overheard in the office today

"do they still have real mermaids at disneyland? i haven't been there since i was a kid."

the endings

I know I was made to go up this mountain
Every bone in my body tells me it's right
I know I was made to go up this mountain
But I'm getting scared of heights.

--blindside, the endings

shampoo planet, take 2

"you mistake motion for growth and are lured into vexing situations."

--shampoo planet, douglas coupland, page 203

shampoo planet, take 1

"in periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. we speak in sentences that end before finishing. we sleep heavily because we need to ask so many questions as we dream alone. we bump into others and feel bashful at recognizing souls so similar to ourselves."

--shampoo planet, douglas coupland, page 182

no, you may not take my picture.

yesterday, i went surfing. it was really fun, but i was not good at it (which i learned from my first experience last year). my friend had parked the car away from the pier we were surfing by because parking at the pier is ridiculous, so after we were done i sat and waited for him to bring the car back to load up and head out.

i pulled out a book and waited for a few minutes, when a hispanic man about my height wearing a camera around his neck approached me. in a thick accent he asked me, "excuse me miss, can i take your picture?" a little startled, i asked him to repeat the question. "why?" i asked him. "i collect pictures. for myself, personal use. not going to put it anywhere."

still very confused by his question, i eventually figured out that he had watched me and my friend rinsing off with our boards and everything, and knew that i was waiting for him to come back. he wanted to wait until my friend came back and then the hispanic guy wanted to be in the picture with me. a thousand thoughts as to why this was a terrible idea crossing my mind, i respectfully declined.

isn't this supposed to change with becoming an adult?

you know how when you're a little kid, even when you're exhausted, all you want to do is stay up? why is that? and why, as an adult, do i still feel that way? i just don't have anyone forcing me to brush my teeth and get under the covers. i've been tired since 10:30. yet, here we are, two hours later. everything seems much more important when you're supposed to be sleeping. yes! i must pick up those dirty clothes that have been laying there for days. yes, i must start building my scrapbook. yes, i must file that paperwork that i can't complete without calling 10 people who work during normal daytime hours and therefore i won't get anywhere on it tonight.

i re-read the first 50 pages or so of Blue Like Jazz the other day, and in it Donald Miller says something about Satan's huge plan to derail the world is not to dress up in bull horns and torment people, but rather to get everyone wasting time. i've been thinking about that a lot. how am i spending my time? am i wasting my days away? as i lay awake checking facebook for the umpteenth time in between trying on clothes in my closet and creating a huge mess that will keep me awake until the wee hours of tomorrow morning when i decide to clean it all up again... the answer seems like a resounding, "yes." upon further reflection, it's not always like this. but right now....

the cure for pain

And here tonight while the stars are blacking out
With every hope and dream I've ever had in doubt
I've spent ten years trying to sing these doubts away
But the water keeps on falling from my eyes

And heaven knows, heaven knows
I tried to find a cure for the pain
Oh my Lord! To suffer like you do
It would be a lie to run away

--jon foreman, "the cure for pain"

jeremiah 15:16-21

16 When your words came, I ate them;
they were my joy and my heart's delight,
for I bear your name,
O LORD God Almighty.

17 I never sat in the company of revelers,
never made merry with them;
I sat alone because your hand was on me
and you had filled me with indignation.

18 Why is my pain unending
and my wound grievous and incurable?
Will you be to me like a deceptive brook,
like a spring that fails?

19 Therefore this is what the LORD says:
"If you repent, I will restore you
that you may serve me;
if you utter worthy, not worthless, words,
you will be my spokesman.
Let this people turn to you,
but you must not turn to them.

20 I will make you a wall to this people,
a fortified wall of bronze;
they will fight against you
but will not overcome you,
for I am with you
to rescue and save you,"
declares the LORD.

21 "I will save you from the hands of the wicked
and redeem you from the grasp of the cruel."

15 minutes of Truth

Are there any among the idols of the nations who give rain?
Or can the heavens grant showers?
Is it not You, O Lord our God?
Therefore we have hope in You,
For You are the one who has done all these things.

