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.