Terschelling and Goodbyes

I figure I need to conclude this blog with my final days in the Netherlands. The last two weeks were quite busy, and after coming home I was quite busy as well, so I've never gotten around to it. So, here goes...

During the May vacation I had the privilege of going on vacation to Terschelling with my host family. Terschelling is one of the Netherland's islands in the north. It was really quite beautiful, and I had quite a good time getting to know my host family even better during that week. It was absolutely gorgeous weather, and we spent a lot of time sitting outside in the sun, reading, hiking, and biking. We got to see how the rescue boats worked, and how the cranberry industry got started on Terschelling. It was all very interesting and fun.

Antje on the beach

The Rescue Boat

Our home for the week

Terschelling

After getting back I still had a few days of classes before heading home. It was a bit stressful, but still pretty fun. We had a goodbye party which we had to host. The girls all did an interpretive dance to Phil Colins' "You'll Be in My Heart", which was really quite ridiculous, but loads of fun. We got dubbed the SPICE-girls. The meal for the evening was pancakes, which were made right in front of us by a chef - also quite the experience. It was all pretty delicious.

We weren't sick of pancakes after that evening, and went to the Panekoekenschip for supper on the Wednesday before I left. Following that, we had a suprise party for one of the guys in our group. It was a great time of final bonding before we all went our separate ways.

Thursday was my last day in Zwolle. It was pretty crazy. I still had class - including a presentation worth a fairly significant chunk of my grade, I had to pack, drop off my bike (taking the bus back home), and my grandparents were coming to pick me up as soon as I got home from school. It really wasn't all that fun, and I was fairly stressed out about it all. By the time I got to my grandparents I felt pretty wonderful and relieved. I got to say goodbye to most of my relatives who either came over that night or for coffee in the morning before I left (or both!). It was good to see them all once more.

In the Park on the last day - having fun with pictures

The boys thought we took way too many :)

Friday afternoon I headed to the airport with Opa & Oma Herbert and I headed back home to Canada. There I was greeted by my Dad, Mom, Marc, and a huge sign with my name and picture on it (made by Marc). It was really good to see them again.

I'm sure I will always remember all the experiences I had in Zwolle, as well as all the people there, for a long time to come. It was a wonderful experience that I really enjoyed sharing with you.

New Life

Along the bike path on the way home today

Baby Swans

Hi All.
It's still spring, only now the weather is absolutely beautiful. It's been sunny all week, and everyone has just seemed to brighten up over the past few days. It's quite wonderful. Spring is truly in the air. Along my bike route there are swans sitting on their eggs, and today was the first day I actually saw baby swans. Quite cute. That's what's so wonderful about spring - new life!

Tonight my host family and I are heading to Terschelling - on of Holland's islands. We'll be there for a week of vacation. Should be wonderful! I'm really looking forward to it. I hope the weather will be just as nice as this past week. On Friday I'll be heading to my family - for the last time probably. I have a few presentations thereafter, and then I head home already. I can't believe it's already coming to a close.

This past Wednesday evening we had our Goodbye party with all the host families. We had good Dutch pancakes (which the caterer dude made right in front of us, yum!), sang a few songs, had some stories told, and the SPICE girls put on a little interpretive dance to the song "You'll Be in my Heart" by Phil Collins. We had a lot of fun preparing that song, and I think it was a pretty good success. Maybe it wasn't perfect, but it was fun, so that was most important I think.

Last night I went to Het Vliegende Paard (a local pub/club) for our last time :( and it was a lot of fun. It's too bad it was the last time, but I'm really glad we could go one last time together. I can't believe it's almost all over. But, I'm definitely ready to go home. I will miss it all though.
Anyway, I have to get some last-minute homework done, so I'll close for now. Hope all of you have a nice week, and I'm going to enjoy my May vacation. 'Tot de volgende keer.

Back from Berlin - and Marburg

This was an absolutely amazing weekend! So good! Renee and I began our journey in Utrecht where we had been able to get a ride with someone to Berlin. It was quite a ride - particularly when we got to the autobahn, which doesn't really have a speed limit. We drove 170km/h at times - and people were still passing us! Craziness.