--jeremiah 14:22

"hitchiking to antwerp" or "the time i learned to rely on people's kindness"

so there's this small town in Belgium about 2 hours from Amsterdam called Antwerpen. I've wanted to go there for some time as I've heard it's very artistic and fashionable. I ended up with a couple of days off, so I grabbed my friend Kerry who also had those days off, and we decided to go. I wanted to do the trip as cheaply as possible, so we talked about it the night before and decided to hitch hike. Say what you will about hitch hiking, but in Europe it's much less sketchy. I'm not saying you should just get in the car with anybody, but it's a lot more common around there and a lot of normal people are willing to pick you up. or at least, they are willing to pick ME up.

anyway, I worked the morning shift and then we took off around 2pm after that. It's kind of hard to get out of Amsterdam because of the way it's set up, so after awhile when no one picked us up, we changed our sign to read Utrecht (a town like 30 minutes away) to see if we could get out there and then head south to Antwerpen. Within a few minutes this electrician guy picked us up. he was chain smoking and talking about his girlfriend who was 14 years younger than him. kerry liked him well enough, but i thought he was a bit of a weirdo. he was going to drop us outside of the city, but then he kept telling us about this coffeeshop (you know, for the "coffee") that he wanted us to see. we had no intention of going to the coffeeshop, but still a little inexperienced at the whole hitching thing, we just let him drop us off wherever he wanted and figured we'd go from there. well, it was in the center of town, which is not the best place to try to get picked up for hitching. by this time it was 4:30 and raining and we didn't know what to do, so we decided to go to the eurolines office and see when the next bus was to Antwerpen. the guy told us the only other bus going there that day was in Amsterdam leaving at 6:30 or something. we decided we wouldn't have time to get back out to a good hitching spot and then catch a ride back, so we ended up taking a train back to Amsterdam and catching the next bus to Antwerpen, which was pretty amusing in itself. it took about 3 hours to get to Antwerpen and 20 euros. we talked to the Eurolines guy about it and he was pretty confident in our ability to hitch back, so we only bought one way tickets.

so, the day before we left I set up a couch surfing deal. for those who don't know, couch surfing (www.couchsurfing.org) is basically a social networking tool where people offer their couches to travelers for free. they have last-minute couch request forums in most cities, so i was able to find a guy pretty quickly to host us. once arriving in Antwerpen, we set out to find this guy's house. to get to his house we had to hop on the train, which was literally a 3 minute ride to the next station. we found the guy's house pretty quickly, and it was AMAZING. everyone in the house were musicians and everything was artsy and one of his flatmates was gone so we actually got a room with a bed and a couch and everything in it to sleep on. the guy even had a bunch of dinner and a bottle of wine left over from earlier that he gave us. he had extra bikes in his garage from the missing flatmates, and after eating we all headed into town to hang out at this local pub. i had a lekker cherry belgian beer. we all finally went to bed after this whole process and didn't get up the next morning until 11:30. his flatmate made us coffee and told us all the things we should see and the good places to hitch hike, and then we were on our way again. we hopped the train again to get to the city center (again, literally to the next station, less than 3 minutes) and the guy ended up asking us for our tickets. we hadn't bought any beforehand, so we asked him for two, and he charged us 28,80. wait, what? it's a 3 minute train ride! yeah, but you have to buy them beforehand, he explained. after much debate, he finally let us go with only paying 4,60 each, even though it should have only been 1,60 if we had bought them beforehand.

we went to the city center and hung around for awhile doing the belgian things. bought some belgian chocolate and belgian waffels. walked around the markets. went into a few shops. we decided to start hitching around 3:30 so we had plenty of time to catch the last bus to amsterdam in case we didn't get picked up. we ended up out on the outside of town to start hitch hiking and were only there for approximately 10 minutes when this lady picked us up in her flashy new volkswagon. she said she could take us to essen, which is on the border of belgium and holland. she was really fun-- pretty hip, had just spent the day shopping in Antwerpen while she's on holiday and her husband was at work. we made small talk, talking about what we've done since being in Belgium, and she asked if we had belgian fries while we were here. nope, that's the one thing we missed. she explained that we definitely needed to do that, then offered for us to come back to her house and we'll have a drink and then she'd take us to a fries place around dinner time. me and kerry looked at each other and decided, sure, why not! we can always catch a train later if we need to. so she took us back to this tiny little belgian town and brought us to her house. we hung out in her garden for a long time, ate some authentic belgian fries from some shop around the corner, and then she dropped us off on the highway about an hour and a half later.

10 minutes after being dropped off another lady picked us up and took us to middle of nowhere's-ville. (a little background on kerry-- he is from New Zealand and is a registered dive instructor/underwater construction worker.) turns out this lady's boyfriend grew up in New Zealand and has his own diving business, so she loved kerry. she invited us to this carnival thing with her boyfriend, offered for us to stay at her house that night, and gave kerry her number in case he ever wants to go diving with her boyfriend. we declined the invite to the carnival because it was getting late, and kerry needed to be at work the next morning. she dropped us off on the side of another highway about an hour outside of amsterdam. we were there for about 20 minutes when another lady picked us up and was going straight home to amsterdam! so we rode back with her the whole way and she dropped us off at Amstel station where our bikes were. she was also really cool, talking about how she travels a lot for her job and had just spent 6 months in South Africa.

