Friday to Saturday (August 10th to 12th) - Three Day Weekend

Thursday, our whole group along together with Julie, Mirjam, and Paul took an excursion to Otterloo. Despite the wet and dreary weather that greeted us that morning we were able to make the best of our situation with raincoats, umbrellas, and change of plans to visit the Kröller-Müller Museum first and then borrow bikes after the rain had passed. Unfortunately my camera batteries died early on during the day so I don't have many pictures but here is one of the entrance!



The museum was incredible! Never before had many of us seen such a vast and varied collection, and a private collection no less! Makes you just gape in awe at the family's wealth *laughs* but at least we get to enjoy the endless Van Gogh's, Impressionists, Picasso's, and international sculptures. Afterwards we had group lunch of terrific pasta + potato salad and dicussed our individual projects - their current statuses and where we hit road blocks and where we hope to take advance. Lot's of great stuff! Everyone's doing fantastic work!

Following, we had 2 hours of free time to take our bikes and ride around. Personally, I got a chance to ride a bike after 8 years of non-riding with Haley's help and expertise. A complete and total adrenaline rush! Makes me want to go home buy a new bike. From what I've heard, there's a cool hunting lodge there and great bike trails.

Friday, a group (Ray, Julie, Jack, and Mark) had gone earlier to Utrecht at around 10:00 am and later Paul and his colleague and Ann joined up. I went a little late because I had assumed there was a group going at 1:00 pm but luckily learned from Clifford and Colleen that I should just go and meet up with the earlier group. The following video summarizes the trip to Utrecht:



The Genesis exhibit that was produced by Emily, an acquaintance of Paul's, was truly a one of a kind experience. From what I learned from Julie, Emily has background in humanities and social sciences and really wanted people to get the sense that there isn't a fine line between science and art and kind of take you outside of comfort 'boxes' and I think the exhibition did a great job of that. It's also interesting to think about how people of different backgrounds would view this exact same exhibit because they probably come in with different affinities and understand/grasp certain concepts differently - but in the end it is still the same exhibit!

The whole city of Utrecht has a bit of a more relaxed atmosphere than Amsterdam and we saw quite a few goths there walking about as you might see in the video. Utrecht's plethora of museums is definitely worth the visit. And of course a big thank you to Mark for being a great sport & letting me film/capture such awesome moments!

Saturday I went out and did research exploration and interviewing - Amsterdam West primarily on Saturday. It was interesting to come across coffeeshops in a predominantly Immigrant neighborhood - different kind of makeup than the touristy areas of central Amsterdam. I also got a chance to talk to some youngsters in the Moroccan neighborhood playing outside of their school - really friendly kids. I took quite a few pictures on my walks, here is one of the Moroccan restaurant located on Jan Pieter Heyenstraat that has good prices (around 6-10 euros) for a meal so feel free to check it out! It was very much an independent, self-planned weekend which I hope was both productive and relaxing for everyone.