went to the Heineken factory which was neat. I'm sure the self guided tour would have been more enjoyable had I not been exhausted.

After a nap, my friend and I went out for a nice dinner. For dessert we stopped at the grocery store near our hostel to pick up stroop wafels. Stroop wafels are little wafer cookies with caramel in the middle...unbelievable. We must have eaten 4 packages in the three days we were in Amsterdam.

On our third day we wandered around for a while before the cold got to us so we decided to go to the airport early. We got back to Edinburgh that night. I went to bed early so that I could get my packing out of the way to enjoy my last day in the lovely city of Edinburgh. I went with three of my friends to a pub for one last pub-food lunch and then hung out with all the friends I made over the semester that night. It was sad to say goodbye to the people and the city that I have loved so much over the past four months, but I must say it is nice to be sitting here on my couch listening to my dog snore.

I hope you all enjoyed reading my blog as much as I enjoyed writing it! It was a way for me to keep a journal of my adventure whilst sharing it with friends and family.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Back side of a flower market in Amsterdam, a city known for tulips

Dutch East India Company building that is now part of the city's university

A small neighborhood where only 30+ year old women can live

Narrowest building in Amsterdam. The man who lives there is taller than his house is wide.

Canal in the Red Light District

Liz and I!

Cool drawbridge over the major canal, Hermitage is the building on the right 

Amsterdam is a beautiful city!

One last visit to the Christmas Market in Edinburgh

Last pub lunch. From left to right: Brook, Hannah, Becky, Liz.

Until next time! xoxo

Exams

While exams are never enjoyable, the University of Edinburgh sure did make them beautiful!

My Fluid Mechanics final was in McEwan Hall, one of the university's oldest buildings.

Inside McEwan Hall

Outside McEwan Hall

The UK examination system means that the grade I get on the exam will have the majority of sway in my final grade for the course...so that's nerve wracking. Thankfully, my grades transfer back as pass-fail!

Rosslyn Chapel

Any DaVinci Code fans reading this? If so, you'll hopefully find this as bafflingly interesting as I did.

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, after I got out of my Linear Algebra final exam, I took a break from studying to go to the small town of Rosslyn about a half hour outside of Edinburgh. My friend and I scoped out the bus schedule and found the public bus that would bring us to Rosslyn Chapel. She had suggested it a while before and the name had sounded vaguely familiar until I remembered the Dan Brown books. For anyone who hasn't read them (other than the fact that you should change that) Rosslyn Chapel is a key site of conspiracy theories about the quest for the Holy Grail in the first book.

After about 25 minutes, Edinburgh faded away and was replaced by farms and sheep and rolling hills. Gotta love Scotland. The bus let us off a short walk from the chapel, and after a quick peek at the visitor's center we entered the walls surrounding the chapel.

Alas, no pictures were allowed inside.

The chapel is much smaller that I expected. However size was not an issue because the chapel is not known for grandeur, but for its intricate carvings. There is hardly any symmetry inside which makes every wall panel, column, and window unique. There is a lot of speculation about the meaning of the carvings in the chapel. There are many "hidden" carvings of Christ strewn throughout the chapel, most famously amongst stars and flowers carved into the ceiling.

Another example of the intrigue of the carvings is: around the edge of one of the windows are ears of corn. One of the chapel's informative plaques said that corn does (or did) not grow anywhere in the UK, and this chapel was built long before English settlers had gotten to America...so how did the masons know what corn was? Did someone in Scotland discover America before Christopher Columbus? These are the conspiracies that arise in the chapel. Amazing!

This afternoon was the perfect outing to take a break from studying before putting my nose back into the books.

Exams and the British healthcare system

As I said in my last post, classes ended last week. This week has been empty: no classes, no exams. For many that meant trips around Europe but for me it meant a relaxing week to catch up on life with maybe a little studying thrown in. Now that reading week is coming to a close, I am feeling the pressure of my upcoming exams. Unlike the US where we get (what I now see as) a cushy chunk of our final grade dedicated to homework, other assignments, maybe midterms, here they are not so kind. Out of my three exams, the one worth the smallest percentage of my final grade sits at an uncomfortably high 80%. In another class the exam is 100% of my final grade. So basically: don't expect another post until I get through finals. Oh and then a couple days more because I will be going to Amsterdam!

In other news: the UK's healthcare system totally rocks. I had to test it out about a month ago when I injured my back. A quick flash of my university ID and my passport got me free care for my stay here. I registered with a GP, had a nice meeting with a doctor, and walked across the street to the pharmacy to get my prescription filled free of charge. Not a bad deal, if you ask me. Unfortunately this morning I had to test it out again. I got up in the morning to go for a run as I have done countless times here. I don't know what it was about today, but I got approximately 200 yards before slipping on some salt on the sidewalk and completely wiping out. Long story short I was taken to the hospital and am very frustrated with the fact that I have a sprained ankle the size of a baseball...but at least I didn't have to pay for anything!

The beginning of goodbyes

The goodbye process has started, and I can't say that I'm happy or unhappy about it. Among other things, last Friday marked the last class I will most likely ever take at this university, and on Monday I sold my bike. Theorems, investments, and even friendships that I have learned and made here will come to an end in two short weeks. I hope I do not sound too pessimistic, I am thrilled to have made friends here that I will be able to retain when I return home. But I will only have the memories of riding my bike through this wonder-filled city.

I do not want to wish my time left here away, but I am very much looking forward to going home. A friend gave me advice about dealing with reverse culture shock: make a list of everything you missed about home, and all the things you will not miss about the city in which you immersed yourself for a short, yet long, time. I have been making a mental list so that when I get sick of the lack of nightlife in Gloucester, I can remember that at least the US has figured out how to combine the hot and cold water into one faucet.

The first sunrise I saw over Holyrood Park