Friday February 11 - Saturday February 12 - Amsterdam! (and home to New Amsterdam)

Kamiyiha and Mondriaan teacher Thom de Groot pose in the Amsterdam Centraal Station a few minutes after our arrival there on Friday morning.  Kevin Whiston is in the background.  (Note that for this picture as for all the ones on the blog clicking it will enlarge it to make it easier to see details - like the "Welcome to Amsterdam Central Station" sign in the background.)

Feb 12, 2011
En route Schiphol to JFK airport
14:30 GMT +1
(8:30 GMT -5)

As I expected, the last blog entry will fall to me, because the students (who faithfully promised to write)  are sweetly slumbering all around me as we fly home.  John Heegle's prophetic comment when we got on the plane a week ago (to many suppressed giggles) was that he thought the ride home would be much quieter, and indeed he is snoring gently next to me, while Devon, now an old pro on his second plane ride, snores
gently in front of me, and Alicia and Shakeria (also taking their second plane ride ever) are sound asleep in the row behind (with Angie between them, her head leaning on Nancy's hardly more wakeful shoulder.  Across the way Scarlet is wrapped in a blanket and clinging to a stuffed animal, and hasn't opened her eyes since well before take-off.

All the intensive sleeping is not just a result of waking up early to catch the 6:47 Intercity to Amsterdam (stopping at Schiphol International Airport), although certainly the early start didn't help.  Rather, yesterday (Friday) was a long and event-filled last day of our trip, which left us all exhausted but happy.  I will jump backwards in time to the morning of Friday February 11 and try to tell the story in chronological order.

Our arrival in Amsterdam on Friday morning.

The kids returned late from bowling and the game arcade at Scheveningen on Thursday night, and were too excited to sleep quickly.  (Some of the boys had the bright idea of pool at 2 am, and were dissuaded by a sleepy and grouchy chaperone, namely me.)  Therefore, waking them up on Thursday took some doing.  In keeping with our policy of not holding up the group for the late people more than necessary, the majority of us set out to the train station at 9:45 for the train to Amsterdam, as planned.  John was left behind to shepherd the stragglers.  At 9:58 (with all of the Mondriaan buddies present), I called John's cell phone and told him that we were taking the 10:02 train (having left sufficient tickets with him for a later one).  "We'll be there," he said, and hung up.  We headed for the platform, and were just moving onto the escalator up to the tracks when we saw John come running down the causeway, with four students spread out behind him, too breathless to complain at the pace.  We all pounded onto the 10:02 train (which was standing room only until Leiden), considering this a good omen for our day.


The beauty of Amsterdam's harbor as you emerge from the Central Station is always a bit of a shock, and the more so for me since the station is under considerably less scaffolding than the last time I saw it.  (Some day I will arrive in Amsterdam and there will be no construction at all in the Central Station.  I will probably faint from surprise.)  The technical word to describe Friday's weather was foggy, but that implies low visibility, and what we saw was merely a bright white sky, with a few tendrils of darker gray cloud (and of course hordes of bicycles and the usual homicidal blue and white trams).  We shooed the kids onto the Damrak, where of course they were entranced by the row of tacky souvenir stores that somehow give the place a tawdry but wonderful energy, perhaps similar to parts of Times Square.  I remember how charmed I was by the walk down the Damrak from the Central Station the first time I took it, even as I recognized it for being a tacky tourist trap.  It was fun to see the kids so captured as well.  "It's like Manhattan!" Kamiyiha exclaimed, with the joy of a stranger in a strange land who sees a glimpse of home.

The first stop on our walking tour took onto the Oude Zijde of Amsterdam, to the Oude Kerk, the neighborhood church for Rembrandt, where his wife and children are buried, and the oldest gothic church in Amsterdam.  It is undergoing restoration at the moment, and part of the floor is ripped up, something that John Heegle found very cool.  "There's something about seeing the sand that it's built on," he said.  "You don't think about that."  I would add that the building has stayed so long comfortably on sand because the Amsterdammers were wise enough (or economical enough) not to burden it with a stone roof, so it is the only gothic church I have seen with the original wooden roof, and with the interior of the wood painted very beautifully.  (When the paint on the columns and roof was new it must have been as garish as the Damrak.)  Mohamed really liked the stained glass windows, both here and in the churches in Delft yesterday.  "It's cool how they do it, so it looks like a painting from the inside, and from the outside it's just a window and you can't tell," he commented.  "I've never seen those picture-story windows from the inside before.  And it's the light from outside that makes the colors like that, right?  It's pretty."

