Sing, Breathe, Repeat: Day 8 - January 16, 2011

Today was an absolutely glorious day!

I think the world was making up for my bad decisions from the night before.

I went to bed at 9:30 the night before and did not stir once until my alarm went off at 9 o'clock the next day. We had a 10 o'clock call and the holding room was actually in our hotel because we were planning on shooting right outside our hotel so I got to sleep in, not pile into a van with a dozen grumpy people in the morning and it was projected to be a short shooting day.

On 'the planning' which is what Dutch people call what we would refer to as 'a schedule' it said that we were going to shoot from 10 until 2 in the afternoon. And along with being a short day, everyone was in a shiny mood and the actor we had on set, who is apparently a very well known actor in Belgium was an absolute thrill to have. That's one of the things that I can't understand over here, these famous people come to set but I don't know who any of them are so I can't stand in awe of them because I have no idea who they are. They may find my lack of knowing who they are offensive but how am I supposed to know any better?

We wrapped filming by 2 and it was turning into a gorgeous day. Pretty much everyday that I have been here it has been cloudy or rainy or both but today was a much different picture. It was sunny, warm and absolutely beautiful. And I was by no means going to waste this opportunity to see daylight. Amy, Matt and I went to a cafe to just grab some human food that wasn't Kraft Services. I ordered a Cheeseburger because I was just craving something from the homeland but I was a little surprised when my burger arrived and it definitely didn't taste like the burgers I am used to eating back in the states. This tasted more like a veggie burger to my disappointment, and the more I thought about it that if it was in fact meat, what kind was it? I stopped that train of thought right there in its tracks because I didn't want my burger to take a second visit to the outside world. The burger was tasted fine but the texture was weird, well just leave it at that.

Then the three of us walked further south of the central Amsterdam that we had become so acclimated to. The further south you go from central city the wider the canals get and the more the scenery changes. Instead of cobblestone markets and castles in the center of squares there are parks and greenery to walk or run through. A few picture of southern Amsterdam below:

After we were finishing enjoying what was left of daylight, Matt headed back to Rotterdam while Amy and I headed back to the hotel to do a much needed organization hour. We were convinced that the mouse we spotted in our room a few days earlier was responsible for some of our missing stuff that it was high time that we organized the chaos that was our suitcases to see if the mouse really was to blame. And you would not believe how much difference having your suitcases organized relates to your mental health. After I had everything accounted for, sorry for jumping to conclusions mousey, my life just felt a little less stressful and I wasn't tired and I was ready to go back out around Amsterdam.

Amy and I then ventured down to the Leizeplein where Alison, lead actress, told us there were several wonderful shopping opportunities and if you know me at all you know that I never turn down a shopping opportunity. It was a rather far walk but the view as so wonderful that I hardly even noticed. And by happy coincidence we ran into Alison shopping while we were walking down there, out of the 2 million people that live in Amsterdam we run into Alison, so she took us on a stroll to the hotel where she was staying. And she is not staying in the same hotel as us because she is important and she was in the Best Western on the other side of the city so we accompanied her back to her hotel but we refused to go inside because if we saw how nice of a place she was staying in we may never want to leave her place to come back to ours. So we dropped her off, said goodbye and continued our shopping. I bought a sweater, some postcards (if you are special enough you may get one in the mail) and a lighter. Pretty boring stuff I bought but I figured I'd buy more souvenirs closer to when I am leaving, so if you have any special, legal, requests for gifts, let me know!

After shopping we stopped at a little Italian place which wasn't great by any means but it was cheap and that seems to be my driving force as of late so I didn't really care. While we were eating the wait staff was clearly talking about us and laughing because multiple times we heard 'American' which obvious finger points at us. But whatever, Amy and I just took it in stride, ate our dinner and left.

On the way home we got a call from the producers and directors saying that they were coming over to our place to party. We had no knowledge of this but when we got back to the hotel they were already drinking at the bar in lobby. The hospitality that I spoke of in a previous post about the people who run this place was really in full swing this night. Everything was on the house and after they ran out of beer they started breaking out the more potent stuff (whiskey, vodka and rum). Learning from my previous mistakes I stayed down and socialized with the 15 crew members that had congregated in the bar but I didn't get so silly so that I wouldn't be able to function on set the next day. But half of the people who were partying didn't have to go to set so when I went to bed at midnight they stayed up and continued to get crazy. Below are many, many pictures of the crew socializing that night.