seeing orange

I know, I know I am a little late in posting about Queen's Day, but better late than never, right? I spent Queen's Night in The Hague listening to some great bands at the various stages set up around the city center. The locals were right, you have to stay in The Hague for Queen's night. The bands that they had were actually really great - I had never heard of any of them, but was super impressed by the three that I saw. I didn't stay out too late because on Queen's Day I headed into Amsterdam fairly early for some museum hopping and Queen's Day festivities. I, along with a friend, walked around Amsterdam and took in all the Orange. Little fact about Queen's Day, people all over set up tables and sell all the stuff they no longer want. It's pretty much an enormous garage sale with everything you can imagine up for grabs. It's quite entertaining to see what people put out to sell. Below you'll find snippets of what was for sale along with a shot of the canal full of boats for the celebration. I think that if I ever do Queen's Day again I must find someone with a boat to take me out! It looked like so much fun! I also went to two great museums, but I'll save that for another post!

Oh, and I am 26 today! Crazy how time flies. Last year at this time I could have never imagined I would be living overseas, but I guess that is just to show that not everything in life goes as planned. I am looking forward to the latter half of my twenties. I feel I have a better understanding of who I am and what I want in life. I talk about this often with people, but I'll say it again, being in your twenties is not easy, it's a lot of learning, growing, and searching, stuff that for me, I hardly dealt with in my teens. I am doing my best to embrace this stage in my life and feel that taking the step to leave my job was the best decision of my twenties thus far. Of course, I am not able to spend as much money on clothes and entertainment, but what I am doing now is allowing for so much more growth than my job ever did. So, happy birthday to me, so looking forward to what this new year will bring!