As we left the church Kamiyiha stepped between me and John and said "so, Mr. Heegle, Ms. Pawel, can you tell me what you learned from this old church?  And how was it different from the old church we saw yesterday in Delft?  Go ahead and raise your hands so you can take turns."  Naturally she called on me first because I waved my hand in the air and yelled "ooh, ooh, pick me," and then John and I made the
observations recorded above.

Moving from sublime to the ridiculous (or at least the sacred to the profane) the next part of our tour involved a walk through Amsterdam's famous Red Light district, with a little lecture from the buddies (who had obviously prepared carefully) explaining the origin of the name, and the general rules for employment there (no non-EU citizens), along with the information that "we're not taking you here just so the boys can stare, but so that you can see that Holland is a very liberal, very open society, and that people are very tolerant."

Anushka's lecture on the history of Amsterdam's Dam Square

Angeline takes a photo on the Dam

We emerged from the claustrophobic alleyways of the Red Light district to the Dam square, where we received another little lecture from the buddies about the history of the square, including the events of April 1945, when various Dutch citizens who were prematurely celebrating their liberation were shot down by "some German guys" to quote Anushka, who was giving the lecture.  (I saw her teacher wince.)  After that we headed for the Magna shopping plaza, where the buddies had wisely decided to give us a chance to eat our packed lunches and do souvenir shopping indoors, rather than trusting the weather in February for an al fresco meal.  Most of the students did not eat, but rather spent the entire time purchasing souvenirs, in some cases frantically crossing things off of their gift lists, and calculating their remaining euros.

On the Prinsengracht

From the mall and lunch we headed toward the Anne Frank Huis, beside the dignified canal houses of the Prinsengracht, while Scarlet walked slowly with her i-phone held slightly above her head staring upwards to capture video of the architecture, and Azizi darted about with his camera, trying to capture the white light of the fog, until Devon told him that his "glass thingy" (i.e. lens of camera) was getting fogged with rain and that he needed to wipe it.

We waited on line for perhaps ten minutes at the Anne Frank Huis, time that John and I put to good use by reminding the kids of who Anne Frank was, and telling them a little about the Dutch resistance, as an explanation of where we were and why.  "But is this the actual house?  Because it looks very modern," commented Steven M., signalling the plate glass windows of the ultramodern museum cafe on the corner of the street, with his usual perspicacity.  I explained that the entrance to the museum was actually two houses over and he was satisfied, although as usual I was vaguely discomfited by the dichotomy between the actual annex (which should be haunting but seems depersonalized or desensitized to me, partly no doubt because of repeated exposures), and the modern part of the museum, which deals with human rights in general, and has interactive digital displays, and is quite nice in its own way, but seems weirdly disconnected from the intensely personal memorial that was originally intended (I think).

Whether it was my explanations or John's or their prior knowledge, or just their general kindness and sensitivity, the museum made a huge impression on the kids.  They moved through it slowly, and with intense attention, looking at artifacts and reading journal excerpts with occasional muted exclamations.  I think Mohammed - who succeeded in beating Ms. Wharton in a hard fought monopoly re-match on Tuesday night, and has been searching for people to play monopoly with almost every evening - was moved by the "stock market board game" given to Peter van Pels for his sixteenth birthday and currently on display.  "That museum was really depressing," commented Alicia as we waited outside in the drizzle for Scarlet, who had remained behind because she was overwhelmed by the exhibit.  I admit that since I had not had the chance to eat at the shopping plaza (I was helping Angeline with her gift shopping list), I seized the opportunity to skip the end of the museum and hurry to the cafe (which is really quite a nice cafe in a pretty location, if you can overlook its incongruity) to bolt down an excellent tuna salad sandwich with fresh greens.  Since I was mostly thinking "mmm...sandwich yummy..." at the end of the museum I was a little abashed at Alicia and Shakeria's sincerity.  That museum really shouldn't have a cafe at the exit.

