Home > Mission to Amsterdam > Archives > 2008 > April > 16
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Good times and good friends
I have 3 weeks until the end of my time working at the Shelter. I can’t believe how quickly the time has passed and how full it has been. I keep thinking about all the lessons I have learned and the memories I have made with my new friends here. I feel so incredibly blessed. Last night, in a dreadful bout of homesickness, I started looking through all the pictures on my computer.
I kept laughing as I came across pictures from great times last semester and pictures with my family taken years ago. I feel so blessed knowing I have these friends here who love and accept me, and my incredible family and friends at home as well.
My grandparents celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary a few weeks ago and won the “Unsung Heroes” award in New Braunfels. I am so proud of them. The award is well-deserved. My cousin is getting married this Saturday; another good friend will be getting married at the end of this month. I am almost overwhelmed by it all sometimes.
Aside from being entirely too homesick, yesterday was a great day. I had my weekly day off and decided it was about time I saw Mr. Van Gogh’s paintings for myself. I had seen Starry Night at MOMA once before and stood for a ridiculously long time, completely entranced. A museum full of his paintings sounded absolutely amazing. I woke up, made breakfast, and talked with my friend Kimberly about where we could go travel after I finished. I will have 21 days to travel by myself before my family comes to Europe to join me for a little while.
I decided to take my day off and go to a thrift store in North Amsterdam. As I was getting ready to go, Martijn, a staff member from the city, asked if he could come along with me. I explained my plan to go to North and to go to Van Gogh, and he seemed eager to do whatever it took to get out of the house.
We started out toward Central Station and Martijn lead the way without my having much say in where we were heading. I was content to follow until I realized we were headed to the wrong ferry — the one that took us to a different part of North Amsterdam. Martijn said he knew of a good cafe in this area of North, so we went. It was fantastic. I had a cappuccino, and we talked about fasting for a long time. Martijn is one of those Christians who really likes to dialogue about spiritual issues, all the time. He challenges me to think about the tenets of my faith, but talking to him for long periods of time is also very fatiguing. We headed to Van Gogh after this, and I had plenty of good, quiet time looking at the paintings and soaking in the sheer magnificence of the different art collections.
That night, I worked on a memory box, got my hair cut and learned to juggle, sort of. Natalie, our new Australian staff member at the Jordan, brought juggling balls and taught Kimberly and I how to juggle. Kimberly had recently taken a fall on her bike that left her black and blue, so she got her bruises decorated as we all sat around in the community house. I wanted to take a picture. There was Kimberly with her bruises-cum-butterflies, Lianne with her sketchpad, Christian playing random notes on his guitar and Natalie juggling in the armchair to my left. I have struggled in the community house since I came, dealing with moral relativism; where to draw the line between accepting people and not accepting everything they do. But as I sit in the midst of these people, I am proud of the strong friendships we have forged together. I am proud of how unique they all are. I’m going to miss them all so much.
