Good luck!

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm thinking of you today on your first day back at school! I hope everyone enjoyed their vacation!!! I wish I could see all your faces today and hear what you did over the summer. Please feel free to email me or leave me a comment and catch me up with your summer and tell me all about the first day back at school! I know there are a ton of changes at Randall this year, starting with the paint on the walls! Fill me in, please! :)

Good luck today! I wish each of you a wonderful year--filled with laughter, new memories, close friendships, and of course, lots of learning! Remember that everyone is going through changes this year-- the teachers, the office staff, and the students. Be patient with each other and help each other as much as possible! It's not going to be smooth like silk on the first day, or even the first month! And that's okay, just remember to stay positive.

I miss Randall, and more importantly, I miss YOU!

Be patient. Be respectful. Be a Superstar. :)

Amsterdam Canals

    If I could sum up Amsterdam in a few nouns they would be: bikes, canals, Anne Frank, Van Gogh/Rembrandt, and the Red Light District. I wish I could add two other Netherlands staples to the list: windmills and tulips, but they don't quite fit with my experience of Amsterdam. I love tulips, and wish I could have seen the fields of tulips like the ones on the postcards in all the souvenir stores. But tulip growing season occurs for 2 months in the spring, not the end of July, and the closest I got to the Semper Augustus tulip was seeing the big bulb seed being sold at the street markets and souvenir shops. As for windmills, while Amsterdam used to be filled with them, now there is only one left. Jackie and I made sure to ride our bikes out to see it the last morning before we left!

The back view

So no tulips and one windmill in Amsterdam-- at least in July.

     But back to what it does have... our canal tour guide told us that almost every resident of Amsterdam has 2 things: a bike and a boat. Students who go there for University will purchase a cheap row boat and park it in one of the countless canals that make up the city. They don't put forth much effort to maintain it, and if it happens to sink, they'll just buy another used one. (Same goes for the bikes-- separate story, but they pull thousands of bikes up from the canals each year with cranes! People use the canals as big trash cans-- sofas, mattresses, bikes... cars are also found when careless drivers roll over the curbs when trying to park). Then there are the people who live in the houseboats on the canal. There are 2 kinds: the actual large boats, and the houses that float on water. You need permits for either one, and they're almost impossible to get unless you're willing to spend big money and wait a while.

     Amsterdam is filled with canals! It's named Amsterdam because it's a dam on the Amstel River. In the past, it was a small fishing community, but it became huge when it was the main port during the Dutch Golden Age when the Dutch East and West Indies Companies thrived. Amsterdam is sometimes called "Venice of the North" because of all its canals and bridges. The 3 main canals were dug in the 17th century (1600's-- the Dutch Golden Age).

     Here are some photos from our canal tour... it was relaxing, interesting, and hot on the boat! I enjoyed some ice cream while taking in the views :)

I've seen so many beautiful places on my trip so far! Love the canals and blue sky!!!

Waiting for the canal tour to start

The smallest (thinnest) building on the canals! They used to pay property taxes based on how much footage was "on the canal," so these owners tried beating the system with a THIN/narrow front. Apparently the back opens up wide like a regular building (but we didn't get to see the other side).

Pretty facades

House boat on the canal-- people actually live here permanently!

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you-- these are all "crooked!"

7 identical bridges in a row

Love this! This picture says, "You're in Amsterdam!"

I played around with some of the special effects on my camera... my sister looks like she's dreaming here :)

Every building has a hook so that they can carry up merchandise that came off the ships back in the day (since the doors were too small/narrow); they still use them now for bringing in larger furniture (sofas, beds). Building were often angled forward so that when things were carried in through the window, they wouldn't swing and crash the other windows on their way up! 

3 random lady figures at the top of one of the balconies 

One of the many groups we passed on the canals-- it was PERFECT weather for cruising along the canals! People had their snacks and beverages and were just enjoying the sun. There were sooo many different kinds and sizes of boats!

Most of the canal buildings had sidewalks before the water, but there were a few stretches that didn't. These are more like the ones in Venice where the buildings sit directly on the water. 

The Netherlands flag is on the boat right in front of us

If you notice on the sides, you can see how close the cars are to the water. I would REFUSE to parallel park on these streets! I wouldn't even want to open the driver's side door-- I'm clumsy and might accidently fall into the canal!

Another look at the crooked buildings

Some of the bridges folded up so that the larger boats could pass through. The canal bridges even had traffic lights for boats to pass through-- just like a street! 

