Day Five, Mothers Day

Happy Mothers Day to all Amsterdam to Paris MOMS!!! :)

Today, we woke up around nine o'clock and got ready so as to enjoy the crepe styled pancakes that our shelter makes for breakfast. It's rather interesting when you end up spreading "syrup" aka molasses on your pancake with a knife because it is so thick. After enjoying our breakfast, we promptly leave for church a couple blocks down the road at the Christ Church of Amsterdam. However, we end up arriving in the middle of the service (minor error in the starting time). The church was an Episcopal Church which reminded some girls of their church back at home. I loved the message because it spoke on forgiveness. Ever find yourself sitting in church and saying, "wow did they just write this sermon for me?". Or, "how do they know?". I always enjoy listening to God when he so obviously speaks to me :). After the service, we went upstairs for coffee, tea, and coffee dipping sugar sticks (?). This time was really fun because we all got to either reconnect with each other or visit with people from around the area. You would think that because we are on a trip together in such tight quarters, we would have enough time with each other. However, you find yourself grouping off, going to different museums or stores, thus, you sometimes need a couple minutes to reconnect and talk about your day :). After the freezing walk back to our shelter, we got ready to leave for the Keukenhof Gardens (the famous tuplip garden).

The garden was absolutely breathtaking. It was about an hour total drive by bus and tram ride out to the countryside where fields lined with rows of tulips. There were 7 million different forms of tulips there, covering 40 acres of land. As you can imagine, it is easy to get a tad lost in the garden which is surrounded with ponds, shops, petting zoos, rows of flowers, and sculptures. We split off into two groups after grabbing a quick bite to eat and walked around the grounds, which had paved roads that twisted and turned around everywhere. After three hours we hadn't even walked everywhere, but we went home pleased with over a hundred pictures, if not more. I'm sure you'll all be super excited to see the gorgeous poses that we got with the scenery and flowers as our background, I know we were :).

After we met back up around 5:00 pm, we rode back to the hostel in our church clothes that we decided to wear all day. We thought it was better to sacrifice our warmth to get pretty pictures and for some it was worth it but by the end, we were all questioning why we decided to wear such little leg covering on such a freezing cold day (this is for sammie: We felt rather doe ba doe!). After we got back to the shelter, we went seperate ways and found food to eat for dinner. Some went to an Indonesian place while others grabbed food at the local grocery store (bread with salami and cheese). I, on the other hand, accompanied two of my girlfriends and took the easy way out, grabbing food at the local café in the shelter (which is priced really nicely). By the end of dinner, we had all met up and talked about our day in the café, reminiscing over our silly and cute pictures from the Garden. A few of us decided to make one last shopping trip at a nearby souvenir shop before calling it a night. Now, I am sitting in the café at our shelter, watching Sylvette read an Amsterdam book, Kate typing on her computer, Scottie and Stephanie writing in their journals, and the rest of the girls packing in their room and giggling. I am leaving you all now to go back to the room and enjoy the packing party :). Hope this is a fun update to read. Love you all and miss you very much.

This is Kendyl signing out ;-) (Star Trek reference for you daddy)

-Kendyl Tarbell