What is Home, Anyway?

A question I've grappled with constantly since I left for college, I have continued to wonder how to begin answering this question throughout much of this semester.  And, although I have had my moments of intense homesickness and wanting to be around something familiar finally, this weekend was quite the affirmation that (1) home is always home and Bethesda is my home always because of the incredible family and friends I have there; (2) home is so much more than a place or geographical location; (3) home is not always inherent: it can be created, too; and (4) Amsterdam is hands-down a new home of mine.

The first of these points was highlighted so well this weekend when I traveled to the beautiful Rome to visit Lex.  From the moment she texted me half an hour before picking me up at the Terravision (loyal shuttle bus) cafe in the Termini train station to our last hug before I headed back to the airport, I was right at home.  We know exactly how to make one another laugh, know when to tease and when to be sensitive, and are always somehow on the same page when we're ready for a heaping meal of deliciousness...and Lexi is a true pro at navigating the best of Italian cuisine at this point, which was a real treat.  She beat me to the detailing of our visit in her blog, so here's the link for more details (see post "Home Meets Rome"):

http://eatplayloveitaly.blogspot.com/

Lex did such a good job expressing exactly what I felt like visiting her, and her explanation of the sights she took me to see (Vatican City -- St. Peter's basilica, Ponte Helio, the Trevi, Spanish Steps, Pantheon, and Colosseum) is far better than mine would be, so definitely take a look at her post to read more.  The remaining pics from my camera are at the bottom of this post...No shock, I was stunned yet again by yet another stunningly gorgeous city.

When I spoke with my Grandma last week, she told me to stop at every street corner, each of which resembles the most beautiful painting...and she is totally right.  Despite the not so scattered rain showers and our occasional ducking under awnings and into cafes for shelter from the buckets of rain falling upon our flimsy and incredibly lame umbrellas, Rome defended its magnificence with flying colors and never ever let me down.  Unfortunately, though, my recently discovered lactose intolerance came with me to Italy and the lactaid pills, wonderful as they are for little slices of cheese, were defenseless against the cream sauces and ricotta-stuffed ravioli I consumed.  The stomach aches were well worth it, though...my taste-buds were dancing all weekend.

More important than the sights and the food that kept us running all weekend, though, was the way overdue and much deserved reunion of two best friends.  We laughed and laughed and even cried a little, went out together, watched a movie, talked about high school friends, winter break plans, and the future and marveled in both excitement and fear at the reality of growing up.  Staying up to date on the daily details is not always realistic, but we have kept each other well informed about the important stuff, and Lex is definitely still a friend I turn to for the best laughs and support.  Our visit was pretty spontaneous (I bought my unexpectedly cheap ticket less than a month prior) but surprisingly well-timed for the both of us.

We are each facing the final two weeks of our time abroad, and realizing the reality of this limited time has brought a whole host of mixed emotions.  I feel like a little pendulum swinging back and forth between severe homesickness and never ever (ever) wanting to let go of my experience in Amsterdam.  Watching Lex come to similar realizations about the impending end to her journey was sad but also validating for each of us, and somehow nostalgic as we worked through the emotional roller-coaster together.  Hot tea, stroopwaffels, chatting away, and curling up under a warm blanket to watch a goofy movie was the perfect remedy, and thank goodness we had each other.  The whole weekend brought about this great affirmation of how strong my ties remain to the place I grew up, but it's the people that have made Bethesda's streets and billy goat trail paths feel homey; the nostalgia that rushes back when I'm home is rooted in experiences and relationships, and my friendship with Lex is among the strongest I've had.

But, like I said, I am quickly discovering the possibility of home as a created space and a process of developing foundations of nostalgia for landscapes once as foreign as the language spoken on the other side of the world.  And so, here I am in Amsterdam, this place filled with landscapes once blank canvases that I've painted my experiences upon and thus I am home.  When I hopped on my bike after arriving at Amsterdam Centraal, my legs spun in familiar circles and, cheesy as it sounds, the feeling of pushing through the breeze to the tune of my tires pattering atop the cobblestone streets all the way to my bike shed made me comfortable to the point of giddiness: yes, this is real.  Somehow, amidst the final papers staring at my still hesitant and diverted gaze, I'll find the time to be continually distracted by the canals and my friends here, knowing that my conflicted feelings are a blessing in disguise: it's a good problem I have, I suppose, to feel sad to leave one home to return to another.

