Amsterdam (but really Apeldoorn) Day 4! Exercise and sunshine really are healing

First off, Happy Mother’s Day!! To all of the wonderful women in my life, thank you! I love you❤️

This morning, we headed off in a bus to the national park! But first we had to make a pit stop at church. We went to the Apeldoorn ward, which is a tiny little Dutch speaking ward. We drove through the cutest little neighborhoods to get there! We basically doubled their attendance haha but they were actually the kindest. Everybody was so welcoming and asked so many questions about us and our study abroad. It was all in Dutch, but Rob actually gave a talk in English and they had a Dutch translator haha. I don’t know how that came about but it was a wonderful talk. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, bikes > people here. Rob compared us stepping into the bicycle lane and trusting that we’re going to be ok, to the iron rod and trusting in God. He also talked about our paths (like the path of the iron rod), and how our paths often aren’t what we think they are going to be. The rod will take us where we need to go and will lead us to the places where people need our help, even when those places aren’t like the tree of the love of God (like the women we learned about who helped in the Red Light district). He said it much better but those were the thoughts I remember. We stayed through sacrament meeting, and then we changed out of our church clothes in the bathroom to get ready for bicycling haha. It was really sweet though, they had flowers for Mother’s Day and were handing them out to us. 

When we were all changed we got back on the bus and headed off to the national park! When we got there they told us to grab bikes and set us loose until we had to meet at the museum in the center of the park, so off we went. It was SO much fun!! I forgot how much I love biking. And it was soo beautiful out! It was in the 70s, sunny, with a breeze so it was the perfect weather for biking. Also don't mind the baby seat on the bike. It was on all of them for some reason - ruining my perfect aesthetic. Haha.

After a few hours of biking, with a stop for picnicking and pictures of course, we headed to the museum. Over half of the museum’s artwork was Van Gogh which was super cool, but my favorites were honestly the pointillism work that I got to see. There were some really beautiful pieces. There was also some really… interesting… modern art pieces so I threw a couple of those in too. And also just some ones I thought were fun!

I thought this one was really cool because the paint for the ring on her finger is raised! So it looks like an actual stone!

I looked at the art for a while while listening to “wandering through an art museum aimlessly music” living out my mysterious artsy girl dream, and then I headed outside to the sculpture garden which was actually incredible. It wasn’t really a sculpture garden like I thought it was going to be, like a bunch of white marble statues of people and stuff like that, it was more modern. But it was my favorite modern art I’ve seen so far! There were also beautiful purple flowers everywhere. I ran into Joss and so we went around together and had a blast. My favorite was this Dr. Seuss esque sculpture that you could walk on top of. Also the giant blueberry that wasn’t actually a blueberry.

After finishing the loop I headed out to the main part of the garden and ran into some other friends so I lounged around in the grass and just soaked up the sun. It was so so nice and much needed.

The museum closed at 5 and we got kicked out so then we waited outside until 5:30 for our bus and headed back to the hostel to pack up for our flight to Madrid tomorrow! I’m going to miss beautiful Amsterdam but I am so excited for Madrid. Yay! Enjoy this picture of Rob reflecting on life underneath the tree, before he decided that it was too windy and a branch was going to fall on him hahah.