Arrival in Amsterdam

For those of you who know me well, you know that I am not the best packer in terms of quantity. An attribute that I definitely get from my mother. Upon arrival at the airport on Saturday evening I discovered that the weight limit had been severely decreased by Northwest- and guess who's bag was 60 lbs., 10 lbs. over weight? Fortunately, the attendent let me take some books and such out of my bag to get it down to 53.5 and then let the bag go from there. It's things such as this that make me a little nervous at the beginning of a trip, but oh well.

We arrived Sunday morning without a hitch, although I did not sleep as much as I usually do, a meager 30 minutes. Martijn met us at the airport and took us on a tour of small villages to the north of Amsterdam. We visited the cities ending in "dam" and were able to finally understand the Dutch system of keeping it's citizens above water. The system of dams and canals is pretty amazing a true feat of engineering. Despite the rainy, 40 degree weather, we were off to a good start.

After getting some caffeine in our system, we proceeded onto a site where you could visit different kinds of windmills. We went inside one windmill that was used to grind various materials into powders for dying cloth. Most of the original windmills were used to pump water out of the canals and keep the water levels manageable.

Here I am on the second level where all that wind is turned into useful energy- pretty cool, huh? That may just be the engineer in me.

A much better view from the outside of the windmill.

Edam- known for its cheese was a fun excursion. Here's a cheese display we saw at the windmills.

We returned to the airport to meet our fourth team member, Top, before driving to Delft where Martijn, the entrepreneur, lives. We were able to see the big storm dam to be used in the case of a 50 or 100 year flood. These Dutch engineers will now be using their expertise to repair the New Orleans levies.

Delft is lovely with the cobblestone streets, canals, and 16th/17th century buildings. We had some productive meetings today with the IRC water/sanitation division that specializes in microfinance. This evening we'll be visiting Rotterdam for dinner.

Here are some of the days highlights.

View from Martijn's doorstep.

Second view from Martijn's doorstep of the canals and churches.

WP Team: Top, Ken, Margaret, Melinda (from left to right)

Yes, we really are doing work. . .tomorrow we're off to meet with the bankers. This is a real opportunity for Martijn to get the first 20 WPs paid for to scale up in India. We will then visit some museums - Van Gogh, Anne Frank's house- and then end our visit to the Netherlands by seeing Schubert's Octet in F major performed in Rotterdam.