Amsterdam Day 2

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We got up at 8 am this morning, simply because we had all fallen asleep the night before at 5:30 pm.... there's no need to do math, we just slept for a crazy amount of hours. Part of it had to do because we didn't get much sleep during the transition day over here, but it still felt amazing when we woke up.

The Hostel was having complimentary breakfast for all of its guests, which is a buffet style meal with a variety of morning foods like hard boiled eggs, milk, coffee, orange juice and bread slices. We ended up getting down there around 9:30 and stayed for a whole hour, and yes we kept eating through that entire hour. I hadn't really had anything the night before, except 2 slices of pizza.... The experience at the restaurant had made me lose my appetite completely, and I could only eat a small portion of what I had ordered while Joon had everything else, which was pretty much the entire pizza.

We had woken up in time to catch the 10:30 am walking tour for the day, which we hadn't been so successful at in London. We walked with our tour guide for awhile past Vondel park (big famous park here) and into some town square, where we met up with more tourists who were also going on the day tour. To my surprise, there was only one other group, a family, from the US... everyone else was from Europe and mostly the Middle East. Regardless, we all were drawn together by our spunky tour guide, Kiel (pronounced Kyle) from Australia. He seemed like a very worldly guy, becuase he had traveled to all the countries in which he had lineage in and found out about his ancestors first hand this way. He had been a tour guide in Scotland and Dublin, and he has been in Amsterdam for about a year now.... I'm only mentioning this guy because I think these lifestyles are very unusual. The more I meet people Kiel's age (25 and up) in Europe, I am discovering that they don't really have a life plan other than to work so as to afford life's essentials and then party. I am subconsciously comparing him to the staff members of the hostels I've visited, which isn't a fair comparison but a connection I see nonetheless. All I know is I don't think I want to live this kind of lifestyle in 5 years...

The tour was very good, we learned a lot about the general history of the Netherlands and how this country rose to power with Western ship trading. They had many golden eras because of their wealth, through which they were able to produce some amazing artistic minds (Van Gogh) and literary geniuses because they weren't bound by the financial limitations that people with these professions usually have. One interesting thing Kiel told us about was how weed was managed around here... Supposedly, every business around here can operate as long as they follow three unspoken rules, which are that it cannot harm anyone, it is generating profit, and it is out of sight (in terms of marijuana). The misleading term "Coffeshop" masks the true identity of the type of business that goes on inside, while smoking doesn't harm anyone (except for the smoker's lungs) and each shop is making a lot of money which goes on to pay taxes. Technically, marijuana is legal but it is all done in a way that is not in-your-face, so law enforcement doesn't really need to pour its efforts into it.

We left the tour just before it was over and went to find a supermarket called albert heijn, the equivalent of a safeway around here. I stocked up on breads, ham, and pasta for dinner today and lunch for the next several days. If we can save some money with food, it will open up more opportunities for us to do exciting things in the future.

After lunch, we pretty much just hung out at the hostel until dinner time.... We were going to a comedy show later, so we didn't feel the need to do anything out of the ordinary. The venue was called BOOM Chicago, and I guess the company (which is also titled the same way) has produced comedy giants like Andy Sandberg and Jason Sudeikis. I guess I had high expectations for the show because of these names.... but the comedians and the performance were sub-par in my opinion. The guys that we had seen during the improv show in London completely blew it out of the park with their sharp wits, but these guys at BOOM Chicago looked like amateurs compared to what we had seen. They relied on racist and homosexual jokes to get by, which can be really annoying after awhile. The best part of the whole show was when they asked Joon to participate.... Will and I took videos of the entire thing, which I will be sure to post up later because one has to see it in order to appreciate it.

Afterwards, Will went off to go see his ex-girlfriend at her college, about 40 minutes away. He was going to catch up with her and spend the night there, which was fine with Joon and I because we were going to play chess at the nearest coffeeshop as soon as we could. We had begun to play a little just before the show, and the excitement we had for the game when we were kids resurfaced when we started to play each other. We stayed there for three hours I believe, and got back to the hostile at around 1 am.

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