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Published: January 7th 2006
Grassy Stuff
Walking to the African museum. Well this may be silly but we went to an African Museum today. While in Europe, why not learn about another continent??
Another house member appeared last night, Chris from Germany, and while talking about what I wanted to do while in Maastricht and the museums I wanted to visit in other cities he mentioned how there was an African museum in town. There used to be a church in Maastricht that sent a lot of missionaries to Africa, and when they came home they'd bring an item or two. Over the years there became quite a collection of items, either as gifts or swiped we're not sure. It's quite a nice little exhibit, I enjoyed it although all the descriptions were in Dutch, but Chris and Marit helped translate for me.
They also had African drum classes, a gift shop and coffee bar. The exhibits were nice, and there were some really wonderful peices. I quite liked the carved ivory tusk, which I think depicted a creation story. It was also written on the wall behind it; it was in dutch but I understood snippets of it. I also thought the coffin was interesting. Apparently
Walking
Marit and Chris they would have their coffin be shaped like anything they wanted, like if you had always wanted to be in an airplane you could shape it like an airplane, or if you sewed for a living it could be sewing-machine shaped. Only near the end of our museum wander did I finally figure out how to turn off the flash on my camera. That's why the picture of the drum doesn't look harsh. I wish the one with the long mask and the carving had been without flash, because with the lighting and shadows of the display they looked really beautiful. Also on this trip I figured out how to zoom in and out with my camera! You'd think I'd have gotten it before now but no, and I had been quite perplexed but it's a little swivelly dial on the top and I guess I was looking for buttons or something else. Just all sorts of learning going on today!
Jet lag is still interesting. I went to bed last night at 6pm for a change, and woke up at 1am and again at 4am, when I actually got out of bed. I wanted to play on
Outside the Museum
One of the half-dozen or so prayer areas the computer but I needed the password, and everyone was asleep (being 4am of course) and then at 8 or so I went out and bought a loaf of bread and was all ready to make french toast... when I realised one of the smokers in the house had taken the lighter from the kitchen to light the gas stove and not replaced it in the kitchen drawer. So I had no french toast OR World of Warcraft until after 9:30. It was a long morning. We went to the museum at around 2.
Alice came today too! That's Joel's girlfriend. She's very nice! I was excited to meet her, I'd heard a lot about her. She had to go study today or she would have come to the museum with us.
We are making dinner soon but I wanted to put these pictures up... when we left the museum the sky was pretty and pink and the city was kind of foggy, and we were on a bit of a hill (it's really flat here!!!!) and so I got a couple nice pictures. And before we went into the museum it was nice and sunny
Outside the Museum
We figured this used to be part of the church. Now it's another prayer area. and so also nice time for taking pictures. There were neat prayer areas outside the museum too.
Take care everyone! Thanks everyone for the messages and *hugs* 😊 I love to hear from you.
And a special message... Congratulations to Jean and Brian! I wish I could have come to the wedding today, I know it will be beautiful and a wonderful day! I wish you both the best from over here in the Netherlands! Hugs and kisses all around!
That's all for now!
heading to the kitchen,
~Bev
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kayda
non-member comment
hello!
Hey Bink! Great Picture taking! Don't forget to take pictures of yourself too, k. And try not to cause too much trouble ok? Love, Kayda