united colors of iss

the afternoon was an interesting trip to the open market. basically, it's just the netherlands version of our palengke, but closer to mindanao's taboan. open market days are MWFSa, but fridays (vrijdag) and saturdays (zaterdag) are busy with people.

love, my classmate from Ghana who has gone in and out of NL for the last six years, was kind enough to give us a tour. us meant andrea and john from canada (one from vancouver, the other toronto), lola from nicaragua and myself. the five of us alone already represented four continents, the opposite ends of the color spectrum and the height range of 5'3" to more than six feet.

the tram station from the centrum to the groete market was absolutely gorgeous. i can't describe it as i'm terrible with architecture and i don't have a photo to prove it. but it was beautiful. even john says so.

we rode the busy tram, with the middle school kids on the way home from school. i forgot which street we went down in, but we just had to cross the table to get to the open market. and lo! tiangge! coats, shirts, shoes, electronic gadgets! so many stuff.

having too many companions really made it hard for me to look around, so i just went straight to what i came for. fruits. i also wanted to buy vegies but love told us it would be better to buy from albert heijn because it stays longer than those from the groete market. so.

i ended up with a euro worth of carrots. which is a lot! good for a couple of weeks, i would think. but i intend to make it my junk food for studying. i also bought grapes and kiwi which i split with lola. i really had no idea how to eat a kiwi or what it tastes like fresh. but hey! 50 cents for 5 pieces is good for me. it costs P100++ in the philippines, noh! i also had to buy chicken and pork for the welcome dinner for our late pinay classmate (we pinoys are too nice. i might not have thought about it if the others didn't tell me. haha!), as well as garlic. finally i was able to get salt and also some apple juice. but dang... sugar still eludes me. the one that i found was too big and i didn't have a container for it. so.

all-in-all it was a pretty good experience. more than the trip to the open market, it was actually the interaction with the others that i enjoyed. it was my first trip with non-pinoys, and that is always exciting. i really find these people interesting!