19-25 October
My third week here and I started to be like at home. I was going adapting myself to this small country. May be the most remarkable of this week was the travel to the beach of Alkmar. I suppose that people can think that this doesn’t have anything special and they will be right but for me was a great moment. In Valencia we also have beachs, but this time it was my first time at a Dutch beach.
What took more my attention was the seagulls walking on the beach without paying attention to the people, you could approach to them almost touch them and I had the chance of taking some nice pictures.
The other thing that was a little strange for me was to see the windmills a one kilometer from the coast.With time Dutch people has developed ways to exploit the nature to obtain energy and do it being creative and trying to take the maximum advantage possible. And the result for example are mills in the middle of the sea, what is an amazing engineering.
I can’t finish this week without comparing the temperature, something important for a person who is used to live in a warm region, and the issue is that while in Spain, specifically in Valencia, the temperature was around 25 degrees, here It was around 10 degrees. Something that you always can support easily with a hot chocolate.
26-31 October
Finally at Amsterdam, one of the travels David and I were waiting eagerly. After 45 minutes by train, not so much time to arrive to a big city, we were at Amsterdam, a lovely multicultural city. And how you can imagine, full of Spanish people…Yes, we didn’t expect that, but when for first time we heard a Spanish voice there, we said: ohh there are Spanish here too! But as much time we spent in Amsterdam we noticed that there were a lot of Spanish, well, I suppose that everyone would find people from his own country there because the diversity at Amsterdam is amazing.
Our first pictures at Amsterdam, pictures with colorful elephants nobody could resist the temptation to take a photo with them.
Our first pictures at Amsterdam, pictures with colorful elephants nobody could resist the temptation to take a photo with them.
Another curious thing at Amsterdam is how to read a map, well you can read it like you are used to doing it , but don’t take a canal as reference there, because you can get completely lost. It’s the first thing we did until we noticed that the amount of canals in Amsterdam is awesome and we had to walk more than we wanted. Well, I guess than in Holland cities are full of canals, then it won’t be strange anymore.
1-8 November
This time our destination was Den Haag, one of the most important cities of Holland. Here you can find the International Court of Justice, one of the most important harbors in Europe and the Real Family’s palace.
This day we could visit Den Haag taking advantage that we were going to the inauguration of the new house of one friend of the family we live with. Before we go to meet her we were visiting some parts of the city. Here we have the palace in the back.
After our visit around the city we went to the meeting with our friend. This was without doubt the best part of the day, there we met other friends. All of them are very nice people, this was the first time they met us and they were trying to involve us at their conversations and we felt as we knew them the whole life.
9-15 November
On Wednesday of this week we had the opportunity of going to the museum’s nigh because a good friend of us got entrances.
Actually, she cared about everything, she got the information about when it was, the transports we could take and the entrances.
The night was very funny we visited the Van Gogh Museum, the Nemo (Sciences museum) and one exposition in our friend university. These were the only museums we had time to visit, but making a good planning I suppose that we would have been able to visit more museums.
The Van Gogh museum was the nicest museum to see. It’s amazing how this man could reflect his sight and his understanding of the life. But which really took my attention was the fine way he had to communicate himself with his friends. I consider an excellent idea to send a portrait with him and the friend who was going to receive the letter in the back of the picture, an important symbol not only thinking about to have a portrait with a friend if not considering also the work one had to spend in paint it. In the museum you can see different pictures with different friends of him.
The Nemo museum wasn’t as nice as the Van Gogh but was the funniest of the night, there you have some interactive plays in relation with the science curiosities and also the ugly robot that you can see above. May be it’s not the nicest picture of the night, not seeing the horrible puppet moving and talking with eyes that seemed that was going to through fire but it’s something that will make me not forget that day.
The last visit was to the university of our friend where there was an exposition made by students. They had made an exposition using their creativity and you could find the most strange things but with an interesting meaning at the background, even you could find pictures of them dressed like comics or film characters.
16-22 November
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23-30 November
This week I celebrated Saint Nicolas with other volunteers from R-17, a youth center in which I’m helping too. The funny of this party was that I was noticed on Tuesday that on Wednesday we had the party and I had to run to buy something. The party was on the evening on Wednesday and consisted in play a quiz based in questions with different proves. The game was played in pairs and when you failed a question you had to go in competition with other pair in one of the proves and if you lose the prove you didn’t get.
To buy the presents for Saint Nicolas I went with two of the teenagers I was guiding because they had to buy some materials for their activity, and it was a crazy evening, funny but crazy, always is an experience to go shopping with young people.
