AMA-Ho!

Magnet #190 - Ede, Netherlands

Country #1 - The Netherlands

Just before my senior year in high school, a good friend of mine and I decided to join the American Musical Ambassadors. The AMA was an organization that took U.S. high school students on a whirlwind trip throughout Europe, performing in different venues along the way.

Think of it as a 21-day, 7-country...BAND TRIP. And, for those of you band geeks reading this post, you know what those away games were like.

This will be the start of a short miniseries to uncover how much I remember besides 50 kids running through Europe with the rallying cry of "AMA-Ho!" (Yep, it sounds so wrong now.)

So, after a 3-day intense rehearsal session in New York, off we went to Ede, for a host family stay and a concert in Ede.

Hazy memories of:

• a lovely host family
• cool bathroom fixtures
• a community center dance where girls fought to dance the chicken dance with my supercute host brother Peter
• tile (for some reason)
• Dutch windmills
• Dutch mom telling me that they don't really wear wooden shoes
• acres upon acres of tulips (and maybe poppies)

We also hit Amsterdam, where I was intrigued by the Anne Frank Museum, thoughts of a red light district, and fell asleep on the canals tour. What? It was an overnight flight!

This is the only magnet that I have from that trip, and the only one that won't be a stretch during the next seven days. I looked up what it means, and Kok-Ede was some sort of food company, I think. And, if I take my iGoogle translator widget seriously, then voor grootverbruik means for bulk.

Well, of course. Somehow, I ended up with a magnet from the Dutch version of Costco.