Day Sixty-Two

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Today was much more productive.

Jill and I ended up getting frustrated with the others today so we made a deal. If she came with me to the Press Photo 09 exhibit, I would go to the Anne Frank House with her later that day. This worked out great because I wanted to see both things and I really didn't feel like going by myself.

The Press Photo 09 exhibit (above) was incredible. It is put on by a group that strives to promote art within the photo journalism world, so not only were the photos awesome, they each told a story which made them that much more incredible. Some pictures were ridiculously sad, like the ones of the earthquakes in China or the wars in Georgia, but some were super uplifting, like the photos of Obama or the pictures from the Olympics.

The Anne Frank House was also incredible. I had never read The Diary of Anne Frank before going in, so I wasn't sure if it would have a very profound effect on me, but it was definitely memorable. Being in the place where they hid out for two years was interesting, but hearing the first hand accounts, reading quotes from her diary, and reading the story of her family's struggle really blew me away. It's really hard to conceptualize what they went through. They lived in the top floor of building for two straight years; they couldn't make a sound and they couldn't even open the windows to get some fresh air.

-Pat