After the Anne Frank Huis Thom led us past the Westerkerk, back to the Dam, and on down the Rokin without pausing, to take us quickly to the new subway station which he thought was fascinating.  I admit that I was dubious, and wondering if Thom remembered that our kids are far more blase about subways than even the Rotterdammers (who do have a working metro).  But the "station" is actually a work in progress, and it ended up being fascinating.  (Most of the kids said it was cool and Shakeria said it was scary.)  One enters through a turnstile which is at the moment always green in both directions, and takes a set of echoing metal stairs (made of slats with irregular holes punched in them for traction) down to the first landing, where a little photo exhibit about the construction of the subway is perched among immense tubes, and where the echoes of the work below ring vaguely.  Continuing down to the second landing you can look down over a metal railing and see -- far, far below -- the earth moving machines sitting in the mud, well below even more tubes and wires -- the buried ganglia of a great city -- and piles of sand and dirt.  Eerily, you can also see water bubbling from the soil, and the underground pools where it is being collected prior to being pumped out.  Dimly light by fluorescent bulbs, the whole thing looks like the set of a James Bond movie (the lair of the super-villain of course), or like a video game backdrop.  Thom explained that the construction of a metro in such soggy soil presents unique engineering challenges, but I don't think the kids appreciated the explanation until they actually saw the work.  Then they all whipped out cameras and started vainly trying to take pictures in the darkness.

Steven and Stephy (and their purchases) on the way back to the Hague

After the subway the kids were clamoring to finish their souvenir shopping (as it was their last chance) and insisting that we had promised, so we granted them an hour to shop, which turned out to be just as well, as our train ticket discounts were only valid for trains after 5:00 PM.  Heavily laden with new Amsterdam bags ("for carry-on, Miss, because my bag is full"), hats ("Miss, Sietse showed me where to get it"), shoes (Gabriela gave in to temptation), and the ubiquitous blue and white plastic shopping bags that mimic Delft tiles that all the souvenirs are sold in, we took the 5:19 train back to the Hague.  Most of the students promptly fell asleep when they got on the train, except for Devon and the group around Devon (who were listening to Devon).  Devon was practicing saying "Scheveningen" again.  He's getting fairly good, although somehow he puts in an "r" making it sound more like "Schreveningen" which suggests something written ("scrivenings" if that's a word in archaic English).  "I keep wondering," said John thoughtfully, after we had exchanged smiles at the shrieks of laughter at Devon's noble attempts.  "What would it be like to be riding home on say the New Jersey Transit and have someone behind you just saying 'HOboken'...'HoBOken'...'ho-bo-ken'...over and over."  I pointed out that someone from the Benelux countries would be perfectly familiar with the name "Hoboken" and suggested "Seacaucus" as more difficult phonetically, and then John topped it with "Massapequa."  We agreed chanting "Massapequa" on the LIRR would probably drive regular commuters crazy.

Had we merely arrived back at the hostel at 6:00 for dinner the day would have been full enough.  But we arrived only to rush again through eating to work on changing and showering and generally making our toilettes for the party the Mondriaan students were throwing us for our final evening.  I took the opportunity to video skype my 6th period class, and was greeted with shrieks of "Hi, Ms. Pawel!" and a number of students who looked suspiciously as if they were sitting on tables in a classroom with slightly disarranged furniture.  I reminded the kids that there would be chocolate in it for them if they did the worksheets I had assigned while away.

My "video class" was brief, even though the students were (of course) late, as I had to get ready for the party also.  While waiting downstairs I spoke to Ms. van der Vlies, our contact at the hostel who has by now known us for five years, and was responsible for making sure our rooms were ready at 8:00 in the morning on the day we arrived, and generally has been hugely helpful.  She said a polite farewell, and asked what time we were leaving in the morning, and then (on hearing that we were heading out by 6:30) asked if we would like an early breakfast.  I worried (correctly as it turned out) that food would be too much of a distraction for our not terribly punctual students, but agreed that tea, coffee and orange juice would be most welcome, and accordingly Saturday morning all those who were on time were able to at least leave the hostel after a hot drink.  (Devon wisely grabbed two clementines to go, and saved them for the airport, a convenient way to carry a thirst-quenching non-liquid.  I should have followed his example.)  It is nice to feel that we are liked at the hostel.

