I suck at blogging it's official...
Two weekends ago we went to AMSTERDAM (woop woop!!) I had so much fun. We had to catch a plane at 6 am in the morning on Friday so we thought it was a fabulous idea to pull an all nighter, go out until like 4 in the morning, then taxi it to termini. Anndel's friends from home, Courtney and Elly had just arrived on Thursday so when we were done with classes Thursday afternoon they came over and hung out and drank wine. All the roomies, Anndel's friends and Matt (Anndel asked him to go so that Courtney's and Elly's male friend (his name escapes me right now- maybe Ian???) would have another guy to talk to... he never ended up coming... haha oopsies)) went out to dinner at this place close to our neighborhood and really close to the Colosseum called Luzzi. It was soooo delicious. I had seafood pasta.... yum yum!! Anndel was extremely stressed about some issues and was therefore set on drinking as much wine as possible... It was an interesting dinner. We then went back to my apartment so that I could pack and then high tailed it to Matt and Kurt's where the gang traveling to Amsterdam was hanging out. After some socialization we headed to one of my favorite places... OLD STATION (another woop woop!). We stayed there until about 4 am and then caught a cab to Termini after grabbing our bags. I had a nice little nap in the cab which there is pictures of floating around here somewhere (probably the most unattractive I've looked in my life... Matt and Alex called be Goddess Bunny all trip because of those photos.. it's a youtube video.. DONT watch it). I slept the entire plane ride and got STARBUCKS in the Amsterdam airport (Kelsey literally cried when she saw those beautiful green light shimmering in the distance!!!) We checked into the StayOK hostel and walked around Amesterdam. That city is seriously so beautiful it's not even funny. There are little rivers everywhere, the buildings are beautiful, and everyone is so happy and layed back (not to mention they speak english). Friday we walked around, were lame and took a nap, and then got up for a delic dinner at an Irish pub. I had beef stew mmmmm. We also of course drank a lot of Heineken. We ended up at some "Pirate" bar which was completely ridiculous. We eventually made our way home and called it a night.

Oh, P.S. we stayed in a 6 bed hostel and there was only 5 of us (Matt, Alex, Kelsey, Kellyn, and muah). So we had some random guys staying with us. He ended up being like 40 some years old, had gray hair, and the guys called him Mr. Tumnus??- I don't know it has something to do with the movie Narnia- The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. He would always come in after us at like 4 am.... sketchers. Anywho he was nice enough and tolerated 5 college kids.

Saturday we slept in, kind of, and got up to rent bikes. Everyone drives bikes in Amsterdam, they have a separate bike lane on every road and I almost got run over approximately 37 times. We got our beautiful red bikes and went to check out the Vincent Van Gogh museum which was having an exhibit of Van Gogh's night scenes. Here comes the best part......

I fell off of my bike. Yes... I did. I kind of half attempted to go up this steep curb, decided it wasn't such a great idea half way through and bailed. I had trouble jumping off and ended up falling on my butt... hard. This all occurred in front of the 100 person long line waiting to get into the museum p.s. oh, and in front of my friends... Grreeeattt. So that was fun (no it was actually realllyy funny... but I was embarrassed to say the least). The Van Gogh exhibit was awesome. I saw Starry Night and a lot of other original Van Gogh's... such a cool opportunity. We then biked it (begrudgingly) to a little restaurant for a Heineken to warm up for the Heineken factory.

The Heineken factory was sooooo cool. We learned about the brewing process (kinda) and got three free beers, took some pics, and more importantly I think Alex's life is now complete due to the visit.

OMG after the Heineken visit we got some delicious Mexican food... so yummy, and one of the many things that is impossible to find in Rome. I ate so much I almost got sick, so therefore it was time for a nap!!!.