all in all, a pretty amazing two days! met some cool people, saw some cool things. definitely beat the typical "take a train and sit in a hostel sight seeing" trip.

this is your life

so the last two days i've been trained as the hostel's newest cleaning supervisor. this means i get to work with the cleaners (that i hang out with all the time anyway), except now i get to boss them around! either way, i pretty much run around the entire hostel 60 times looking for people and cleaning beds and checking bathrooms and doing the cleaners' laundry.

today i washed and folded a Brazilian man's underwear. i stopped for a second and thought....mikkele, this is your life.

i have those moments often when i'm sitting in a group of people from 10 different countries discussing what superpower we'd want or how many countries we've been to in the last 10 years or how the word "pity" is something that all dutchies use in english but kind of sounds like an 80 year old woman taught it to them. and then someone says, "Mikkele, Pavlos prayed with Peter last night to accept Christ and to feel the Holy Spirit in his life" and then i see him leave the hostel with David, a staff member, to "spread the Word of God," and i think...mikkele, this is your life. you get to see this transformation happen. while people need clean showers to use or fresh sheets to sleep on, ultimately that's not the point. the reason i'm here is for Pavlos, who accepted Christ. i'm here for Thiago, who we showed what it means to actually have a relationship with God instead of just have a religion. i'm here for Raymond, who accepted Christ in immigration prison and has recently been deported to Holland for the rest of his life without his family or friends.

it's not by any means normal, and sometimes i find myself in a basement folding a Brazilian man's (very Brazilian) underwear, but this is my life for now, and i couldn't feel more at peace about it.

here is a picture of Kerry (left) and Pavlos (right) painting the bike Pavlos bought and fixed up for 5 euro:

heaven knows

the busy season is upon us; we are full almost every night with people from all over the world who have come for various reasons to visit amsterdam and this weekend was no exception.

it was saturday morning around 7:30, and i was working the cafe. morning cafe shifts are always pretty crazy since breakfast is free, and the doors are usually bursting right at 8 with people wanting to get an early start on their sightseeing. somehow i ended up alone in the cafe and jon foreman's "the cure for pain" was playing over the speakers. i sat there listening to the song and staring out the window and i felt an overwhelming sense of peace and calm right before the storm of people i was about to encounter. the sun was shining and the cat was sleeping and it was a really beautiful moment.

here is the song:

oops

chopped my hairs off all asymmetrical like. so much for the previous post....

my hair will look like this soon.

if i keep growing it! my celebrity girl-crush: zooey deschanel



here it is currently....just a little longer....

the most terrifying moment of my life.

tomorrow is memorial day here in Amsterdam, and tonight at Dam Square there was a service with the queen! a bunch of us gathered to watch the festivities. at 8pm exactly there was a moment of silence for the victims of World War II. we were standing there with thousands of people and there was complete silence, when suddenly this terrifying scream came from the back of the crowd. we all started looking around for the insensitive person when something happened that i cannot really explain. i could physically see a dark wave fall over the crowd. it sounded like something, a car maybe, was coming at us and everyone panicked. we all took off running, people being trampled on the ground below. i lost most of my friends and ended up on the other side of the median with my coworker, maranda.

turns out nothing happened. i'm still not sure what made everyone start running, but i just know what i saw/heard coming at me and ran for my life.

a lot of thoughts went through my head- mostly frightened confusion. was i going to die? was something about to run into me? are we being bombed? are those my friends falling over behind me? everything was a blur and when i looked up and saw maranda we grabbed onto each other and watched those around us in tears as our hearts raced. it was absolutely one of the most terrifying moments of my life.

here is a video of the crowd breaking out in terror:

also overheard at reception

this guy is one of the many reasons americans get a bad rap.

guy on phone, calling at 11:55pm local amsterdam time, with the strongest southern accent you can muster: hi, i want to bring my youth group kids to amsterdam. can we stay there?

receptionist: we have a special way of reserving for groups, so you need to email....and she can help you, but it's almost midnight here so she is not available right now.

guy on phone: okay, what's the cost?

receptionist: you can expect it to be about 20,50 a bed, depending on the time of year you plan to arrive

guy on phone: is that in dollars?

receptionist: no, sir, that is in euros. you called the european union.

guy on phone: how many dollars is that?

receptionist: i'm not sure? it depends on the current exchange rate. so maybe 25?

guy on phone: OH! that's SO CHEAP! in america we have these things called hotels, they cost like $125 a night.

receptionist: yes well, this is a youth hostel, not a hotel.

guy on phone: i know, that's why it's so great, because i want to bring my youth group kids!

receptionist: yes well, good luck with that. goodnight.

things i like about this conversation:
1) no concept of the local european time
2) no concept of the exchange rate from euros to dollars (thinking 20 euros was equal to something like $100)
3) this man wants to lead a group of children to another continent
4) lacks understanding of what a hostel is
5) the man couldn't tell that the receptionist spoke perfect english with no accent and was most likely from america (ex: in america we have these things called hotels...)

overheard at reception

american on the phone:

Guy on phone: "Can you see ash in Amsterdam?"
Receptionist: "No, the sky is blue."
Guy on phone: "Oh, because this is a historic event and I want to hitchhike to wherever I can see ash."

