...

So I've had a defining moment in Amsterdam. Don't ask me to define this moment. I'll just tell what happened. After our (final?) squat dinner, we rode through Vondelpark to get back to Prinsengracht. It was around 10pm, and we came along a crowd surrounding a stage, with a woman singing a beautiful version of "Redemption Song." A man in the crowd told us this was a memorial to a Surinamese boy who was killed 25 years ago in Amsterdam. People were holding up signs in Dutch, which we could gather were anti-racism signs. The others left, and Isaac and I stuck around to hear a choir sing beautiful Dutch songs. I didn't know what they were saying, but I could tell how powerful it was. People around me were wiping their tears and embracing each other. It was really amazing. I can't believe how lucky we were to have stumbled upon this gathering..

Geotagging

So I don't know how to just embed this on my blog so I'm posting it. Here are the shelters I conducted my interviews at, and three of the squats (only the legalized ones) that we went to as a group.



View Larger Map

callabo-question

Along with the question posted on Fiona's blog about multiple narrators in a paper, I also want to know if it is still as valid (and ethical) to rely partly on memory for interviews.

the streets are alive with graffiti!

So Amsterdam is amazing... it feels so alive and vibrant here. There art galleries and shops, museums, bookstores for every imaginable genre, open air markets, infinite ethnic cuisines, comic stores, record stores, and other awesome shops (the best one I found today... Kitsche Kitchen!) But I have to say that one of my favorite things about Amsterdam is the graffiti... it's everywhere and it is bright, colorful, political, radical, ridiculous, and fun. I've always liked places better with graffiti, even back home... to me, I see it as a creative way of people leaving their mark, to say "I'm here! I'm alive!" Anyway, back home I don't see graffiti that is anything like this. It's not just tagging or destruction, it's truly art. So I thought I would post my favorites...



amsterdam graffiti