Oh, Amsterdam. You were the most confusing place I have ever been to. I wanted to love you with all of my heart and in moment's, I did, but then you would remind me about how much of a disappointment you can be. Yet with all of that, I will still allow you to hold a special place in my heart and hope that someday when it's warm, we will meet again.

Amsterdam is a very beautiful city. The city is covered in these picture-perfect canals. The streets are lined with homes and buildings that are so unique to the city. Everyone is riding bikes and there are hardly any cars. It all seems like a place that you could be nothing but happy in. I was so content exploring the Jordaan area with all its sweet little shops and beautiful streets. Then we wanted to stop and get some coffee and suddenly I had trust issues with this city.

If you didn't know, a coffee shop in Amsterdam is a weed dispenser. A name that is so dear to me is ruined by cannabis. I was so disappointed that a city that has so much beauty and charm makes something so gross readily available for anyone who wants to partake. It's hard for me to understand why people enjoy drugs as something that enables them to be in full control of their self. It goes the same with the over consumption of alcohol or anything of this sort. I also struggle with knowing that when I get back home to California, where weed was just legalized, this could very well become a normal thing to see every day. Just another road I'll have to cross when I get there.

Now the scariest thing that Amsterdam normalizes, and is famous for, is their Red Light District prostitution. There are streets in the city that have women standing in little rooms with glass doors, dressed in lingerie, waiting for a man to come up and knock so she can take him back and do god knows what.

It's personally hard for me to see these women or the big neon signs saying "live nonstop sex show" because the whole concept is so foreign and unreal to me. I grew up in a conservative Christian home so I have always had the values that sex is not just a recreational activity, but something special that should be only for two people who care deeply for each other. 1 Corinthians 6 speaks about this idea that when two bodies join they become one body and when a man "joins" with a prostitute he becomes one body with her, a strange woman whom he will never see or remember again. It saddens me to see that the world I live in has people that will readily knock on these doors.

These girls willingly give out their body day and night for cheap sex and pleasure. They all have their own personal reasons to do so and I wish I could sit down and talk to some of them to try to understand. Some do it for the money, but others somehow see it as empowering. They only see that they have some small sense of power to control men's emotions, but they ignore the fact that they are still being taken advantage of because, at the end, he will always just pay and walk away.

It's a crazy world we live in and so many of us easy accept or ignore the gross sin in the world. I guess it's just easy to blindly let it happen, but that doesn't make it right. The theme of how Amsterdam conducts their businesses is the whole concept of "if it's going to happen anyway, might as well regulate it." That whole idea is what's starting to spread elsewhere. I know tons of people who argued for legalizing weed back home saying "people are still going to smoke so might as well tax it." But that's not the issue. Once it's normalized and said to be okay more people will willingly fall for the traps.

One cool thing that I was able to experience while in the city was in the hostel we were staying at. We found a Christian hostel and decided to book there mostly because it was the cheapest and most central in the city. It seemed a little odd and dorky, but one morning I was able to have a conversation with one of the girls working there. She was a recent high school grad from America so I asked her what made her want to come live here. She told me about how she wanted to take a year to do ministry before going to college and while searching the internet for possibilities she happened upon the website for this hostel and God was just calling her to come here. She said it was an amazing experience because being in the hostel she could interact with people coming to visit and share the gospel by showing that there is more to the city than the gross. She was a light in a dark place and that's the best that we can do as Christians. It's not our job to save the world, but just to share love.

So that was my Amsterdam experience. You may or may not agree with what I have to say, I know it's all very sensitive and controversial. You do you and I'll do me.

till next time,
Julia Carrington