This guy wants to hitchhike from America to Amsterdam. This would also be a historic event if he succeeded, I think.

seven reasons i hope i never fly ryanair again.

Amsterdam-->Bike-->Bus-->Metro-->Train-->Bus-->Plane-->Bus-->14 hours later-->Venice! And only one casualty: my bleeding finger from a small bike accident on the way to the Eurolines bus station. these are the seven reasons I hope I never fly RyanAir again.

The way back actually took more than 7 transportation switches because I started out on a water taxi at 4:45am from my hostel in Venice, and the train AND metro both broke in the middle (Brussels, I shake my fist at you), which caused me to miss my bus. I ended up on a train back to A'dam which put me into a station across town from where I'd left my bike days earlier. I ended up on the metro to get my bike and then biked back to the hostel to work my evening shift.

It felt like I fought a war against the various European transit systems and ultimately won after a few minor setbacks.

me too

postsecret.com

You came from where??

Today I made a list of all the countries that I've met people from since moving to Amsterdam. So far, I have 48 (that I can remember). Here they are:

Somalia
USA
Germany
France
Belgium
Italy
Switzerland
England
Afghanistan
Spain
Iran
Estonia
South Korea
China
Japan
Sierra Lyon
Greece
Scotland
Ireland
Brazil
Argentina
Mexico
Israel
Algeria
Georgia
Russia
Panama
Sweden
Norway
Ghana
New Zealand
Australia
Austria
Romania
Pakistan
Slovakia
South Africa
Canada
Armenia
Thailand
Czech
India
Whales
Turkey
Denmark
Azerbaijan
Philippines
Hungary

shhhh'd!

today i was standing in front of my house with anne, a fellow volunteer at the hostel. it was about 10:30 in the morning and we were waiting for some people who didn't have a key to get into the house. as we waited, we chatted about class and the weather and the likes, when we heard someone close by saying "shhhhh!" we looked next door to see a lady standing in the doorway shushing us!

excuse me? this is a public street! it's 10:30 in the morning, and even if it wasn't, i could be yelling if i wanted to, and you could have nothing to say on the matter.

crazy dutchies. that'll teach me to have conversations outside.

last i checked, the nickel is still legal tender

it was 11:45pm and my abnormally stressful-after-no-sleep-and-issues-with-next-week's-trip-to-italy reception shift was coming to a close. the door opened and a tiny man whose face was partially covered in white paint stood in front of me requesting a room. hesitantly, i opened the door for him. no one was around except Joe, one of our current cleaners, who was talking to me because he couldn't sleep. the man, who turned out to be polish and spoke no english, apologized for his appearance. through hand motions he explained that he needed a place to stay tonight. my patience was running low, but i booked him a bed and told him he owed 18,50. he apologized again and began pulling something out of his pocket. next thing i knew, there were piles and piles of change sitting on the desk in front of me. joe was still standing at the desk, laughing, and i stared in disbelief. i began to fish for the 1 and 2 euro coins, when the man stopped me again and apologized. he pointed to the 5, 10, and 20 euro cent coins, and again through motioning, asked me to use those first. i began digging through the mountain of change in front of me, using the smallest coins first and taking out the turkish, polish, and 1 & 2 euro cent coins (all of which we can't accept). at that point, i couldn't help but laugh along with joe. every once in awhile when i'd pull out a foreign coin of some kind, the man would pick it up and insist that joe or i keep it as a present. during the ten minutes or so that it took me to dig through this pile of change, joe asked him questions. the man responded through more motions-- he was a street performer and that's why his face and hands were partially covered in paint. this explains the mountains of change he carries around with him; that is where he gets his money. he pulled out a crate and stood on it, trying to explain his gig. eventually we got the whole change thing sorted out and i looked at the piles in the register that the nightman would have to count in the morning after working all night, and i asked the man if i could take his picture. he agreed and decided to put on the whole getup for me. without further ado, the man and his victim (joe):

Jesus Calms the Storm

One day Jesus said to his disciples, "Let's go over to the other side of the lake." So they got into a boat and set out. As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger. The disciples went and woke him, saying, "Master, Master, we're going to drown!" He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. "Where is your faith?" he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, "Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him."

