We had a 7:30 wake up call for breakfast before checking out of the Botel and leaving for the Derde Dalton Basisschool, a primary school pictured above. It was in the very southeast of the city and it is traditionally one of the better performing schools in Amsterdam. The principal of the school was named Mario and he was quite the personality. He was very candid and relaxed with us. The coolest part of the trip was the fact that we were lead around the school by 12 year old Dutch students who all spoke flawless or nearly flawless English. Most of these kids know four languages by the time they're in high school and, frankly, I'm jealous. The foreign language education system in the US is very flawed, but it is impossible to truly learn a language when you cannot easily immerse yourself in it due to the geography. In Europe, students can easily travel and because of that, outside influences are much easier integrated.
After the primary school, we quickly got our luggage from the Botel and bussed from the north, Amsterdam, to the south, Maastricht. I would have loved to see the country as we drove through, but in typical Danny fashion, I fell asleep for almost the whole ride.
Our hotel, as I mentioned before, is incredible. Here's the view of the grand entrance from my room:
And this is the crest above the fireplace in my room as it was the tower of the castle back in the day:
There was an awesome formal dinner last night with four courses, each better than the last. I am definitely not hating being here. The boys did some local exploring last night and we found a bar who served a beer called Brand Dark that honestly tasted like Coke. It was a very low alcohol content, but man, was it good. We met some locals on their Tuesday night darts league and then we just hung out at the hotel because we had another school to visit in the morning.
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