Remember To Say Yes
Written on Oct. 24, 2022
This week was technically our fall break, but while one of our professors flew off on my dream trip to Rome, we were given a long list of assignments to finish our projects due next week. I was already feeling burnout last week, but looking at this list of what I had left to do was not making me feel better. What made this intimidating was the way all of the assignments blended together since they were all steps of the large projects. I also haven’t worked too much with Adobe Illustrator other than an intro course I took in high school, so the idea of designing packaging templates felt ridiculous.
Monday:
I started the week by going to a coffee company — a simplified and cozier version of the Starbucks chain— in the city to work a bit on my designs. Once they closed at 6 pm, I began to wander around with my camera hoping to be hit with some inspiration. The universe must have been listening because as I walked down a familiar street along the River Amstel, a man on a bench stopped me to ask if I would take his portrait. He had just finished the Amsterdam half marathon and won a medal — which he was obviously very proud of. I of course said yes and didn’t have to do much directing because he apparently already had a pose in mind. Typically, I don’t trust random men who try to talk to me on the street, but this guy was genuinely just proud of himself. He told me he was from Egypt and that he travels around the world to compete in marathons. Soon, he is supposed to be participating in a swimming marathon in Greece. After getting his email to send him the photos and parting ways, I started playing around with long exposures on a bridge to get a smooth effect of the water. As I was doing this, I noticed the photo looked a bit pink. An incredible sunset had developed above me and made the entire sky glow. I’m used to bright sunsets like this every night being from Tucson, AZ, but I hadn’t seen any since I arrived in Amsterdam. I haven’t felt very confident about my photography lately, but when everything happens so naturally like nights like this, it reminds me why I enjoy it so much.
Tuesday:
Unfortunately, Tuesday couldn’t live up to how great Monday was. I was overwhelmed by my list of tasks and the forecast claimed today would be the only sunny day for the next week. I felt like I needed to take photos even though I had a lot to do for the branding project. I forced myself to travel to the city to try and find moments to photograph, but my stress got in the way. I felt very discouraged and like I had wasted my precious time and sunlight. I’ve been feeling like I need to be in the city in order to make the most of every day, but this backfired. I learned that I can’t force these things to happen because projects like this take time and happen naturally.
Wednesday:
After the events on Tuesday, I told myself that this was a new day and I was going to get things done. I went to the closest cafe to my apartment, ordered pancakes, and got to work. Somehow, I was incredibly focused and basically finished all of my initial designs in Illustrator. I felt as though I had made it over a steep hill on a long trek up a mountain.
Thursday:
The stress along with the change in weather had gotten to me — I woke up sick. This was no surprise to me because I get sick every October without fail. I still worked on some of my assignments, but I basically just rested and watched a bunch of Parks and Rec, aka, my favorite show of all time.
Friday:
My sickness had luckily disappeared as quickly as it had arrived and I found out my old friend, Alex, from junior high and high school, was in Amsterdam for the day! I met up with her and her two American friends at Vondelpark to spend the afternoon walking around with them. I hadn’t seen her since our graduation over three years ago and a LOT has happened since we talked last. She had solo backpacked across Europe, we had gone off to college, she had moved to Germany, and covid had affected the entire world. We caught up all day and talked about what people from high school are doing now. It’s crazy to think about how much everyone has changed in only a few years but see how we’re all still the same at the same time. We walked through the entirety of Vondelpark, went to a cheap Italian restaurant, saw the red light district in the evening, and went to an Irish pub. They gave me a ride home in their car, which felt strange since I hadn’t been in a car since arriving at the Phoenix airport, and because driving in Amsterdam is terrifying.
Saturday:
This week in my hip-hop class, we began learning how to dance to disco! It was incredibly fun, but since the assignments still left on my to-do list weren’t getting checked off, I struggled to focus. I was upset with myself for this because I wanted to enjoy the dance class that has become such a valued part of my week.
After hip-hop, I started walking aimlessly with my camera and was feeling incredibly discouraged, wondering if I should try to focus on a different and easier subject like bike culture here in the Netherlands. Ending up in Museumplein again, I took some photos of a girl performing on stilts. We chatted a bit and I started to talk to people who were watching her perform as well. This led to meeting some incredibly kind dutch people who were also carrying cameras. They’re taking a photo course at CREA, the same place I am taking my hip-hop classes. After taking a quick portrait of them, they told me about the annual Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) protest parade that would be happening soon around Museumplein and kindly asked me if I wanted to join them. Having absolutely no plan and no idea what this would lead to, I agreed.
The small looking parade included a few scrappy car floats playing techno beats slowly moving down the street followed by small crowds of eccentric characters. They quietly made their way to the middle of Museumplein, but something felt strange because there were many people beginning to line up around the area. As the floats reached a point in the square, they each blasted different types of techno music at maximum volume from their floats made of speakers. More oddball characters arrived and began dancing wildly around the floats. This was a surreal experience considering this square was usually a calm and relaxing location in Amsterdam. Before I parted with my new Dutch friends, they told me that many of the people there were squatters— people who live in “abandoned buildings in the city”. Squatting is illegal in some places but there are some communities trying to be developed. They also said this festival-like protest had become an annual event because many people were upset with how commercialized ADE has become in Amsterdam. Even though this had become an insane event, I immediately felt more comfortable taking photos in these large dancing crowds because I am used to photographing events for the Lumberjack Newspaper back in Flagstaff. As I was shooting, a man who seemed to be in charge of one of the floats asked if I wanted to go up. I again said yes to this random opportunity and ended up on the top of this parade float taking photos of the wild characters dancing on the speakers for a while. I couldn’t believe what this had become but I was grateful to be there.
Later, my friends Luc and Lucas joined me at Museumplein and were flabbergasted at what was going on. Once the event died down, we went for drinks and met up with some of Luc’s friends from Germany. Luc left with them to attend an ADE event, and since Lucas and I didn’t have tickets, we found a bar at a hostel in Oosterpark. Lucas decided to gamble a bit and spun a wheel for 10 euros for a drink surprise. He got lucky and ended up winning a bottle of rose which we then split. Saying yes to random things really makes for some great memories.
Sunday:
Normally I don’t write about my Sundays because they usually involve at home cleaning, laundry, and writing this blog. This Sunday, however, I met with my German friend Sofia in Jordaan. This is an area along the western side of Amsterdam which I’ve barely explored, but I quickly discovered it is one of the more beautiful and much calmer parts of the city. We went to a cafe, an Instagramable bridge decorated with pumpkins, window shopped along the 9 streets, and got the most incredible Dutch parmesan truffle fries from Fabel Frite.
We didn’t feel like going home just yet, so we tried to find a few specific bridges and pin points we had put on our google maps inspired by Tiktoks we had seen about Amsterdam. This led us to the Munttoren tower intersection that I tend to always find myself at and ended up getting ice cream at a tourist filled McDonalds. Even though I wasn’t working on school work, this felt productive to me because I was checking places off of my “Things To Do in Amsterdam” list that hadn’t been touched in awhile.
