Heading to Amsterdam

Kevin, Brady and I headed to the bus stop at 8:30am. The rest of the group had an earlier flight then us so they had already left. It took about 45 minutes to get to the airport. We checked in and everything went alright except for the fact that my bag weighed too much and I had to check it. It was only 20 Euro so it wasn’t too big of a deal. We got through security really fast and grabbed some breakfast. A restaurant in the airport actually had a real breakfast so we ate there. It tasted really good! Then we boarded the plane around 11:30. I slept the whole way which was really nice so it felt like a really short flight. We got to Amsterdam at 2:20pm. Once I got my bag we had to figure out how to get to our hotel. Luckily they had a kiosk where you could call the hotel directly. It turned out they have a free shuttle. When we got to the hotel everyone else was already there so it worked out well. The hotel looked really bad from the outside but the inside was pretty nice. I shared a room with Kate and the guys were paired up in three other rooms. We then all headed into town which took forever! We had to take the bus back to the airport and then get tickets for a 20 minute train to Amsterdam central. It was kind of a pain but we had no other choice. We walked around town a bit. The city is actually pretty neat with the buildings and canals. The group decided to go to a coffee shop where Kate and I split a piece of space cake. Interesting experience to say the least. Afterwards we found a pizza place for dinner. Then after dinner we headed over to the red light district. Absolute craziness! First of all there literally are red lights all over the place. Second, it is basically just a bunch of girls selling themselves in windows. It was a really strange thing to see. Then something happened which pretty much ruined Amsterdam for me. The guys wanted to go to another coffee shop so we found one which was right by one of the canals. It was incredibly smoky and I could not handle the smell so I went outside and Dan and Sean came outside with me. After awhile Brady and Jeremy came outside because they claimed they needed some fresh air. Brady started walking towards the canal and all of a sudden started falling forward. There was a light post about a foot away from the canal and he fell forward, his arm wrapped around the light post, he hit the ground and started shaking uncontrollably.  We all ran over to him to try to keep him from falling into the canal and he looked absolutely horrible. His face turned instantly yellow and he had the blankest stare on his face. It was so scary! Once he stopped shaking we tried moving him away from the water and over to the steps but before he got there he fell again and started shaking again. A guy from the coffee shop came out and gave him some sugar water. He said he sees it all the time and apparently smoking weed makes your blood sugar really low. He eventually stopped shaking and we got him to sit on the steps and drink a lot of water. Afterwards I was the one who couldn’t stop shaking. It was probably one of the scariest things ever. So many things were going through my head – what if he fell in the water? How are we going to get him to the hospital? We are in a different country, are they going to understand what happened? So many things all at once! It was a terrible feeling. It reminded me a lot of the time I saw Kristin wipe out on her skies. Just not knowing what happened is really frightening. After things calmed down a bit he seemed fine but had scratches down the side of his face from when he hit the ground. When he felt ok enough to get up and walk we went back to the hotel. It was our first night in Amsterdam and I had already seen enough.