Research Day Four...it only gets better!

This morning began as a very very ugly day. I stumbled down to Mirjam's office this morning around 10a with my coffee in hand still in my pajamas. I guess I looked pretty well put together because no one said anything. I spent some time in her office with Ray, taking care of what I needed to do. Luckily for me, Mirjam was nice enough to get a hold of Esmee for me and we set up a time to meet at noon. I headed back to my room to get ready. Ray knocked at my door around 11:30a to check in with me cuz she was going to be following me today for her project. We looked at the map together only to realize that Esmee's street wasn't on our map so we had to trust Mirjam's direction and hope that there were people around our destination to ask if we headed in the right direction.

We headed towards the tram lines but decided that before this mission breakfast was a necessary so we stopped off at Spar. We grabbed some breakfast and headed out. To those interested Spar has some great crossiants! While we were walking, Edward joined us for a couple of minutes and then parted into his own direction at the world famous grogery store, Albert Heijn.

Prior to leaving the dorms, we consulted a tram map (the map that the program provided for us) but when we arrived at waterlooplein, we couldn't find the tram that was listed on the map. Luckily while I tried to figure out where I was going, a gentleman approached us asking us if we needed some help. He kindly pointed us in the correct direction. Luckily by this point it had stopped raining and was turning into a very nice day. We made it our tram stop, took tram 5 to just past Museumplein and got off. I had to stop and ask a couple of people where the street was that I was looking for. I went around in a big circle but then came to my destination, Esmee's apartment.

Her apartment was really awesome. Her and one of her friends were working on installing some laminate flooring. We decided to go sit at a cafe and chat for a little while. Esmee is really cool. She answered some of my questions. A couple of hours later, we parted, Ray and I heading back to the dorms and them heading back to apartment to get some real work done. While we were walking back, I started looking at gifts to bring home.

Later this afternoon, I met up with Shirley and May-Britt and headed towards our meeting with Juoal and a friend of his. The five of us sat at a cafe for about 2 hours talking about Islamic culture, rules and just about everything else. The guys were really resourceful and provided us an interesting view of the situation. The full dialogue should be available on the wiki shortly. I think it might have been one of my better sit-downs besides it being ridiculuously cold where we were sitting. At around 8:30p, we parted but we got both of their email addresses in case we want to contact them again. The sunset on the way back was amazing so I thought I would share it with everyone.

So I guess overall, it was another awesome day. I met with Esmee and she agreed to translate some stuff for us. And even better was the conversation we had with Juoal and his friend.

Next step, get everything transcribed and analyzed!