Belgium Study Abroad 2012: Going to Amsterdam for the Weekend

6/08

We all woke up this morning around 4:30AM. It was still really dark and really cold outside. I made sure that all of my stuff was packed and I made myself a packed lunch for the train. At 5:15 a taxi arrived which I was very happy about because I was unsure if the woman on the phone understood me about the taxi. We loaded all of our stuff in and made it to the train station a half hour early and met up with the WKU students and got on the train. It was about a 3 hour trip on the train which wasn’t too bad. We arrived at Central Station in Amsterdam and got our tram passes for around the city. We had to quickly travel to a different part of the city to meet with Mr. Achmed Baadoud the city councilman of Amsterdam Nieuw-West. He oversees that area of Amsterdam which is a large mixture of both Dutch and foreign people. There is a Muslim community within this district and Mr. Baadoud described many of the challenges that they face which were discussed in our Islam in Politics class such as the language barriers and the educational system. It was great to be able to hear about things that were from our class and how accurate they were to real situations. Afterwards, we all went to the Blue Mosque and met Mr. Abdulhafiz Acherrat who is the Assitant Director. He gave us a tour of the mosque and also told us about the general practices of the people who attend. I got to see where the people of the church pray daily and that they have special places for programs for men, women and children. I was impressed with how open Mr. Acherrat was and that we were able to walk through practically the entire mosque. Once we were done we went to get some lunch and ate at a Surinamese restaurant which was a type of food that I had never tried before. Then we went to check into our hostel, it’s the same hostel that I stayed in 2 years ago when I studied in Holland. It was really fun to be able to visit again and I remembered my way around the city. We only have the weekend in Holland so I made sure to go into the city as soon as I could. I just enjoy walking around the streets and seeing the canals which is what I spent most of my time doing. I had a good night being back and I stayed out with my friends until about 1AM before going to bed.