Documented Magnificence: 

We flew over the Alps on the way to Rome!!!

Yes way!

Lex took me right to the Vatican City.

REUNITED

Well if this isn't pretty enough, I don't know what is.

So happy :)

Lex in front of her school...proud student.

And the gelateria so fortunately situated just down the block from school.

Delicious would be an underestimation.

Throwing my coin into the fountain.

This would be the not so scattered of the showers...aka DOWNPOUR.

Here's a creep who nearly stabbed both of us at our waistline...NOT appreciated.

Pantheon!

Spanish steps.

Sorry, couldn't help it...

This photograph was taken by two Dutch travelers! 

View from the top

 

 

Thanks for the recommendation, Isabela!

Colosseum at night--incredibly gorgeous!

:)

An Afternoon Narrative on Sweetness in Amsterdam

There’s a sweet simplicity, a nostalgia, even, to the pace of life in this quaint village-like city-town that lends itself the time to cherish old music playing like a feedback-stricken, crackling radio in a café on the corner.  Come with a friend or for a pause yourself; sit here with a table-top candle to mesmerize your eyes and a kopje koffie – or a fresh mint tea if you fancy – to warm your hands and settle your inner being with each sip.  You’re thankful to be here, and aware even of the serenity that is this space: you choose to either observe in silence, tuning out the sound and merely listening to the pulse of this life, or sit amidst the buzz and chatter of people stopping for a break, watching them kiss three times and catching up before stepping outside for a cigarette and a glass of wine as the sun begins its steady decent over the canal just outside the front door.  Why should this be anything other than routine?  This treat is to me ever so special; still feels sacred in its somehow now normalcy.  And I wonder how, if even possible or acceptable, to replicate these moments once I step beyond the utopian canal rings within which I have found the greatest sense of stillness in each day.  Perhaps I cannot, but I then still find happiness and a deep sense of appreciative joy in the assured continuing existence of these places and the doors supposedly eternally open for my revisiting such moments; I will have to find a time to return but will until then ride away on my squeaky green bike into that quiet setting sun, chasing it for three weeks more.  I will forever cherish my pen’s scripting of this scene in a memory box of sweetness.

Dancing Under Christmas Lights in Delft

Way back when we were all planning out our semester of travels, Kyle, Hannah, and I decided to keep Thanksgiving weekend open for some time to explore more of Holland.  On Friday night, we went to a party at this contemporary art space near Dam Square.  I am so glad that I sucked up the six euro cover and went--it was my favorite kind of night out: lots of awesome people, cheap drinks, endless nerd dancing (no judgments, twirl as you so desire...twist and shout, even), a great DJ, art incorporated somehow, and a bunch of young people and artists who are just out to meet one another and are so unlike the gross people you meet in the classic international bars filled with drunkos trying to make-out and intoxicate themselves to a surprisingly unsafe level...I hate the latter, so I'm always really happy to seize the opportunity to get to a party with my kind of people, and Friday night brought just that.  The art installation piece was a set-up of 6 scanning machines, and everyone was scanning themselves and then the papers were scattered all around.  Every once and a while, they had these massive fog machines and blowers that lifted the papers up and made them fly all around, to which Kyle and I just yelled, "ART!"  So so fun. 

It was a super late night, topped off with a visit to the famous french fry place in honor of Kyle's request :)  We all got a good night of sleep and reconvened in the morning to pick our destination for the day: somewhere in Holland that we had to take the train to, that was somewhere CIEE hasn't or won't take us, and somewhere we had on our bucket list...Delft was the lucky winner.  We stopped by Nieuwemarkt on our way to Central Station to pick up some food for a train picnic.  I can't do the markets justice in my explanations or photographs...it's their widespread presence throughout the city and endless supply of delicious breads, cheeses, fresh fruits and veggies, baked goods, and other cool finds (everything from second-hand vintage sweaters to old books and handmade journals) that make them a truly unique part of this city.

