Prequel to my Amsterdam posts: In case you are wondering, I went to Amsterdam to present at the IAFL (International Association of Forensic Linguistics) conference. During Fall semester I took the senior capstone class for my major, and it was all about language and law and how the two work together (aka forensic linguistics). Basically our whole grade in the class was doing a project/paper to prepare for this conference.
Today was one of the longest days of my life. It pretty much started on Friday, when I drove with my mom and brother down to Vegas. We stayed overnight there because my flight was Saturday at 7 am. Yuck. So I probably got about 4 hours of sleep that night, then we got to the airport around 5:45. I started out by flying to Atlanta, where I had a 3 and a half hour layover. I spent it reading articles that could make our presentation look better and eating. I then actually ran into Catie and John, two people who were in my class- they actually turned out to be on the same flight as me to Amsterdam. We finally got on the plane and started our 8 hours and something flight over the Atlantic. One thing that was nice about the plane was that it wasn’t full, so I got two seats to myself and no one sat by me at all. On the plane I watched movies and tried to sleep, but I didn’t have very much success with that. It is pretty much impossible to find a comfortable sleeping position while only being able to recline a few inches.
We got to Amsterdam at about 8 in the morning (their time, I lost all track of time on that flight) and I thankfully had John and Catie to help me navigate my way around. We were all pretty exhausted, so it was super fun to try and find out where we were supposed to be going. We finally figured out we needed to take a train from the airport to Centraal Station. Once there, we wandered around a while until we figured out how to buy a week-long tram pass then found our way to our respective hotels. Catie got off a few stops before we had to, but it turned out that John’s was only about a block away from mine, convenient since we are in the same presenting group and still needed to work on our presentation. Unfortunately by this time it was only around 11, and neither of us was supposed to be allowed to check in until 3. So we each left our luggage at our hotels and then walked across the street to Sarphati Park. This proved to be an entertaining choice. First of all, we were two random Americans were sitting in a park with laptops on their laps talking about linguistics. This was probably weird to the Dutch. And to us, the part of the park we happened to sit in was apparently an exercise/stretching area. They have all these stations (like at a gym) where you can do different exercises and stretches. So all these people kept on coming and doing stretches, and it was hilarious. Add that to my delirious state of exhaustion and it was just crazy.
Finally at 1 we decided we were done thinking, plus our laptops had no more battery. I went back to my hotel and found out I could check in early! This was the best news ever. I made my way to my room and collapsed on my bed, but then realized my bed was not very comfortable so I decided to take a shower instead. Then at around 3 or so Marissa and Laura got here! I am sharing a room with Marissa and then Laura and her dad have their own room. We chatted then I took a nap for a while, then Marissa and I decided to go find some food. We went to this small café across the canal, then just back to our hotel. I worked on our presentation for a while, then John came over and we worked on it some more. I finally went to bed just after 12 and I think it took me less than 5 seconds to actually fall asleep.
P.S. I didn’t take any pictures today because I looked disgusting, and nobody wants to see that.
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