We got to Berlin at 12:00am Thursday morning, arriving at our hostel around 1:00. I wasn't expecting the hostel to be so big, but it housed 300 people, which I thought was quite a few! It was quite nice, and for €15 we had a bed with breakfast included. Very nice.

On Thursday we were able to go on a free tour of Berlin, which was also nice and cheap :), and we enjoyed that quite a bit too. We saw a whole lot of Berlin on foot (like the Brandenburg gate, checkpoint Charlie, the parliament buildings, and a whole lot of other historic places), and also got the explanations and stories with it. Before our tour we'd met a lady from Hawaii who was also staying at our hostel, and we hung out with her for the day. In the afternoon we went to the Jewish museum, which was quite interesting - as well as HUGE! It was different than I'd expected - I would've thought it would have more of a Holocaust theme, but it was more about the history of the Jews - but it was still quite neat to see.

At night we went to the parliament buildings, where you can walk around a huge dome at the top (for free!) and get a beautiful view of Berlin. That was nice to do as well.

Friday was more relaxed in berlin - we visited the broken church, rode the metro, rode the metro some more, visited a larger portion of the Berlin wall, and once again rode the metro.

Part of the Berlin Wall

Friday afternoon we headed to Marburg, where Peter, a former exchange student that Renee knew, lived. Marburg was definitely one of the highlights of my entire stay in Europe! It's beautiful there, and we had such good deep conversations with Peter and his roomate Volker, as well as some friends that were staying there that weekend. Volker, as well as a few of the other people there had been to Israel for a year, and picked up on some of their customs, and were celebrating the Messianic Passover that weekend. The house smelled so good the whole time we were there. It was really special to celebrate the passover with them, and it was made even more special by the fact that there had been Jews who celebrated Passover in this house before, and during, the holocaust. Our time there was just amazing, and it's really hard to describe. It was just really good.

Volker preparing the Mazzah ball soup

After the meal

View of Marburg

Our trip home was also quite amazing. We had a ride home with an atheist guy from Marburg, and had a huge discussion about God, and why we believe for the majority of the trip - about 3 hours of our trip. It was so amazing. I don't think I've ever had an experience quite like that before in my life. It was awesome!

Journeying Home

So, yeah... that was my trip in it's briefest form. It was quite good, and I'm really glad we went. We were definitely supposed to be there. God is so good!

A few more words...

Well, time just keeps flying by here. Only 3 more weeks (+2 days), and I will once again be sitting in my own living room, and sleeping in my own bed. Kind of weird, if I really think about it. It would be really nice if I could take everyone with me, but that just isn't possible.

I haven't really been doing a whole lot of things recently... Last week I saw Geert Wilders at the parliament on our excursion. I don't know if any of you have heard of him, but he's caused quite a comotion here. He doesn't want the Muslims in the Netherlands, and is extremely anti-muslim. He made a video (Fitna) and there was this huge thing building up to it. But, the video is really quite ridiculous, and there probably shouldn't have been so much drama leading up to it. It's a big mess, that could have had a huge negative impact for the Dutch world-wide, but we haven't seen all too much damage done yet, thankfully.

Tonight I'm heading to Berlin for a trip with Renee. I was supposed to have class tomorrow, but we were able to move it, and since my other 3 classes this week were cancelled, I've had no class this week. But, I've had a whole lot of HOMEWORK, and I'm so behind, it's not much fun whatsoever. There's just so much of the stuff. It's not really hard, just time consuming. But, I'll get through it all eventually.

Today's my host sister's birthday. We got up at 5:30 this morning to have breakfast with the whole family. That's quite early. But, we could all go to bed afterwards (except Jan who had to work - the reason we had breakfast early). It was fun though.

I don't really have anything else to write at the moment... I hope all's well at home, and yeah... I'll write some more after I'm back from Berlin :)

Kom in de Kas

Well, I figured I'd break my posts into two, so here's the second one.

This weekend I visited my family again, and it was a special weekend. They had "Kom in de Kas". Basically it's like a barn tour, except you visit greenhouses instead of farms, and it's not freezing cold (it was pretty warm at times actually). I thought it was pretty neat. They had three greenhouses which grew roses, which was quite a few, but otherwise there was quite a bit of variety - like cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, asperagus' (the white kind), and several varieties of flowers. We visited 12 different greenhouses in total, as well as a place that showed paintings (all having to do with flowers, fruits, and vegetables). It was kind of neat.