The church lit up, overlooking the canals, in the evening... Isn't it amazing? It was a beautiful and busy night in the city centre. Wouldn't you want to live someplace like this?

We ate dinner at this restaurant, on the outside terrace, overlooking the canal at night. Lovely!

Anne Frank House

Anne Frank House

If anyone watches Keeping Up with the Kardashians, (you shouldn't, but I know some of you do!) you know they do a "peaks and pits" after every vacation-- every person takes a turn saying their high/low of the vacation. Jackie, Jeff, and I did our peaks and pits of Amsterdam, and while there were many peaks, all of us agreed that the Anne Frank House was most interesting/memorable/moving/thought-provoking place in Amsterdam. Even Jeff, who HATES history and barely knew anything about Anne Frank's story, was fascinated. **Again, a disclaimer: we weren't allowed to take photos inside the museum. But I bought a wonderful book that I can't wait to bring home and put in my class library! It's full of photos and interesting information! 

The museum is a tour through the building where Anne Frank, and 7 others, hid and wrote in her diary during World War II. All around the museum are quotes from her diary, photographs, films, and original objects from her time in the secret annex. We walked through multiple rooms of the building: the warehouse, the offices, the storeroom, the landing with the moveable bookcase used to conceal the entrance to their rooms, and the actual hiding place (her parents' room, her room, bathroom, kitchen/living room/Van Pels' room, Peter's room). 

I don't even know where to begin to explain my emotions and thoughts as I walked through the museum. And since I'm not sure how familiar or unfamiliar you are with her story, I'll focus on the things that surprised me or made me think. *I HIGHLY encourage you to read her book-- some of you may be reading it for a class as you get older. Email me if you need help with any report or want extra information!

1. I didn't realize, or had forgotten, that there were 8 people in hiding. Anne's family (mom, dad- Otto, sister-Margot, Anne), plus another family (Van Pels-- Mr. & Mrs. Van Pel and their son, Peter), and an individual (Fritz Pfeffer, a family friend and dentist). 

2. The building itself-- I didn't remember that it was Otto Frank's business building (his companies made jam and spice mixes for meat), that the building was still used for business during the time they were hiding (which is why they had to be completely quiet during daytime/work hours-- no talking, no walking around, no using the bathroom), that some of the employees helped hide them, or that the annex was actually 2 floors at the top of the building! 

2a. How can a Nazi soldier looking for Jews not realize that there are 2 unaccounted for floors at the top of an office building? Especially when looking at it from the street?

2b. In my head, the annex was one room... the 2 floors were separated into rooms. Seeing it in person, they had more room than I realized; but I still couldn't BEGIN to imagine being confined to those 2 floors for 2 years without ever going outside. The could only see sunlight through a window in the very top space of the building (the attic).

2c. The rooms were empty, on Otto Frank's orders. He wanted them to remain like they were after the Nazis raided/emptied them. He had scale models made so that we could see what it looked like when they were hiding--furnished-- and had those photographs up around the rooms. In Anne's room, her posters of movie stars are still on the walls.

3. The 8 of them were betrayed by someone, and that person's identity is still unknown! After all the publicity surrounding her diary, so many years later, and we still don't know who told the Nazis they were hiding there. I figured someone by now would have made a deathbed confession or something, but no... 

4. The 8 inhabitants were sent to concentration camps, and only Otto survived. Anne knew her mom died in Jan. 1944, her sister died in March 1944, and less than a month later, she died...one month before her camp was liberated!!! If only she had hung-on for one more month, she would have been freed and possibly reunited with her father. One of the short videos in the museum said she probably just gave up and stopped fighting to survive, thinking she was alone in life. She officially died of typhus.

5. There's a photo of Otto, in the annex, hours before it opens as a museum. It is the saddest photo ever. He worked so hard to have Anne's diary published, almost immediately after he was liberated and returned to Amsterdam (1947) and learned that his family and friends had all died. The house officially became a museum in 1960... I couldn't imagine being back in a place where he had spent 2 years in hiding, only to be caught, taken to a concentration camp, and now returning as the sole survivor. If it were me, I feel like I would want to be as far away from that place and those memories as possible. 

6. The Diary: it survived! Even as she was writing it, Anne had heard on the radio that Jews were encouraged to keep diaries to tell their stories during this time. She rewrote pages and her short stories, fully intending to make a novel out of her writings. It's been translated into countless languages; it's the most translated Dutch book. They even have a graphic novel version of the book (I bought this book too for our class library). 