Finally, quite late, but all very gorgeous in our party finery, we set out for Mondriaan for the last time.  When we arrived the students charged cheering into the canteen, which had been prepared with red white and blue balloons and streamers, and the (red white and blue) flags of the Netherlands and the U.S. and where disco strobe lights were flashing and music was already playing.  They were all dancing merengue within thirty seconds.  Stephen P. has some very impressive dance moves.  (Actually, so does Ryan, who demonstrated his later.)  "This is nice," commented John as we watched the kids dance.  "To see them all happy, like this."  We teachers sat contentedly in the shadows with chicken sate sticks and sodas, while the kids moved from merengue to reggaeton to the ubiquitous Electric Slide (which they all danced on the little stage at one end of the canteen), while I explained to my colleagues that not only has the "Electric Slide" been danced at every prom I have attended, it is my observation that singing along on the boogie-woogie chorus is mandatory for all dancers.

New York
Feb 22. (After my laptop battery died on the plane)

Alas, our late arrival did not mean that the party could run late, as the janitors were arriving promptly to clean up the cafeteria, and the Mondriaan kids had to do their part of the cleaning and furniture moving beforehand.  Therefore, promptly at 9:45 the lights were turned back up, and we said our farewell speeches.  Kevin's was particularly moving to me, as he announced that this is his last year, and I can hardly imagine the trip without him.  But it was left to Kamiyiha to unconsciously paraphrase a great moment in cinema when she took the microphone to reassure the buddies that "we have to go, and we'll miss you.  But we'll always have Facebook."

The whole group, at the very end of the party Friday evening

After the last last photos and embraces we left Mondriaan for the last time, and emerged into a night as foggy as the scene in Casablanca that Kamiyiha didn't know she was quoting.  We took the bus to the Central Station with a majority of the buddies, and then switched, still with a number of Mondriaan students to the number 17 tram, which dropped us outside the hostel.  There Stephen P. once more showed a gift for the cinematic, as we all piled off the tram, and some of the buddies (including Stephen's) stayed on it to head for home.  The night was dark and windy and the tram's lighted windows showed us the passengers inside clearly, although there was a fair amount of condensation on the windows.  Stephen rapped on the window next to where his buddy was sitting to get her attention, and then drew a heart in the condensation once he was sure she was looking.  She smiled, and pressed her palm against the warm inside of the glass.  Stephen pressed his palm along the the cold outside, opposite hers, and as the tram began to move, he began to run along next to it, calling (95% jokingly) "No!  No!  I can't bear it!  Don't go!"  He pretended to sob as the tram accelerated, leaving him behind, and I shamelessly laughed at him, wishing all the while that one of us had captured his dramatic gestures on video.

Most of the kids flatly refused to go to sleep once we reached the hostel.  "Miss, it's our last night in the Netherlands!  I want to absorb the atmosphere!" Stephanie explained.  The best we could do was shoo them into their rooms, make the buddies who had accompanied us go home before they missed their last tram, and warn the kids strictly about leaving on time the following morning.

I will say that the majority of the group left at 6:30 (we had originally intended to leave at 6:15) and the four stragglers who left a few minutes later with Ms. Wharton and me managed to make it onto the platform just before the 6:47 train to Schiphol pulled into the station.  After the bustle of checking bags, and a last orgy of souvenir shopping (and inevitably breakfast at McDonalds) at the airport, we all headed to the gate, where the kids gave up any pretence of being awake.  It's a wonder we didn't have to roll them onto the plane.

A lot of them said how eager they were to get back home.  This has been a TIRING trip for all of us, and a week of being permanently stimulated by completely new things, plus the stress of being away from home, and living with strange people, and having to act grown up definitely exhausted the kids.  In spite of their exhaustion however, I know that they have had a wonderful trip, filled with excitement and positive new experiences (as well as new challenges).  I'm glad we're all safely home as well.  And I'm proud of the kids.

Signing off, for the last time for "Brooklyn in Den Haag V",
Rebecca Pawel