Am-ster-Damn!

Yeah Amsterdam!

I made it, and in classic Katie style. Because everyone would be disappointed if there wasn't any huge disaster and chaos at some point in the trip the fates decided to get it all out of the way early (or at least hopefully my arrival here is the the worst of everything and tomorrow will be an infinitely better day).

Needless to say, I pulled that age old nightmare of all international travelers and parents of said travelers...I lost my passport somewhere in the ether between getting on my flight in Gatwick (as a side note, Gatwick is 800 years outside of the city! It's not a London airport! whose idea was that?!) and standing in line at border patrol in Amsterdam...yeah...for real. Gone. I have no passport. Now just take a moment and imagine the panic, watching your fellow travelers orderly walking through immigration, tearing apart your bag hoping you were just being silly, imagine your inner-mother yelling at you for being such an irresponsible child (not to mention what your real mother's going to say), imagine looking at the immigration officers and explaining "yes, I am that dumb ass American that couldn't even keep track of a small booklet of the most important piece of paper ever"...yeah that's how my day started.

But the folks in immigration were fantastic, they had cake (aparently the airport is doing away with flight taxes), which I couldn't eat because the idea of eating something made me even less happy than I was already, but at least each one fo them offered some at least 4 times...but for real, they were amazing, and understanding, and put up with my absurd amount of tears and bad jokes about what it took to prove I was an American. And after about 6 hours that gave me a provisionary visa to hang out in Holland, Belgium, and the somewhere else. I'll admit I wasn't listening, I was just so happy to hear I wasn't going to be thrown to the international border limbo like that guy Tom Hanks played in that movie.

So I'm here.

The guy in charge of the house is awesome, as are everyone I've met so far who are associated with the program. They all invited me out to an opening on the other side of town, which I naturally excepted, never being one to turn down a party especially after a craptastic day, only since I'm not that proficient on a bike they were going to ride and I was going to take the tram...only the tram we thought went there, didn't, and it took me a long to figure that out. And then the lovely tram driver told me the right bus to be on, so I got on it, when the driver of that then informed me that it was going in the wrong direction, so I got off and got back on in the other direction, to which the other driver said that the first driver was wrong, but he'd get me there...hours later...needless to say I missed the opening, but I got to see A LOT of the city. So in the end I just went home, at which point Claudio, the guy in change, made me the best cabanara I've ever had, served with some wine from his father in Italy. And I'll admit it, my day is now infintiely better. He felt so bad for me he decided to cook me an home cooked Italian meal, and low and behold I'm human again.

So that's my first day in Amsterdam. For real. It actually a gorgeous city, even when seen through the eyes of an exhausted incredibly unhappy traveler. I'm excited, it's going to be good.

Or at least it can't get worse.