Luke 8:22-25

notes from the reception book

"camouflage undies
'wolverine is gay'& #41
tripped up stairs twice after trying to slap up the stairs"

--notes from the reception book at the hostel i work at

the people to feel the saddest for

"sometimes i think the people to feel the saddest for are people who are unable to connect with the profound--people such as my boring brother-in-law, a hearty type so concerned with normality and fitting in that he eliminates any possibility of uniqueness for himself and his own personality. i wonder if someday, when he is older, he will wake up and the deeper part of him will realize that he has never allowed himself to truly exist, and he will cry with regret and shame and grief.

and then i sometimes i think the people to feel saddest for are people who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder--people who closed the doors that lead us into the secret world--or who had the doors closed for them by time and neglect and decisions made in times of weakness."

-douglas coupland, life after God

i can't believe i made it home from paris!

so, i was in paris last week from wednesday-saturday. it was a great trip and i stayed with my friend allison and we had lots of fun. this, however, is not the point of this blog post. i am seriously amazed that i made it home, and here's why:

it's a weird story as to why, but there was a problem when i booked my train ticket online. i thought i had fixed it, but apparently not, so when i got to the train station in paris for my 6:25am train ride home, i couldn't find my train anywhere. i double checked my ticket to make sure i had the right time, when i noticed that the return date was 25/2 not 27/2 (the day it currently was) and that my train had, in fact, departed 2 days earlier. now, i've just navigated the public transit system of paris for the last hour and been up since 4:30am, so all i wanted to do was get on my train and sleep.

my first thought was, okay, i need to get a train ticket home, and this is going to cost me a lot of money. tickets on the hi-speed train to and from paris are expensive anyway, much less without buying in advance AND on a weekend. this will probably set me back a good 150 euro, minimum. there is no one working (because it's 6:30 on a saturday morning) so i go to the ticket kiosk to see what is available. the answer: nothing. for 3 days. everything is booked. eesh.

my mind starts racing-- okay, i need to call allison or i need to find a place to stay and i need to call the hostel to tell them i can't work and i will have to pay so much money for food and i am so tired and i can't take a trip anywhere next month because this is going to eat up my traveling budget and i am SO TIRED! i decide to wait until the ticket office opens up to see if there were any cancellations and i can get out of the station sooner. i sit there for 10-15 minutes when i see someone working.

"parlez-vous anglais?" i ask her. "un peu," she replied. i try to explain to her that my train ticket was booked for the wrong date and i wanted to see when i could get to amsterdam. she pointed behind me and told me to get on that train. i saw it was a hi-speed train and i had no idea where it was going, but i did what she said.

i walked over to the throng of people waiting to get onto the train and the manager told me it was fine, they would honor my ticket, but i wouldn't have a reserved seat. i walked onto a random car and waited next to the luggage to see if there was a free seat anywhere. i asked another train manager about my ticket, and he was completely unhelpful. he didn't know why they let me on the train, why i was talking to him, where i should sit, and he walked away. as soon as the train took off, i figured as long as i could get to brussels i could hop the commuter train that leaves every hour to amsterdam, so i found an open seat and waited. the next train manager that came by i explained my ticket to, and he was SO AWESOME. he told me it was fine, explained what train i needed to take in brussels, what time it left, and that they should honor the same ticket on the next train since it was booked all the way to Amsterdam anyway.

sure enough, i arrived in brussels and after a few confusing conversations, they let me on the train. not only did i not have to buy another ticket, but i actually think my ticket was cheaper than it would have been had it been booked for the correct day (a saturday, which is always more expensive). i arrived in Amsterdam and i could not have been happier to walk home in the freezing rain with my bags. praise God i made it back!

crazy nights at the hostel in amsterdam

we have had some pretty crazy nights at the hostel as of late. i was "sleeper" last night, meaning i stayed up with the nightman and evening reception from 10pm-2am to help out keeping people in order. we had a guy pounding on the doors to the hostel asking if we were the house of God. after trying to talk to him through the intercom a couple times, we finally had to call the police. they came and knew his description, so i guess they took care of him. a few minutes later we caught a guy trying to sneak in. then a guy came to check out-- at 1 am. then around 1:30 a guy tried to check in that was barred from the hostel. i definitely prayed over the hostel that night while i fell asleep in the attic.