We had such a nice time wandering around Delft, and really took the day slow--our hope for the day was to spend time together and make it a point to sit in a gezellig cafe for a few hours, drinking hot beverages and chatting anything non-homework related.  Note: Gezellig is a word that encompasses nice, warm, cozy settings...It's a Dutch word that's seemingly impossible to translate but now that we've started using it, we just can't stop!  The Dutch say that lots of things are nice, but gezellig is saved for the nicest, snuggliest cafes and things...just imagine a brown-bar cafe with wooden tables, candle-light, warm, with jazz or the best of the best music playing...and being there with good friends--this is gezellig :) 

We certainly succeeded in finding our perfect gezellig cafe, warmed up with hot tea and koffie verkeerd (latte -- literally translates to "coffee wrong," because it's wrong to have more milk than coffee...oh, the Dutch), and played bananagrams for hours.  All in all, a much-needed day outside the city-center and extremely fulfilling on the chilling out front.  Holland is the best best best...I don't want to leave!

Best lunch...YUMMERS

Oh hey, just another classic church...I've only seen eighty thousand this semester, but they're all so beautiful :)

The art of the stroopwafel.

 

Showing off his brand new scarf

Dancing under Christmas lights :)

The goofiness continues...

Cozy in the gezellig cafe

Bananagrams, we love you.

Buddies and Classic Dutch Apple Pie Cure the Rocky Days

This week was definitely not the easiest of them all.  Being abroad is a huge challenge: one well worth facing, but there is certainly a high expectation for the best moments to dominate this experience (and for me they have), but I often feel as though I'm under a lot of pressure to have a "perfect" experience here.  Still, the hard days, missing the comfort of familiar friends and family, and general homesickness come and they certainly go, but their presence is annoying and being away from home for Thanksgiving this week made my already homesickness hit a peak.  Luckily, though, the week turned around for the better, slowly but surely.  I went to several films through the International Documentary Film Festival here, and also went to an awesome art house on Monday night to see this French film from 1963 called "Strip-tease," starring this crazy lady Nico.  The film was actually pretty incredible, and it was so fun to see a black and white film projected so big.  The whole scene at the venue, De Nieuwe Anita, was awesome: great people all around and everyone got to there early for drinks and shmoozing.  The film was screened in the basement, projected onto a big screen and there was just a great feeling among the crowd--young artists and students abounded, all happy to take a break from the chilly evening weather to cuddle up in the theater.  Plus, the guy who runs the place is NUTS and listening to his rant about the glory of the old days, the importance and seriously awesome totally cool really good value of drugs, and how we should all just "f the system" was entertaining, to say the least.

Here's a link to De Nieuwe Anita, a new favorite spot of mine in town:
http://www.denieuweanita.nl/

I've also been continuing with my weekly yoga classes, which have been incredibly grounding.  It's the one place I go that's really just for me--nobody else from my program is there, and I get to just take a step out of the study abroad world--highly important.  This week I also had my second level 2 yoga class.  Two weeks ago, my instructor told me she thought I was ready to advance, and I gladly accepted the opportunity...little did I know that my sun salutation warm-up would turn into a level 2  minimum 30-minutes of sun salutations at the beginning of class, followed by lots of other intense asanas.  Nonetheless, I have enjoyed every minute of my new class, and the instructor is awesome.  This week, he challenged us to spend three minutes in every asana (pose) of the sun salutation, so we spent a full 40 minutes completing just one salutation, which is SO much harder than you'd think.  My neck is still sore, but my muscles are getting stronger--always exciting :)

And, I decided that it was time to spice up my room a bit more.  Doesn't take much to convince myself it's time to craft, so I pulled out my Amsterdam magazines, a pair of scizzors, some tape, my thinking cap of creativity, and got to work.  Here's my masterpiece (a little over 3 feet wide):

