How to Arrive for School Just in Time - having really annoyed your mother

1.  Decide late the night before that you need to do your laundry

2.  Go to bed before transferring said laundry to the dryer

3.  Hope your mother (aka the laundry fairy) discovers the laundry in the washing machine and transfers it to the dryer.

4.  Don't wake up the first time your mother (aka the alarm clock) comes to your room to tell you to get ready for school.

5.  Finally wake up and shower.

6.  Be shocked to discover that the laundry you left in the washing machine the night before is not dry.  (keep in mind you have lived in Belgium for several months now - you know a dryer cycle of 1.5 hours is just enough to make them only damp.  This dryer cycle is usually followed by at least half a day of the clothes hanging on the clothes line.)

7.  Decide to wait for your clothes to dry before going to school.

8.  Eventually capitulate and wear a combination of dry (but unwanted) clothes and damp (but really want to wear it) clothes.

9.  Miss bus

10.  Decide to ride bike

11.  Spend several minutes hunting chain and lock

12.  Realize you can not get on base without a helmet on - find helmet

13.  Get ready to ride bike to school only to discover tires are flat

14.  Spend several minutes hunting bike pump while implying that your mother and sister have conspired against you and put it where you can not find it.  (Keep in mind neither the mother nor sister ride bikes or use a bike pump for anything)

15.  Finally concede things are not going your way and ask the laundry fairy/alarm clock for a ride to school, knowing full well rides to school are not free and missing the bus has consequences.

Amsterdam

On Saturday, Kyra, Flat Stanley (of course!) and I traveled to Amsterdam.   We left SHAPE at 7am in the morning and arrived downtown shortly after 11am.

Planning out our touring plan was a bit of a challenge.  Museums close at 6pm.   Our tour of the Anne Frank house was scheduled for 3:30 right smack in the middle of the day.  The attractions of the city are spread out so one can't easily get from one place to the next.  I had little interest in visiting the red light district and certainly wasn't going to with a 12 year old.  Kyra wasn't interested in art museums.

Our compromise turned out to be touring the city via canal boat that we could get on and off throughout the day.

The canal boat took us past this windmill.  I took a photo because, well isn't it required to take pictures of windmills when in the Netherlands?

From the canal boat we saw many of the canal houses.  We learned about the hooks at the top of the homes.  When one has narrow staircases, the only way to get furniture in or out is through the windows.  The hook was and is used to hoist large items.  You may or may not be able to tell from the photo that the facades of the homes lean out a bit.  This is intentional.  We also saw homes that obviously leaned sideways, this was not intentional.

As we walked around the city we learned about bikes.  They are everywhere.  They are parked and locked all over and the citizens do ride them everywhere.  The most important thing a tourist can learn is - don't walk in the bike path!  Kyra and I quickly learned to be more cautious when crossing a bike path than when crossing the street.

As you can probably tell from the lighting in the photos, the weather was constantly changing throughout the day.  It was cloudy, rainy, sunny, windy, and hailing at various intervals.  Flat Stanley posed by a canal in the brief amount of sunlight we enjoyed.

You can see the canal, bikes and some houseboats in this photo.  The steeple in the background houses the church bells that Anne Frank could hear in the annex.

Tomorrow I'll share more about Anne Frank's house and our memorable visit there.