7. The Franks and Van Pels tried for years- before they went into hiding- to get papers to legally move to other countries (USA, Cuba among them). In fact, they had already left Germany to go to Amsterdam, thinking it would remain neutral like in WWI. They had a copy of a letter from the USA that said they were wait-listed to enter the country. The expected wait time: "indefinite." While they were on the wait list, they couldn't move out of Amsterdam, or they'd have to start the process all over again. The USA accepted the most Jews of any other country, but even then, so many were denied... I know America doesn't have the resources to support every person who wants to wants to move here (back then or even now), but it's still sad to know that so many families like Anne's had no place to go and were trapped in Europe, just waiting to be found/sent to "labor" camps like Auschwitz & sentenced to die. 

Literally every quote, every short video, photograph, etc., taught me something. I wanted to buy everything in the bookshop and bring it back to my class. 

I'll just leave you with this quote from her diary, so wise at age 15:

One day this terrible war will be over. 

The time will come when we'll be people again and not just Jews! 

We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever,

we will always be Jews as well. 

But then, we'll want to be.

Anne Frank, 11 April 1944

Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum

Reminder photo: this is Van Gogh's Starry Night that we saw in NYC at the MoMA (where we were allowed to take photos). Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take photos at the actual Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. :( But this is the style of his work. Check Wikipedia or Google images for more examples-- he does great work! 

Two of our favorite museums in Amsterdam were the two museums where no pictures were allowed: the Van Gogh Museum & the Anne Frank House. Hopefully my words will suffice to explain the fascinating things and significance about each place.

Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum is really two buildings that connect underground, at one end of a plaza/concourse that connects to the Rijks Museum. Surrounding the walkway, there is a huge grassy field where people were having picnics, playing frisbee, reading, and just resting! We got to the museum in the late afternoon, and knew we only had a couple of hours before it closed. Our plan was to go quickly through the ground floor, and spend the majority of our time on the first floor, where there were a wide selection of paintings by Van Gogh, arranged in chronological order. The other two floors and separate building/wing were temporary exhibits or works done with links to Van Gogh, and we figured we could skip those if we were running out of time (or energy). 

R1, Van Gogh's floor, was organized by time periods in the artist's life. It started out with his early work in the Netherlands (1880-1885), then moved to his peak time in Paris (1886-88) and Arles (1888-89), followed by the work he did as his health began to decline in Saint Remy (1889-90) and Auvers-sur-Oise (1890). That's really only 10 years worth of work! 

Going into Amsterdam, and going into his museum, I didn't know much about Van Gogh. I knew "Starry Night," and that he drew sunflowers, and that was about it. Having a whole museum dedicated to his work was awesome to visit, because you could really get a sense of his career and how/why his style changed over the course of his life. He was a very interesting man! In short, he was only active for 10 years, but has 800 paintings and 1,000 drawings preserved in various museums. He was extremely close with his brother, Theo, and people have learned a lot about his life through his own letters. He was largely self-taught as an artist, and really began to flourish when he moved to Paris and began to experiment. Unfortunately, he was ill, and admitted himself into a mental clinic. About a year later, he committed suicide. 

My favorites of his work were definitely from the Paris and Arles time when he used brighter colors in his art. It was interesting to learn that he often reused canvasses to save money, and he also did a lot of self-portraits to save money (as opposed to paying for models). 

Funniest story involving the Van Gogh Museum: Jeff skipped the ground floor entirely because he was still outside finishing his lunch when Jackie and I went in (not super relevant, but he used it as his excuse for the next comment). Halfway through the first floor, he turns to Jackie and says, "Man, he paints this same guy a lot!" Jackie couldn't stop laughing and explained to him that they were all self-portraits-- it was Van Gogh in every portrait! More about Van Gogh 

Interesting grass area outside the museum... maybe they use it for concerts? I'm not sure why it's raised on a slope like that!

Amsterdam: Rijks Museum & Vondel Park

     We honestly didn't know much about Amsterdam when we decided to spend a few days there. But the Lonely Planet book highly recommended visiting the Rijks Museum, so we headed there on our second day.