As I'm writing all this, it's nice to realize that, even amidst a week that felt harder than most, I did so many cool things, and still managed to make it to most of my favorite cafes and spend quality time both alone and with friends.  And it's always nice to know that people you love are thinking of you...my sneaky parents emailed Kyle and told him it was my half birthday this week, which really isn't a big deal, but it was so nice that my mom reached out to me through him, and I came back from class to a surprise half apple pie, and a KyleHannah choir :)  The Dutch take their apple pie very seriously...it's funny to explain, but they really don't mess around, and there is much competition among Amsterdamers to make the "best" apple pie in town.  So far, the long-standing winner is Winkle, which is conveniently not too far from us.  Needless to say, the three of us happily went to town!  Being homesick is the worst, but apple pie and some good friends are quite the cure :)

Most delicious pie of them all.  Best buds, too :)

Hello Friend, Hello Eastern Europe

Early in my semester, I planned a short trip to visit my friend Alex in Prague, where she's spending her semester.  I met her through Josh at Oberlin and, over the past couple of years we have spent a bunch of time together on my visits.  This past summer, we bonded over our fear and hesitation about actually going abroad...we made each other write lists of why we were excited, (which kind of helped me) but, nonetheless, we were both super nervous about the prospect of being so far from familiar faces for four months.  Luckily, we have both proven ourselves wrong and are having incredible semesters.  Hooray!

But before our two day reunion and happy recounting of our semesters began, I succeeded in creating quite the dramatic airport story:  Especially since the end of high school, I have traveled quite a lot and I would definitely say I'm a pro at navigating airports like they're my home.  Well, everyone's wrong sometimes...despite my double checking the departures board for my check in location and number, I managed to make my way through the absolutely wrong security check point, which I conveniently only discovered after the 30-minute process.  I left security and checked the board...no EasyJet flight posted there.  Womp #1.  Went back up to the security point and asked one of the guards to help, to which he replied, "You're on the wrong side of the airport."  With only twenty minutes until boarding, I asked him how exactly it would be possible to make it to my gate, to which he so calmly explained, "You must go down the hall and to the left and into baggage claim and out through customs and back up to escalator and walk FIFTEEN MINUTES to the OTHER SIDE OF THE AIRPORT, go through security again, and go to your gate."  Womp #2.  Jaw dropped, I was speechless, especially when he yelled, "You better RUN!"  Jeeze...there I was, sprinting through Schipol with my legs sore from yoga and backpack weighing me down.  Oh, and obviously I was dying to pee.  Womp #3.  Laugh you may, because yes, it was quite the sight.  Huffing and puffing (although my legs are beasts from biking and yoga, so it didn't actually take me more than 5 minutes to make it to the next security checkpoint), I ran up to the security guard and cut the line.  Adrenaline is a funny thing; messes with you, even.  Somehow, in my mind I had decided that my flight would be the third listed on the EasyJet gates board once I arrived at the waiting area (see Barcelona blog post for a recap on their INSANE check-in and gate system).  So, I looked at the board and "my" flight, the third one listed, read, "gate closing."  Womp #4.  There I went again, long-legs striding as far as they could alongside the normal people, walking at a normal pace, to their gates.  Panting and freaking out, I arrived at M3, and discovered that the gate closing was indeed the third listed flight...to Barcelona.  Well I just took a little sigh of relief, tried to laugh at myself, and sat down in front of the board to await my actual flight's gate posting.  And, the best part is, I was the third person on the plane.  Success.

That was definitely my dose of drama for the day, so I was really glad to have an easy time navigating the Prague bus and metro system to Alex's stop.  She met me at the top of the escalator and thus commenced our two days of catching up, talking over drinks in candlelit cafes, walking around beautiful old neighborhoods, and marveling at our experiences.  I was so so so in need of seeing a familiar face, and of having a different sort of travel experience.  While I have absolutely loved the trips I have taken with friends from CIEE, I was definitely starting to tire of the days of long walking, cramming in lots of sight-seeing and trying to really get a good feel for a city, all based on travel guides and our own arbitrary sense of which direction to turn when we decide to be "adventurous."  Visiting Alex was so special because she gave me such an insider's perspective, showed me things I never would have discovered without a real local (and that she is!), and joined me in my preference for walking around and discovering cool places along the way, rather than pre-planning out a full, packed day.

