Improvements

Ok, things have gotten much better. Well, I arrived in Belgium after the last train back to Amsterdam so I had to stay. I was supposed to have met Megan near baggage claim but she thought I had missed my flight or something, so she went back to Amsterdam. The ticket booth was already closed, and I almost missed the last train to Brussels Centrale. I hopped on the train, found the conductor and paid him on the spot and then found a nice guy on the train who let me use his phone. I got ahold of my good friend Irina from my old church in Belgium. We were supposed to stay with her this weekend, but she was nice enough to let me stay with her once I arrived in Belgium. She was amazing and came to meet me at the central station, brought me back to her house and I FINALLY got to take a shower and have some mint tea, relax, and get some sleep. Although.. at this point, I still didn't know yet that Megan had made it to Amsterdam.

I checked my email, found out she was there and decided to take one of the first trains there in the morning to try to meet Megan by 11. Irina and I got some delicious croissants, and headed for the train station. There were some delays, so my train didn't get into Amsterdam until almost 11:30. I started walking towards where the hostel was and was lucky enough to find Megan in the street. United at last! :0)

We spent a few hours trying to be good tourists in Amsterdam(seeing all the essentials: canals, tulips, clogs, etc.). Then, I went to call my friend Sara to tell her we were coming to meet her in her city, but I didn't have a working European phone. We ended up calling from the police station because nobody seemed to know where the payphone was. We arrived at the train station in Den Haag (Sara's city) and hopped in her friend's car to head to the beach. We tried some Dutch pancakes at a cute little restaurant and umm... Megan and I started feeling really odd, but we decided to go on a long walk through the paths in the dunes. Our two groups got seperated, and eventually we all ended up meeting on the beach, relaxing, and playing in the water of the North sea a bit. It was nice, and by the end of it, we had probably more than a 10 km or at least 6 mile walk on the beach.

I was so jet-lagged and exhausted by that point so Sara made us some dinner and I fell asleep really soon after. Then, the next morning, we slept in and took a train to visit this cute, traditional Dutch town called Delft. We had lunch along the canals, had our first ice cream in Europe, and bought little wooden shoes.

Finally, we took the train back to Den Haag to explore a little bit. We decided we wanted to try Heineken here but most of the places weren't open. We walked into a little street cafe and ordered a beer. They said ok, but couldn't seem to find them. Finally, they gave them to us, but they were warm - so we choked them down and went to meet Sara after she got off of work. We went to this AMAZING Korean restaurant and tried some really interesting foods. We all left to walk around Den Haag for a bit and see some more of the sites, headed back to Sara's to watch a movie and get some sleep. Tomorrow morning, Megan and I will be headed back to Brussels to see Irina and all of the good people at IBC. Things are looking up!