After we recouped we had to check out the red light district. NUTSO.... I was disappointed. I thought that the prostitutes would be like all middle aged and completely disgusting, but a lot of them were young and actually attractive... It made it even worse lol. I just wanted to go up to their little window and tell them it was ok and that they needed to get a job. But on the serious it was a funny experience but it was a really weird experience as well. Matt almost cried when a prostitute winked at him hahha. Alex concluded that the girls on the trip were definitely the type you could take home to mom considering me and Kellyn were more concerned with the geese necking in the river than the skeevy surroundings. So that was pretty much the extent of our night.

Sunday we got up and went to a pancake house which was extremely expensive and not that good (booo) and returned our bikes. We then headed to the Anne Frank museum. It was really cool to learn about the house which was the actual house Anne Frank lived in while she wrote her diary in hiding from the Nazis. I never read the book but being a Nichols I cried in the museum... so sad. After the museum we grabbed lunch and a BAGEL (another thing you can't find in Rome.. grrrr) for the road and headed to the airport. I got back to my apartment at like midnight and passed out!!

THE END

So the days here are so long. It takes a minimum of 40 minutes to get anywhere in Rome including school. I have class every morning at 9:30 but have to get up no later than 7:30 in order to get my act together, eat, and get out the door with enough time to get to school. I've been trying to walk to and from school as much as possible, weather permitting. It's a 45 minute walk but it actually isn't that bad at all and I walk right past the Colosseum, Roman Forum, and Piazza Venezia every time. I'm at the IES center from 9:30 in the morning until 4:30 in the afternoon and then have to take into consideration the time it takes to walk home. Anywho, the whole point of me explaining this is to excuse myself from sucking at keeping up with my blog. I constantly feel like I have no time to do anything extra here, which isn't a bad thing, just busy.

Anyways... let's pick back up from where I left off: Switzerland. So the week following Switzerland was pretty uneventful. I just had classes and was getting used to the new ISC. We tried to stay in and not go out in the weekday evenings because we were majorly jetlagged. However on Wednesday we decided we wanted to go to "Cheap Bar" in Trasteverre to meet up with some fellow IESers. Anndel and I had a pretty big blowout with Kurt and Matt when they ditched us before going to Trasteverre, and acted like jerks in the process. So that drama consumed a good day and a half of my time here... But thursday night we ended up going to Cheap bar and then Zarr's where we paid 15 euro for all you could drink until 1 am... kind of sham.. figures. I was a lazy bum and instead of touring Rome on my first free weekend day, on Friday I decided instead to sleap until 3:30 in the afternoon... no seriously (eek bad I know). Once I finally got my bum around Anndel, Matt, and I met up with Alex and Nat by their apartment in Trasteverre for dinner. Afterwards we went to Karly's apartment and hung out before going to this club called Joiya. UGGG... bad idea. Karly convinced us to agree to make reservations at the club with a group of us and her ISC. Apparently Joiya is pretty upity and you have to like look decent and make reservations and pay 20 EURO just to get in!!... It was ridiculous. We were waiting for Karly's ISC's friend until 1 in the morning and didn't even get to the club until 1:30. We had a fiasco at the door because one of our party decided not to come. By the time we actually got in we were all completely sober, bored, and agittated... not such a great night.

Saturday was State Patty's day at home!!!! And being that the majotiy of the IES students here are from Penn State we decided that a celebration was in order. Anndel, Matt, Alex, Nat, Karly and a few others gathered at Alex's apartment again and did some balcony drinking and Irish car bombs. we eventually decided to leave the apartment and make our way to some bar that was supposed to be dedicated to Penn State. Of course we stopped for pizza along the way (PS I'm getting fat... no seriously I mean it. I'm going running as soon as I get home from class today). The bar was pretty fun. It was an Irish bar that had Penn State and Steeler's flags on the wall. Its located right off of Piazza Navona. All in all I think we represented Penn State well in our festivities.

I spent Sunday just hanging out and doing some homework. Matt stopped by and convinced me (very easily as always) to go with him and Alex on some sort of trip the next weekend. Originally we were thinking about going to Dublin or London. When that didn't work out we explored the idea of Greece. So the rest of the night was spent trying to organize some sort of trip.