July 15: Moving from Amersfoort to Amsterdam

On Wednesday night, we said goodbye to my Uncle Bob and Aunt Jeanne because the next day they were leaving early for a trip to Italy. We were in their house on our own for a few days, but they have new guests coming to stay in their house on Sunday, so we had to move to our next desitnation: Hannah and Naomi's house in Amsterdam!

We are dog sitting for Uncle Bob and Aunt Jeanne's dog, Jack. He is a very cute puppy and very persistant about his walks. He is very slow on walks because he stops to pee every 10 seconds. So, on the move to Amsterdam, we put him into a duffle bag with his head sticking out so that we could get to the train station more quickly. In the train station, we let Jack out of the duffel bag and let him stretch his legs and I was holding his leash so that he wouldn't get loose or go onto the train tracks. 

It was a hot day so Jack was panting a lot. His breath STINKS. 

When we were on the train, we thought that we had arrived at Amsterdam Centraal, but we were one stop early and then we had to catch another train because we were at the wrong station. Also, my dad took my bike helmet off of my bag in the train and I didn't know that he did that. So after we got off the train in the wrong station, I realized that I didn't have my helmet so I had to run back onto the train and get my helmet and get off the train again before it left for the next station! So if I had got stuck on, it would have actually been fine because I would have been at the right station, Amsterdam Centraal, waiting for mom and dad and Hendrik and Jack. 

When we FINALLY got to Amsterdam Centraal, we decided to take a tram, which is a train that is on the road, instead of walking the whole 20 minutes with our suitcases and Jack. We still had to walk about 7 minutes from the stop to their house, but that's not as bad as having to walk 20 minutes to get there. 

I am sleeping in Hannah's room. The bed is actually quite comfortable! After we unpacked all of our things, Mom and I went on a walk to the grocery store just down the road from Hannah and Naomi's school. We collected our of our groceries and when we were checking out, it started POURING rain. We waited for a couple of minutes and when it slowed down we started walking home. We got home and were a bit wet, but we didn't crush the eggs that were at the bottom of the backpack! 

After dinner, we biked over to the Amsterdam Zoo, which is called Arits, to meet my cousin Stephen, who is Hannah and Naomi's uncle! He snuck us in so that we didn't have to pay, because he works as a volunteer at the planetarium. We spent an hour exploring the zoo until it was time for Stephen's presentation in the planetarium. The presentation was almost all in Dutch, but some of it was in English and some of the Dutch we could understand, like "melk weg" is the Milky Way. I thought it was super cool because there was a huge screen that was on the whole dome. There were so many planets and galexies and it made me a little dizzy sometimes! 

After the presentation, then we went to an Irish Pub so that my dad, mom, and cousin Stephen got some  drinks and Hendrik and I got - can you guess? A Fanta! This time it came with a glass of ice and a slice of Lemon for if we wanted to pour our Fanta into a cup instead of drinking it out of the bottle. Fancy! I like drinking it out of the bottle, though, because it's satisfying taking a swig of Fanta from the bottle.

We stayed out sooooo late. We got home at 11:30pm and I didn't fall asleep until about midnight. It was a goooooood day. 

This is me in my dad's sweater because I forgot to bring mine.😊

Almost there!

At a cross walk before we go under a bridge

First family photo in Amsterdam!

My beer! Just kidding! It's my mom's.

Cousin Stephen and Dad and my broder. (That's the Dutch way of saying brother.)

The view from the pub.

And this is Jack!