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)