On Monday my Opa, Oma, and I visited my Oom Arjo's work. That was way more exciting than Kom in de Kas. I enjoyed Kom in de Kas, but seeing the greenhouse he works at was pretty awesome. A lot of the greenhouse is operated by robots, and it was HUGE! Everyone was at work, which makes it a lot more exciting, and it was just really neat.

One more thing I wanted to add has nothing to do with greenhouses, but more with the past. I visited my Opa and Oma Noordam Monday morning, and listened to the funniest tape (cassette) ever. It was of my Mom, Dad and me 17 and a half years ago pretty much. My language skills were a beautiful blend of two languages, and I did not know the order of the words to "Twinkle, twinkle little star" whatsoever. It was in tune, but the word order was a little off. It was really fun to listen to. I had to laugh pretty hard at times. Basically it just had Mom and I singing songs, and explaining about life in Canada a bit to our family in Holland. Dad talked a bit too. Very fun :)

Anyway, I think that's all I'll write for now. Hope all's well in Canada, and hope to see you all sometime after May 9.

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY KARISSA (if you happen to read this)

By Oom Arjo's work:

Planting Flowers

Heading over to be put in rows

This robot fills these trays with rows of flowers

A full tray

After planting the flowers get 1 min. under water

The "train" takes the newly planted flowers to their new temporary home

The train bringing the flowers away

When the flowers are old enough they get moved again by another train

And they go up...

...and up...

...to the top of the greenhouse

When they're needed for shipping they get brought down and are packaged...

...in a bag...

...and are put on carts

And finally they're shipped away

On Excursion to Greytown

Okee. So, I'm getting pretty behind on this. I haven't written a single thing in 2 weeks. Tsk, tsk. I have been pretty busy though. I feel like I say that a lot, but it's true. Over the past two weeks there has been a thing called "Greytown" at the Greijdanus College, a local Christian "highschool" (pretty close to the equivalent). During Greytown the students at the school get to visit Greytown. In Greytown they get to go through customs, visit the travel agency, go to the doctor, get a job, and visit the saloon. The catch is, they have to speak a foreign language. I helped with the English part, and marked students on their ability to speak English well. It was pretty fun, but we saw 60 students in a day - which is quite a bit. The other languages they had to do (not all in one day) were French and German. It's a very good learning experience for the kids, but I'm sure glad I never had to do it (although they had a lot of fun).

This weekend was the first time I really felt like I was looking forward to going home. I haven't felt homesick whatsoever since being here, and I'm not saying I'm homesick now either, but it's more I wouldn't mind going home now. I think the main reason this hit me now is that I've been planning a whole lot of things for May, and the summer, and I kind of want to get to work on those things. I also just realised that I will only be able to visit my family one more time :( That goes by fast too. I don't feel like I've seen very much of them yet - the Noordams in particular - but what I did see of them was fun :)
It'll be kind of weird to go back home again, but I'm looking forward to it.

Confused Weather?

This weekend was Easter, so I headed to De Lier once again to visit family. While there I got to experience the coldest Easter since 1964. We had snow, hail, some more hail, and a bit more snow. This is nothing like winter in Canada, but for Holland it was quite the thing. Throughout the Netherlands there was a total of 880km worth of traffic jams, and several expressways were closed, making roads a bit of a nightmare. It took us 30min to drive to Delft today, which is generally only takes 10 minutes. All the trains from Rotterdam were either running behind schedule or were cancelled. Fortunately I could still make it back to Zwolle only having to wait 15-20 or so minutes for a train to show up in Delft (the first never came). It was some interesting, but fun, times.

On Saturday night the "nichtjes" (cousins of female gender) from the Herbert side - all four of us - went out to the Greek restaurant in Naaldwijk to eat. We had a really good time together - at least I did (and the other girls said they did too). We ended up being there for 4 hours. I'm pretty sure I've never had a meal that lasted that long before in my life. It was really good though - a lot of meat. After our delightful time at dinner we headed out to a party, which was also quite fun. I got to meet some new people, some of which I will probably never see again, but we had some nice conversations. It was a good night.