today we had an incident with one of the cleaners who cleaned with us for a month. he is an alcoholic and drank a lot during his time with us but let it get way out of control the last few days. we eventually had to kick him out and call the police. tonight while i worked evening reception he kept pounding on the windows and doors and trying to talk to us through the intercom. we ended up having to lock the main door to the hostel and check everyone's rooms and beds before they even came inside to make sure that nothing sketchy was going down.

as Christians, we believe that so many of these things that happen can be spiritual attack, but sometimes it's hard to know the balance between what is spiritual and what is normal for a hostel in amsterdam. but it sure feels like more junk than normal has been happening recently.

if you are the praying type (or even if you're not), please pray for protection over our staff and guests that are staying here, that the work of God may continue despite the crazies that are trying to destroy it. and pray for the cleaner, as he was cleaning with us for almost a month and this, his last interaction with us and with Christianity, has to be such a negative one.

love.

here i am, sending you love all the way from amsterdam!

i feel like those of you who read this blog for update-on-mikkele's-life-purposes are probably at the edge of your seats waiting to know what kind of crazy adventures i'm getting myself into. well, dear reader, your patience has paid off, because here it is:

very little has been happening.

what? i live in amsterdam, the most international city in the world, where marijuana and prostitution and gay marriage is legal and encouraged, where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal! and there are museums! so many museums.

the truth is, since i got here i've spent most of my time getting to know my housemates/coworkers and the area and figuring out my shifts and sleeping and being cold. i'm getting pretty comfortable in all of these things now (even the being cold part) and i'm realizing that i haven't really done a lot outside of biking between the house and the hostel most days.

speaking of the hostel, we've started working regular shifts again. here are the shifts that we have:

cook: cooks dinner for 20(ish) people (staff and cleaners)
morning/afternoon/evening cafe: works in the cafe cooking basic meals and getting people coffee
reception: checks people in and out, guards the door to make sure the crazies don't come in
sleeper: does some reception, cleaning, and sleeps at the hostel in case the nightman needs any assistance in the middle of the night
nightman: stays up all night to keep watch over the hostel
cleaning supervisor: we always have "cleaners" at the hostel, which are people that spend a few hours each day cleaning the hostel in exchange for room and board. the cleaners can stay up to a month. the cleaning supervisor tells the cleaners what needs to be done

i think those are all the shifts. so far i've only been trained on the various cafe shifts and cook, but starting this week i'm getting trained on reception, which should be fun because that's where most of the crazy happens. they only train people on reception that are planning on being here for 6 months or longer, so only a couple of the newer people are actually getting trained this week. i most likely won't be doing cleaning supervisor because they only have 3 at a time and all the spots are currently filled.

it's nice to feel more comfortable and confident being in and around the hostel, but we've hardly had any guests because of the renovations, so most of my shifts have been pretty slow. after doing the cleaning, i usually just sit around and read. i'm not used to having so much downtime, so sometimes i get a little stir crazy. however, it's a nice break from my previously insane schedule, so i'm not complaining. :)

slowly i've been getting the hang of the city. even though i don't necessarily know where everything is, i can at least orient myself pretty well and figure out which direction to go to get home or to the hostel. i've also got a pretty good handle on biking through the city now. i have gotten pretty quick-- winding around cars and pedestrians and ringing my bell at all of them. a few days ago i was biking straight at a car (who usually would move over on the road, but this guy didn't) and he got a little too close. i bailed and ran right into a parked car! it didn't really hurt, it was mostly just funny. also, yesterday i couldn't figure out why i was SO SLOW and working SO HARD when i checked my front tire and realized it was entirely flat. i left it at the hostel after my shift last night for the nightman to fix...so hopefully when i go downstairs it will be as good as new!

i went to the foam (fotographie amsterdam) museum last week and got myself a museum card that is good for most of the museums in amsterdam. i'm not a huge museum goer, but i figure i'm here, and the hostel reimbursed me for the card, so it would be silly not to go. besides, people eat that stuff up. "ohhh, did you see the anne frank house and the rilkes museum?" "oh yeah, i am an avid history and art lover and therefore will impress you with my new-found knowledge of both." foam was pretty cool-- they had an exhibit about urban space and the post-war european city, which you should know by now, is right up my alley. i also got some pretty sweet postcards that i keep forgetting to mail.

speaking of which, if you want me to send you a sweet postcard, please send me your mailing address here: mikkelesuzanne (at) gmail (dot) com

i've also started exploring the markets, which sell everything you could ever want. i got a cute little scarf yesterday, and plan on going back on monday to pick up a few other things that i really liked, but didn't have cash for at the time. i never know if i'm supposed to bargain with them or not, so sometimes i feel like i got ripped off.

this has been a long update. depending on your level of interest i could tell you a hundred more things about my life in this new city, but i'll spare you. also, i love getting emails and letters, so if you just want to mail me something pretty or send me your love or tell me about something funny that happened, please do. also, as always, you can check out pictures here, here, and here.

until next time.

