3 am in Amsterdam

Hi,
First of all, happy birthday Samantha from Mandy!
So it's 3 am in Amsterdam and we're staying at the Inner Hostel close to the Rijks museum. The room is really hot so a few of us are having trouble sleeping. This will not help with our last leg of the trip tomorrow, another 9 1/2 hours of flight to go before our final destination.
Today was an exciting day. Because we are carrying four extra (extremely heavy!) bags for Eritrean women refugees, getting out of the airport and to our hostel in noon traffic was a cluster f*ck. We finally made it, after getting hosed by one of the cab drivers. We had some lunch at a really cute cafe and soaked up the atmosphere. We went on to briefly explore some of the inner city for the rest of the afternoon. We walked by the van Gogh and Rijks museums; strolled through a park and ate a 1 e gelato; went of a canal tour (until we had to get off before we all were rocked gently to sleep); and walked through some of the busy downtown areas (Amanda & Dani window shopped - we need skinny jeans and a bubble skirt ASAP!). We met Mike for supper at a Pancake house (for the whole Dutch experience), then came back here to crash early. Unfortunately, the sleeping didn't last as long as we would have liked for a few of us, but hopefully we can get a few more hours before we have to hop on our next plane to Addis Ababa at 10:30 am. We are due to arrive in Ethiopia around 10 pm local time. I think we're going to be in for a shock seeing the city at night for the first time. We'll keep you posted (hehehe).

Not sure when we'll have access to the Internet again, but don't worry, we'll keep each other safe until we can blog again.

ttyl
Amanda, Dani, and Jenn (PS we are jealous that Alexis hasn't even moved since she fell asleep 7 hours ago!)