After I got in on Thursday night, we headed over to one of her favorite cafe/bars...this awesome, underground place lined with bookshelves and sewing machines for tables.  We shared some wine and dark chocolate cake and began catching one another up on the past few months.  After that place closed, we moved onto "The Big Lebowski's," the "only bar in Prague where you pick what to pay!"  It was filled with cool looking people and we shared some delicious, cheap drinks.  It was such a relaxing evening, and the perfect welcome into the city.

After a good night of sleep, we ate breakfast and headed out to wander through Old Town, which was gorgeous.  The buildings composed a beautiful color palette and those with cracked paint only add to the classic Eastern European aesthetic.  The little cobblestone streets off the main square are even more enchanting, and we didn't need much convincing to stay there for a while at one of Alex's favorite cafes/bakeries.  Our walking continued up a hill to take a closer look at the Prague Metronome, which stands overlooking the city and main river (Vlatava River), in place of the ginormous Stalin statue that was destroyed in 1962.

Beautiful view of the Charles Bridge

After strolling through the park and down through the old museum center, we hopped on the tram and got off near the DOX, the Center for Contemporary Art.  The exhibits were incredible, and I was especially intrigued by the first: The Lucifer Effect: Encountering Evil, a commentary on human interaction and the apparent ease with which the evil can emerge.  The exhibition was largely influenced by psychologist Philip Zimbardo's studies, which, though now considered an absolute violation of ethical guideliens for psycholgoical research, provided much insight into human interaction and conformity.  Very thought provoking.  I especially liked a chart (I can't remember the artist's name right now) that mapped out "the self (draft)," linking a series of thoughts, actions, and outcomes of choices we make.  It was a really powerful commentary on the interconnectedness of so much of what we think and do, and the inevitability of our actions, as seemingly isolated and simple as they may seem, to affect the rest of our own lives and the greater world.  For example, I need groceries: arrow pointing to I walk (ends here); arrow pointing to I bike (ends here); arrow pointing to I drive (links to I propel the fuel economy, I partake in the exploitation of natural resources, etc...)  So cool.

"What a cute puppy!"

"Oh my goodness, he's eating my sleeve!"

Perfect Eastern European look :)

SO COOL

Looked like a mirror, and it was vibrating, giving off such a crazy effect...actually plastic, though.

Rooftop sculpture garden...Alex is happy

We slowly made our way over to a really great vegetarian restaurant, where we ate leisurely for a couple hours before heading to a nearby cinema to see "Midnight in Paris," which was so cool to see for the second time after having visited Paris, and standing in so many of the featured spots.  My continued visits to art museums also made some of the art history jokes way funnier this go-round.  If you haven't seen the film, I highly suggest it (and SO many other Woody Allen productions!)

After some quality people watching at another underground bar (with seemingly endless connecting corridors and hidden rooms), we headed home for another night of quality sleepy-time.  Saturday morning brought banana pancakes and a lovely stroll through Alex's neighborhood, including a visit to the infamous TV tower and viewing of the babies that David Cerny added to spice it up (or perhaps as a criticism on our generation's immediate and endless attachment to the digital world...).  I headed out on Saturday afternoon--seems like a short trip, but the timing was actually perfect.  I didn't want to overextend my stay, and the purpose of my visit was to catch up with Alex more than to see and fully explore Prague, although I definitely felt satisfied with the latter as well.

Alex's gorgeous street!

I could be right at home here :)

TV tower

Babies...crazy!

This end of travel was far easier and more relaxed than the first, and I made it home safe and sound with plenty of time to make dinner, catch up with Josh and my rents, and head over to Marisa's for the evening.  All in all, it was an incredible trip, and I am left feeling SO pleased with my semester: everything from the city I've chosen to the way I'm approaching every day, and the attitude I have toward social life and maintaining a balance of time out and time for myself.  It's awesome to be feeling so continuously positive about my time here and the radical changes it's had for my head-space and willingness to take time to be present and less wrapped up in jam-packed agendas.  What a positive few days!