     It was definitely worth seeing!!! The whole first floor was dedicated to the Dutch history during its Golden Age-- when the Dutch were one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world: when they had the East and West Indies Trading Companies that dealt with trading spices, slaves, gold, and helped establish the colonies in America. It showed the history of William III-- the Prince of Orange, for which the Netherlands' national color originates. The museum had a big collection of Delftware-- a Dutch spin on Chinese porcelain. Then, the upper floors had artwork of famous Dutch artists: Rembrandt and Vermeer. It was all very interesting and beautiful! I learned a lot about the Dutch history and liked those exhibits more than the actual painted artwork. Here is the link to their website, if you want more information: RijksMuseum

     From there, we decided to relax at the nearby Vondel Park. Again, we weren't sure what to expect by just reading the guide book. But, wow! The first thing we noticed was how many people there were... it was sooo crowded! Central Park is HUGE, but because it's so huge, there's lots of free space to yourself. It's serene. Vondel Park was like one big outdoor party. There were people sitting everywhere on the grass-- around the fountains in the big ponds, around the free outdoor concert venue, and just in the open area. We had our bikes and trying to maneuver around the paths of people walking, skateboarding, rollerblading, and riding bikes was like being in a video game! It required concentration and a little aggressiveness to weave in and out. People had music. Families and friends were having picnics. They bought ice cream and hotdogs from vendors that rolled their carts from place to place. Some were reading. We pulled over on a patch of grass and just people-watched. I felt unprepared without picnic food or my Kindle, but people-watching kept me entertained! Amsterdam can be cold since it's so far north-- our Airbnb host told us that last year it got so cold that the canals froze and people went iceskating all around them! But apparently, July and August are beautiful and that's when they get the most visitors. And it was perfect weather! Not super hot and humid like Barca was and Paris would be... just relaxing at the park was what everyone wanted to be doing, and they were! 

Across the canal from the Rijks Museum

Rijks Museum

The gardens of the Rijks Museum

I loved the lily pads in the garden!

Model Ship: William Rex, 74-gun Dutch ship, 1698

Jan Valckenburgh-- director of the Dutch West Indies Trading Company on Africa's Gold Coast. The Dutch West Indies traded in gold and slaves (meaning, it took gold and slaves from Africa and took them to the American colonies and back to the Netherlands). He probably was not popular in Africa! 

Jackie & Jeff examining a sketch-- done in PEN!

A close up of the drawing-- I wish I could be this good with drawing in pen!

I liked the details of the wooden frame, fancy carving!

Maurice, Prince of Orange (1613)-- son of William of Orange (William the Silent, William I: Prince of Orange). He looks TALL!
The Orange family ruled in the Netherlands since William the Silent led the revolt against the Spanish that led to the 80 Years War and helped the Netherlands gain their independence (it began around 1580). Because of the family's role in helping shape the Netherlands, the people adopted orange as their country's color. The Dutch athletic teams now wear orange on their uniforms, and every year there's a HUGE orange day where everyone wears ORANGE! 

One of my favorite rooms at the museum was the room that had the dollhouse collection. The dollhouses belonged to Petronella Oortman and her husband. All the objects in the houses were reproduced in the original materials, and in the proper proportions! It was unbelievable!!! They were made between 1690-1710.
This is a portrait of one of the dollhouses. 

I can't believe all the detail that went into each room... just for dolls! But this is what their real house looked like. They had their dollhouse look EXACTLY like their home. Crazy! and EXPENSIVE!

Jeff's shirt matched the Delftware! Delftware is Delft pottery, blue and white, made in the Netherlands starting in the 16th century (1500's). The Dutch East Indies Trading Company traded a lot with places in Asia-- getting spices and porcelain. Only the rich Dutch people could afford the Chinese porcelain, so many Dutch potters began to imitate the Chinese designs using Delftware. 

These are flower holders. Each is meant to hold a single flower, like the tulip (the Netherlands are FAMOUS for their tulips!). 

Delft is usually used for pottery, plates, and tiles, but here it was used to make a decorative violin

Famous American artist, Andy Warhol, did this portrait of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands

1635, Still Life. I loved how real this looked-- especially the reflection of light on the glass/metal surfaces.

Rembrandt von Rij'ns signature: probably THE most famous Dutch artist, one of the greatest painters in European history. He lived from 1606-1669. 

Famous Dutch painter, Vermeer. The Kitchen Maid (1658)

The Feast of San Nicholas by Jan Steen (1665-1668)
This is a portrait of a Dutch family celebrating Christmas. Remember when we study Christmas around the World? Here, the naughty children get bundles of twigs left in their shoes and the good children get treats.

The Night Watch by Rembrandt (1642): his biggest and most famous canvas, a portrait of the wealthiest members of one of Amsterdam's militia companies

Rembrandt's self-portrait

close-up of Rembrandt's Night Watch

Onto Vondel Park! Riding our bikes, of course. 

It was a beautiful day out, and you can't tell from the photo, but the park was SO CROWDED! 

People rollerblading, skateboarding, walking, riding bikes

A day at the park is always better with some ice cream!