Day 48-54: week 3 Oxford + Amsterdam!

Well last week I had a test in Statics so basically the whole week I was studying and doing work. I have no idea how I did on the test, we will see. Haha that is all I have to say about school at the moment. On Thursday after the test I ate dinner at the dinning hall and then got ready for my long bus ride over to Amsterdam. I left at 7 pm with Michael, Jamie, and Emily (Jamie and Emily were taking the bus to Paris, but this bus was taking us all to London). We arrived in London and sat around until our respective buses showed up. The bus was decent, it had some interesting music playing on a station called mellow magic that I think my dad would thoroughly enjoy. Michael and I talked about random things until we arrived at the Dover. We got off the bus to wait for our ferry appointment and saw Jamie and Emily at the rest stop coincidentally. The ferry was like a cruise ship with several levels. Michael and I watched some people lose all their money gambling at the slot machines until we fell asleep at the table. The ferry finally arrived in France. We then got on the bus and drove to Amsterdam, it was a very long bus ride. We slept the whole way basically and when we arrived at 11:40 am it was pretty chilly. Amsterdam is a very quaint city like Brugge in a way. It has canals with boat houses and old buildings that are really cute. We were supposed to met up with Cesar, Ian, and Anirudh at 1 pm, so Michael and I ate and hung out. I was taking a while so we bought a cupcake from one of the coffee shops. They finally showed up right when we were about to eat it. So instead we put our backpacks int he room that 6 of us would be sharing for the weekend and went out. We went to a coffee shop named Smokey's. I got a smoothie. It was carrot and apple, very delicious surprisingly. Ian met up with a girl named Isabell from Germany who hung out with us the rest of the trip. We then stumbled upon the most famous cigar shop in Europe, the guys got Cubans. Afterwards we went to another coffee shop and I had half a brownie with Cesar. While walking down the street we saw the Amsterdam dungeon which is a haunted house type thing and decided to go in. The people kept picking me out of the crowd to try and scare and do random things like hold curtains. We then had to met up with Ryan and Rob at the hotel. They put up their stuff and we went out again. We walked around the red light district and saw lots of half naked ladies trying to entice us. This guy came up and convinced us to partake in a pub crawl with 6 pubs. . After eating we went to another coffee shop and I had half a cupcake with Cesar. We then went to the pub crawl. It was pretty fun. The first hour was unlimited vodka shots which I did not take full advantage of, since I was pretty good with my baked goods. All of the bars blurred together and was just an experience of us all hanging out having a good time talking and dancing. At the last pub Anirudh threw up ON a table. It was disgusting so we left to another club to find Cesar's friends, Monique and Marina, both of were being incredibly difficult to get together with all day. We found them but whilst inside Anirudh got kicked out for looking like death. When we went out to get him he vomited all over a map of Amsterdam on the street. After much deliberation we decided to take him back tot our hotel since we had no idea where his was. We laid him in the tub and went to sleep. Michael, Ian, Cesar, and I slept on the bed and Ryan and Rob slept on the floor. It was a full bed. In the morning Anirudh left to his hotel. The rest of us went to Madame Tussauds and looked at all the wax figures. Afterwards we went to the I AMsterdam letters. The guys climbed all over them while I took pictures. We then went to the Van Gogh  museum. It was pretty amazing since he is one of my favorite artists. It was really cold and wet most of the day. We tried to walk around at night and see a sex show, but the sex shows were closed. It was way too cold so instead we just went back to the hotel for the night. The next day we checked out and went to breakfast. I got apple and cinnamon crepes, so delicious! We went to Smokey's again and hung out for a while until we decided to go to the Heineken brewery. It was a pretty fun tour and we got to "become beer" and we got to drink beer. Ian, Isabell, Cesar, and I then went on a canal cruise through Amsterdam. It was really nice. We saw all the cute houses and some cool churches and things. It was getting late though and I had to catch a bus to Oxford. So we split ways and Michael and I made our way to the bus. Everything about that was miserable. I was wet and cold and crammed in a bus. We went through security and one couple held us up because they were getting a cavity search, the bus driver joked by saying "We have to wait because they are having an internal investigation". It was pretty funny. I was so glad when we got back to Oxford except that it was time for class. The week had begun anew.