"zeeland" or "the time i traveled in a very tiny car with way too many people"

i've been told that shifts at the hostel are really irregular and people rarely have the same days off and everything, but my first couple of weeks here haven't been like that at all. because the hostel is closed for renovations, we all work the same schedule every day (8:30-4:30) and had saturday and sunday off. because this was an anomaly, we decided to go away together to a little town by the sea called Zeeland. Here it is on a map (Amsterdam=A, Zeeland=B):


View Larger Map

anyway, the whole weekend was a huge blessing. we took a train to Gouda (pronounced, how-dah, crazy dutchies) and then some of the staff members from Holland had friends and family pick us up at the train station and pack us into tiny Dutch cars and drive us out to this beach house in the middle of nowhere (aka Zeeland) right by the North Sea. the hostel gave us money to buy groceries and the house was free, so all we ended up having to pay for was the train ticket to and from Gouda. we spent the weekend watching movies, playing games, praying together, and visiting the water. it was FREEZING, however, so we didn't venture out much. Janna, one of my coworkers, has a brother who lives near Zeeland, so we visited his church and hung out at his house with his family for soup and sandwiches.

the whole trip was a really good time to get to know everyone, and I feel more ready than ever to start my real shifts when the hostel opens again this weekend. here are some pictures:


quicksand warning


walking to the water

you can see more pictures from this trip and more pictures from around the city by clicking here! also, you can check out random other pictures from around town.

"new year's in amsterdam" or "the time i thought i was going to die by firecracker"

new year's eve has never really been a big deal to me-- get together with a random group of people, yell at midnight, and go home. new year's eve in Amsterdam, however, was quite the opposite. people from literally everywhere in the world come here to celebrate.

the night began at the City where we all sat around and played some dutch game...kow something? where you auctioned off animals and traded and stuff. it was so strange. kind of like the american game, pit, i think? anyway, it took like 2 hours and was so weird. then we sat around and talked about 2009 and the major news events, then we headed out to Museumplein to watch the fireworks. and what we saw was insane.

hundreds of thousands of people in the streets doing every drug you can think of, walking around drinking bottles of whiskey and wine and THROWING FIREWORKS! i have never in my life seen so many fireworks. it started SNOWING ASH! the entire city smelled like pot and it was so crowded people were walking their bikes. we were walking down the street and someone in front of me stopped abruptly. i was kind of annoyed and started to push around them when i heard an explosion and realized that someone had thrown a firecracker right in front of us. i had my hip pouch underneath my giant coat and fortunately so, because all night i felt hands going in and out of my pockets. this also stopped me from taking a lot of pictures because i feared my camera would get swiped, not to mention my hands were freezing.

when the clock struck midnight (9 hours ahead of all you california suckers!) i had oliver, a drunk german guy who is the craziest person i've ever met (he's been staying at the hostel) give me a hug. next was kim, the korean norwegian who has never been to korea and is in a perpetual state of "high" (also staying at the hostel) come on over. everyone was yelling "gelukkig nieuwjaar" and dancing in the streets.

the politie were standing around everywhere, not really doing a lot. i guess there wasn't a lot they could do, seeing as how everything that was happening was legal. on our way back to the City we saw a few guys light a 20 foot string of firecrackers. no joke. it took several minutes to get through the whole thing. they stopped traffic with it. within several feet, tourists were letting off m-80's and the sparks were uncomfortably close to me and this large inebriated group of people. also on the way back to the City, we saw a bonfire in the middle of the street. bikes were riding around it, cars were avoiding it, and people were standing around warming up by it with their beers. what the what?!

it took us over an hour to get back to the City, partially because of the amount of people, and partially because we kept stopping to watch the random acts of insanity. i woke up the next morning at 7 and there were still fireworks going off.

the crowd:


the aftermath:


the bonfire:


more of the aftermath. the red stuff is firecracker wrappers. all of it. i am so entirely serious:


don't worry everyone, i'm staying safe! :)

2009 in review. more for me than for you.

two years ago i did a "year in review" post with pictures and everything. i don't plan on doing that as extensively this year, but 2009 was a fun year for me, albeit a bit rough. i set some goals and started making things happen.

january:
-participating in improv everywhere's 2009 "no pants on the subway" ride
-visiting my friend David in San Francisco for MLK weekend!
-started teaching cooking classes at Express Yourself

february:
-my birthday!
-my first toms sample sale
-tiff's bachelorette weekend in palm desert
-big bear for kevin/rechelle's birthdays

march:
-supervising at st. andrew's serve day
-got pulled over while driving for the first time in my life, but the cop totally loved me and didn't give me a ticket
-started the revolution that is "i want to date mikkele suzanne"
-tiff's wedding

april:
-visited chicago for americorps training
-met the mak's baby, nora
-i don't remember what else happened in april.