On Sunday the whole Herbert family spent some time together at Opa & Oma's. We enjoyed soup, buns, meatballs, little suasages, egg-hunting, and conversation. They were some good times. That night Opa, Oma, and I went to Anita & Huib's for some gourmetten. Quite a lot of fun. I really enjoy gourmetten, and the company was quite splendid as well.

Other than that I didn't really do a whole lot. I learned to play Klaverjassen! And also had some fun times playing Mexican Train. Overall, it was quite a good weekend. I only wish I could have spent some more time with the Noordams, but they didn't really do anything together for Easter - at least not that I was told of previously.

Visiting Anniek's work - Opa went right to work

It's Snowing!

And Snowing some more...

Searching for the last 4 eggs (of 22)

Cousins! (Nick, Jason, and me)

And some more snow - Opa & Oma's street

And finally a last little bit of snow

(from my bedroom window in Zwolle)

A Glimpse at Southern France

A Tribute to a Dear Friend now Returned

Today was a wonderful day, simply because a wonderful card was given back to me. When I left my camera and wallet behind in France I thought I would never see this card ever again. It saddened me greatly. It was the one thing I hoped I would never loose. It was the first thing I thought of when it was gone. BUT NOW IT HAS RETURNED!!! YAY!!!

Visitors from Abroad

Wow. I'm getting kind of behind on this. I appologise. I haven't dissapeared from the face of the earth. So... in my last post I said I'd write about my Dad and Marc coming to visit, and what had happened since France. Well, now they're safely back in Canada, so I should probably get on that.
I got back from France on the 8th of March at 9:00 in the morning. I was just in time to catch a train to Delft where my Dad, Marc, Tante Nel, and Marije picked my up. Beginning at 3:00 we had my Oma Noordam's 80th birthday party. Just before I'd gone out for a frikandel speciaal with my Dad and Marc. Yum. At the party I finally got to see the rest of the family I hadn't seen yet (like Gaby, Esmee, Jorien, Sonja, en Rianne). It was quite fun. Afterwards we went to the Binnendijk's to watch a movie.
I went back to Zwolle on Monday and took my Dad and Marc with me. They met my host family, and I think they liked them. Dad and Marc never really told me. I had a really good time though, so I assume others did too. I showed them a bit of Zwolle on the Tuesday, but since it was rainy and we didn't have a bike small enough for Marc we didn't see as much as I would've liked to show. It was still good though.
My Aunt and Uncle's 25th wedding anniversary was this past Friday. My cousins (Marije, Wim, en Anniek) did a fun little song about their parents. It was quite enjoyable. I talked mostly with my cousin Tim the whole night because I didn't really know a whole lot of people, but it was still kind of fun.
Opa and I brought Marc and Dad to the airport on Saturday morning. In the afternoon Oma and I decided to visit Tante Aghad (who is technically my great great great aunt - or my great grandma's aunt) who lives just outside Vlaardingen. I was expecting to meet a really old looking lady, but she was surprisingly younger looking for a lady of 90 years. She didn't look a whole lot older than my Oma. It was a nice little visit. The really neat part though, was that Tante Aghad lives in a boat - on land. That was pretty neat to see. We had to leave pretty soon after we got there because Opa and Oma had a party to go to. I ended up spending the evening with Tante Anita, which was pretty enjoyable.
Anyway, I should go eat lunch, because I have to be at school in less than an hour (and have to bike ~25min.). If I don't get back to this before tomorrow, I'll wish you all in advance a very Happy Easter! All the best.

Excusez-Moi de vous Deranger, Mais Parlez-vous Anglais?

I am back from visiting Southern France. It was quite the week! We began our trip from the South Zwolle station in Zwolle; and it was raining. wow - typical Dutch weather. We took the "route du soleil" - the road of the sun, but when we reached Belgium we had "typical Belgium weather", and in luxemburg we had "typical Luxemburg weather", which is of course - RAIN! But, by the time we reached Marseilles it was beautiful weather with temperatures in the 20s.

Driving through Marseilles was another adventure. We had an appointment for a walking tour at 1:00, and at 1:00 we were stuck in traffic. We could have been on time, but the road our TomTom took us on led us to a tunnel that was 40cm shorter than the height of our bus, so we ended up taking backroads which meant driving mere centimeters away from vehicles on either side of the bus - quite literally without any exageration whatsoever. I don't know how we didn't end up hitting anything. Our busdriver Peter did an excellent job, although I bet he didn't sleep very well the night after that.

