30 Juni - Day 5 of Masters Class

When the alarm went off, I nearly leapt out of bed thinking I overslept after only drifting in and out of sleep for a couple hours. For some reason, I wasn't too exhausted though.

We had another day of lectures that were even harder to pay attention to. Somehow, I made it through. The day ended earlier today since we were going to go on a dinner boat cruise. Skylar had been looking forward to this one all week. We took a chartered bus to Monnikendam and walked through this old village. We stopped and everyone (except Skylar and I) tried fresh herring which was raw and covered in onions. Bleck!

 
After a few more minutes of walking we found the boat. It was a nice little family owned private sail boat. The people that ran it were husband and wife and even had her mother and their four month old daughter aboard. They even asked us to assist them raising the sails. There were about 30 of us crowded on this boat, but we all found somewhere to sit and we just lazed around under the sun. It was a perfect day for a boat ride; absolutely gorgeous! Skylar even got to steer!

They put out cheese, bread, wine, and beer to snack on while we sailed out. We sailed through this inlet of Amsterdam where they built a dike to stop the incoming water from the sea so that it wouldn't harm the businesses there and turn it completely rural. After about 50 years of the water being completely separate from the sea, it turned from brackish to entirely fresh water. Kind of amazing. It was enormous and certainly felt like the sea, but it wasn't.

Apparently packing the guitar was not a joke and we all sang camp songs, like This Land is Your Land while Thomas played the guitar. It was corny, but cute. The Masters group wanted each of the schools to put together a little show for everyone to represent their programs and where they are from like a song or something. The group from Amsterdam sung a song from a dutch TV show about a boy who misses everyone because he loves them so much (like they love us). The Germans sang a drinking song of some sort. The Austrians sang a couple songs too. The Americans were actually three schools, but three of the guys got together and took it upon themselves to make a rap. It was all pretty funny.

We docked when it was time for dinner. They grilled some vegetables especially for me, Skylar, and the other vegetarian on the boat, but forgot to separate it or label it as special for the vegetarians, so everyone ate it. She kindly made us more after announcing that everyone was not supposed to eat that. The vegetables and all the sides were all really good. Then they served a wonderful fruit salad for dessert.  

Meanwhile we had our closing ceremonies where each school gave their students a certificate for completion of the Masters class and presents to the hosts here in Amsterdam for the amazing job they did in organizing everything.

Being out in the sun all day can be completely draining, but the day wasn't over yet. We had to finish up our presentations for tomorrow and then everyone was going out. Shanne offered to stay with Skylar, insisting that she didn't want to go out. It was really sweet of her to do such a thing. So on my second wind, I went out again. We went to a couple different bars and ended up in a dance club. By the end of the night, I was nearly tipping over. I think we got back at about 3am and I immediately passed out.