Day 3 Tour of the Town

So today we started out the day with a lecture about the Netherlands and the language. Then around 10am or so we received a tour around the village/town that we will be living in for January, Broek in Waterland, which is just north of Amsterdam. Here is a map, the pin is where we are staying. The population of this town is around 2,000. There is a small grocery store in town along with snack shop and what I can only assume is a gift store.
Well anyways here are a few pictures from our town around town. (by the way it was freezing cold there, the wind chill was horrible. I couldn't feel my fingers and toes by the end of the 2 hour tour)









The picture above is just one of the main canals around the town. The picture to the left is the road to get back to our house (I'm not really sure what to call where we live)

The picture to the left is our group walking through the streets, I am the on with the white bag. And the picture below is a stray dog that decided to join us for a bit, it smelled bad though.












The next couple of picture are just from around the town in Broek in Waterland.












This is what used to be their school house, now I think it is an art gallery or something like that.







The picture to the left is an historical house that is called the Famous House (it is written in Dutch above the door). It is called the Famous house because in the 18th century the mayor of the town claimed that Napoleon came and visited this house, which actually he never set foot in this house. He visited the house down the road. But our tour guide was telling us that this house was extremely special and you could only enter if you were famous or the owners knew you. It was only renovated 20 years ago in 1990. Most of the walls are covered in beautiful mural paintings that had like 5 layers of paint on them, that they had to chip away with a small knife. The pictures below were in the entry area of the house.

This next area is one of the many dining rooms in this house, but this was the nicest.












This painting on the wall of the dining room depicted the story of Moses being picked up out of the river by Pharaoh's daughter.

The picture below is the kitchen. And the picture to the right is a bedroom that was down stairs. The bed is in this little room to the side and to the right in the cut out above the bed is a baby's bed.
















The picture below is the small lake that is left over after the Dutch drained this lake.










The next couple of pictures are from the church (or kerk in Dutch). This church was built in the 14th century and then it was set on fire, and then rebuilt. There is a stain glass window that depicts this.

































The next couple of pictures are graves that make up the floor of the church.


This is the stain glass window that shows the history of the church. Down at the bottom of the window you can see it on fire. The picture below are porcelain tiles that were found underground in a water storage area from a wealthy house in the town. And the tile (I think 94) tell stories from the Bible. The first one in the upper left is Adam and Eve.














The house to the right was built in 1628, as you can see it is written on the roof in tiles. But was renovated recently by the owner, who was actually our tour guide.










So that was our tour of the town. This is only a fraction of the pictures that Matt and I took. Tomorrow we will going into Amsterdam. Also one of my Professors for the course uploads pictures to the course website. Here is the link: http://www.calvin.edu/academic/engineering/offcampus/dutchlandscapesweb/photoalbums/photoalbum2011.htm