By the end of our first day my feet hurt so badly I could hardly stand up anymore. And having only slept for a max of 30 min. on our 17 hour drive to Marseilles I was pretty tired. Everyone was. There wasn't a whole lot of lively conversation at supper time, and everyone was sound asleep not too long after supper.

On Sunday we went to a church service in Marseilles. I got to see Aunt Emma, Jonathan and Daniel de Hoog, which was quite exciting. We ate lunch at the church, and they stayed as well, so we got to catch up for a while. It was really nice.

We had quite a lot of fun that night as well. We ended up walking down to the Mediteranean Sea a few minutes walking from our Hostel, and walked in the water - a bit cold, but a lot of fun. We also had a blast in our room that night - Jeanna, Amanda, Annie and I. It was quite the evening, and definitely one of the highlights of the whole trip.

After our two nights in Marseilles we headed to Aix-en-Provence. This is where Cezanne came from and lived his life. For those who don't know who he is, he's a painter - a post-impressionist. yeah....

Cezanne's work "Mont-Sainte Victoire"

The same mountain in Aix-en-Provence

We toured around there a bit. I was told it was a smaller town - I think my idea of small towns is different, because it sure looked like a city to me. It was fun though - except we were all still exhausted by the end of the day.

My favourite day of the trip was Wednesday. That was the day we learned a bit about the Huguenots. The exciting part was climbing this hill/mountain to a cave in which about 900 Huguenots would hold services a few times a day since they weren't allowed to hold normal services. They climbed up to the cave in the dark, which was quite dangerous, as it wasn't the easiest trek at all in the day time. When we finally reached the cave (a 25-30 min. hike) I was really surprised at how big it was. But, then again I should have expected it to be big since 900 people could fit in it. We sang songs, and it was beautiful. Quite amazing.

Heading towards the cave - halfway up the hill

The Cave

We also went to see the Pont du Gard. That was definitely quite amazing. It's a Roman aquaduct, but it was quite different when compared to the one we saw in Ceasarea - the Pont du Gard is HUGE! It was also super windy when we were there (thanks to the Mistral). It was really neat to see.

Aquaduct Ceasarea

Pont du Gard

So yeah... those were probably my main highlights of the trip. On our way home I accidentally left my camera and wallet at the restaurant, but I got a call that it was found, which is quite exciting - hopefully everything's still there. I'm just thankful it was found.

Anyway, I'll write more later (on my Oma's birthday party, and my Dad's visit with Marc)

School and a trip to the South

Well, I've finally finished my week of midterms. I have also had the unfortunate "blessing?" of experiencing the Dutch way of receiving grades and feedback. In Canada you get your grade handed to you on a piece of paper, possibly with ways you could improve for the next time, and that's all - simple. Here it's a bit different. Here they critique your work in front of the rest of the class, specifically what you did wrong, and then go on to tell the entire class the grade you got. For me, who is not comfortable with that AT ALL, it was quite a horrible experience. I guess I'll have to get used to it over the next two months though.

On a positive note, we're headed to Aix-en-Provence, as well as Marseilles tomorrow. I can't really say I'm looking forward to it all that much, but I might get the opportunity to meet up with Aunt Emma and Uncle Lee while I'm there. The thing I'm not looking forward to is the 17 hour bus ride to and from the Southern part of France, as well as the fact I'll be arriving back in Zwolle 18.5 hours too late for my cousin's wedding. I'm kind of bitter about that. Oh well. I'll get over it. I'm sure we'll have a marvellous time there anyway.

All things "Dutch"

This weekend I finally got to go to the beach. It was quite wonderful. As we were heading there I thought I should try to make a few more pictures that really look "Dutch", so I took some. It wasn't the nicest weather, but I hope you'll get the idea.

Greenhouses all along the dike - the "Glass City"

Pussywillows

It was really windy the day before - now there were lots of waves

Waves

Oma & Me

Walking through the dunes

Walking through the dunes

I tried (several times) to take a picture of this bird - but he kept flying away

On a bike ride with Oma Herbert - notice the water levels

Schipluiden

First tulips of the year