Drugs are bad m'kay

I don't care if I just updated this, this story needs to be told ASAP. We just got back from a "Drug and Alcohol Awareness" lecture. We were almost gonna "forget" about it like the meeting this morning, but we went because they get mad if we don't go to these events. And boy am I glad I went.

I was expecting the typical DARE speech that they always give us. However it was quite the opposite. There were two police officers. One from Venlo (The closest major city) and one from Amsterdam. They started off by explaining the drug laws in the Netherlands. Much to contrary belief drugs are not legal but they are "tolerated." Basically there is a loophole in the law that lets people smoke pot if they want as long as its under 5 grams. They then proceeded to pass around pot so we know what is real and what is not.
find someone threw up all over the bathroom floor. Oh well I live in a castle.

First day at Kasteel Well: Jet Lag Continued

First off I would like to point out when I open the internet, my homepage is not google.com anymore. It is google.nl. Since this blog is owned by google, everything is in Dutch so I am trying my hardest to figure out how to do things on here. I am writing this entry right after I posted the last entry (Make sure you read that one first) because there is a lot that has happened since that plane ride. The ride was sort of long, but not too bad. About 6 1/2 hours. Luckily Blake and I kept ourselves occupied.


Me and Blake excited about being on a plane to The Netherlands


We were able to sleep a little...


But we felt like crap when we woke up...


So we decided to play the shakey face game...



Finally we had arrived in Europe.


We got off the plane and walked into the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Even though the official language is Dutch, I was surprised that every sign was in English first and then Dutch.

We noticed a sign saying we could take the lift down to get our bags.


So we did.


We got our bags fairly easily as well as got through customs with no problems at all. When we looked at the stores in the airport, we found out they had almost identical store to us. H&M, Burger King, etc.




Me, Alicia and Blake excited about Burger King!



Everyone in the airport.

We were greeted by some awesome people who work at the Castle (I forget all their names because I was so tired-excited for Sun Ah). They all seem really nice and I am sure I will know them better as time goes by.


The outside of the airport.

Once everyone was together, we loaded up a truck filled with luggage and two buses and went off on a 2 hour drive to the castle.


Mer Jones and Blake on the bus.


Lauren Parker on the bus.


The first windmill (And Jon Roth)

Beautiful country side.

Old windmill

Finally after two long hours we saw our first glimpse of the castle and the moat (That's all algae)





Blake and I in front of the moat.

Blake and Michelle at the castle

And here is the panorama I tried to do.















Everyone standing around really excited!


The back of the castle

Jessica in front of the outer moat behind the castle

The outer moat


After looking around at the outside of the castle for a few minutes and unloading our luggage, we went for a brief meeting we had a short break before we got our room assignments. We wandered around the inside for a little bit and realized that our names were on the doors of the rooms, so we ran around trying to find which one was ours. We had no luck and found out later we are not in the main castle but the Voorburcht (Outer castle). When we finally got to our room it was such a relief. First of all I was finally able to put my bags down and unpack. Second our room is gorgeous. It is in the bottom of one of the towers and we have two windows, one overlooking each of the two moats.


The entrance to the voorburcht


The stairs right after the entrance leading up to my room.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1023/1345206311_b0c8ee33aa.jpg?v=0
The stairs looking down


Our door (It is so small that everyone has to duck down to get into it


The entrance to our room.

Panorama of our room (Chris's bed, my bed, Sam's bed, Blake's bed)





The door to the right is our door. The door to the right is a small closet that is FULL of mosquitoes. We aren't going to open that door for a while.


Our ceiling, which by the way is a good 20 feet high.


Our amazing floor


Blake on his bed.


Sam breaking out the ukulele

We unpacked and had to wait for this guy to come do a room inventory and give us internet access (Which by the way is very iffy here so if for some reason I am not responding to you, it's because the internet cut out). We did a little more exploring. We went to dinner (The food is not too good, but oh well) and then had even more meetings which I did not really pay attention to. After everything was over a bunch of people (Pretty much everyone in this castle) went to this bar in town. I wanted to go but I was so tired and wanted to shower and get to bed. I decided to go and just see the town for a little bit and then leave. I went to bed and it was the most amazing sleep ever. We accidentally slept through our first activity and breakfast here, but it was totally worth it. Oh well, I live in a castle.