may:
-ate a grasshopper
-the most hilarious highschool sketchy party/warehouse show ever

june:
-finished up americorps
-went for my first (& second) helicopter ride
-started having a life again after working 60-70 hour weeks between mindfireinc and americorps
-gave blood for the first (& last, let's be honest) time ever

july:
-watched nick and keri get married
-3 weddings in one week (matt in SD, ashley and rodney in huntington, and dan and whit in seattle)
-death cab at the hollywood bowl!!
-weekend in santa barbara with emily
-went to the fair
-taught a photo class for express yourself kids
-watched claire walk for the first time
-flew to portland and drove up to seattle with laura!
-got my iPhone (totally noteworthy!)
-started studying for the GRE
-having to go in for jury duty for the first time ever, but i didn't get picked

august:
-dan and whit's wedding in seattle (same as above, which apparently happened right at the end of the month/beginning of the month)
-went to a taping of conan o'brien
-said goodbye to jeff and emily (boooo)
-claire's 1st birthday
-halecrest chili cookoff and almost destroying the bounce house
-my first angel's game
-saw ian and jake in venice beach!

september:
-phil wickham VIP conversant life show
-print 09 in chicago
-second angel's game

october:
-big bear life group trip
-C3 basketball tournament
-took the GRE
-got the clock back to jeff and emily in the best way possible
-visited jeff and emily in virginia beach
-reverse trick or treating

november:
-visited ben in boston and joel in new hampshire (and for a moment in the same city)
-ate an oyster for the first time
-moved in with my brother and sister-in-law

december:
-flew a plane/went acrobatic flying
-attended dozens of holiday/going away parties
-quit my job
-moved to amsterdam!

i'm sure i forgot some major things, but i'm done with this now. also, make sure you save the date!

on getting lost.

the other day i left my bike at the hostel, and from various events of the night/day i was back at the staff house (henceforth known as the willemsstraat) without it. i've been in this city for about 3 full days now and gone back and forth between the hostel and the willemsstraat a handful of times (about a 10 minute bike ride or a 20-25 minute walk?) so you'd think i would know this route well enough.

i decided to go get the bike by myself; my first venture out into the city alone since i got here. it's dark outside, but i'm going over directions in my head-- walk out the door, go straight, turn right, turn left, follow the canal, etc. i can do this! and i did do it. i made it to the hostel (henceforth referred to as the City aka Shelter City. confusing, i know, but it will always be capitalized) without any issues.

so, i'm riding my bike back, which is a little terrifying (more on that later) and i make it about halfway before it occurs to me that i know how to get to the City, but i don't know how to get home. i made about 6 wrong turns and U turns and rode around for a good 15 minutes before i finally gave up and asked someone on the street for help. thankfully i was carrying the address of the willemsstraat because when i tried to pronounce the name of the street it was on, they had no idea what i was saying. a nice lady and her boyfriend pointed me in the right direction, so i jumped back on my bike and made it about 10 feet before i heard a huge snap and the pedals stopped working. i jumped off the bike and saw the chain on the ground a few feet back. this poor couple is standing there staring at me, this obviously foreign person who is lost and has a now-broken bike that isn't even up to regulation at the moment (no working lights! a 70 euro fine) and it's (literally) freezing outside.

i thanked them for the directions and waved them on, thinking about what to do. i started walking the bike, and quickly realized this couple is walking the same direction as me. i began making conversation, but they didn't really want to talk to me. so i thanked them again and walked much more quickly ahead. i made it a pretty good distance and then i stopped to ask another man for directions but then they walked by, and we did the most awkward yo-yo for a few more streets before i finally made a turn and stopped seeing them. thankfully, after 2 or 3 more people giving directions, i saw the willemsstraat and almost cried tears of joy as my fingers lacked almost all feeling at this point. all in all i think it took me an hour of biking/walking/looking lost to make it there.

it's so confusing because in the area of town that we live in, there are very few landmarks and all of the streets look the same. the city is built on a circle, however, so you can't just count blocks until you make it to your street. also, all of the straats (streets!) are in dutch so they are incredibly difficult to recognize and/or remember. it's so frustrating wanting to be independent but feeling like i can't leave if i don't have someone to walk with me and bring me home safely. i keep forgetting to pick up a map at the hostel, so once i do that and draw the route on the map i think i will be able to remember it more easily. sigh.