Another Novel...

I have to start with what I can remember from this week, it doesn't feel like very much!
On Tuesdays we have a different trainer than usual, and he does a lot of stretching type of exercises with us for the first hour of practice before we run. Then he always tells us the long Latin medical terms for the muscles we're strengthening- not that I can ever remember any of them. This Tuesday we did all sorts of the stretching exercises with these huge metal bullets. Squats, arm circles, stretches, everything. I definitely felt it the next day. After we did the first hour or warming up our work out was 2x2400 meters. As if that's not hard enough by itself, we were supposed to start with a 100 second lap, then do a 96 second lap, a 92 second lap, 88 seconds, 84 seconds, 80 seconds. That didn't happen! I tried though, but once I fall far enough behind, it's hard to keep up with the times, or even close to them. I'm hoping that in a few months I can keep up better.

Wednesday: I remember now! Milja and I got up at 6:30, and drove to her office in Amsterdam, because I had to take the PSAT's at the International School of Amsterdam at 8:30. We were a little bit early, so we walked through Milja's office and I met some of her co-workers. Everyone was nice, and said nice things about my Dutch, though I think a lot of times people just pretend to understand me when they actually don't. Her office there is really big and fancy, with a big reception desk, and a nice coffee room with twenty different kinds of tea that you can choose from. We drank coffee at her office, and then drove to the International School. It was neat just walking into the school because there were all these little preschoolers there with their rich parents from all over the world.
There were probably about 40 kids taking the PSAT's, and I didn't get a chance to talk to very many of them, but everyone spoke perfect English, without a accent at all. I think a lot of the kids who go to there are only living in the Netherlands for a couple years or so, and their parents are working here temporarily. The test went okay, I think. The reading comprehension parts weren't very hard, and the most of the math sections were okay, it's just that there wasn't very much time.
Taking the test felt weird, because being here, it feels like college is incredibly far away. And here I was taking a test that has to do with going to college. I don't want to think about that yet! When I come home I want to be home for a while, and not think about leaving again. We had to write down what we want to major in at college on the test. What is that all about? I'm only sixteen, I don't know what I want to do with the whole rest of my life!
Thursday I had to go to school again, but my first hour of class was canceled, so I got to stay home for a little bit longer. School was fine, same old, same old. Then practice which was at the fitness center again, so that's always hard, but a good workout.


Friday, again school. It got shortened quite a bit though, so we all got to go home around 2:00. It was lucky, I don't know if I could have made it much longer. Kind of like when you have to do push ups for a certain amount of time and you know that you're super close to being done so it just gets harder and harder. That's how school was getting. But now we have fall vacation for one week. School starts really early in the fall here, and ends really late in the summer, but they have way more vacation time than we do at home. There's this vacation that we have in the fall, then we get two weeks for Christmas. In February we get one week, then there's an Easter break, and I think we get another week in May. It will be hard though when it's the middle of June and I'm still sitting in school.
Friday night Taiana had to work, but after she got done she came back home and got me, and I went with her and one of her friends to this bar in a nearby town. A lot of her friends from work were there, and it was fun to go out and to meet them. But don't worry, I was a responsible drinker!

Saturday morning I woke up and went to the gym. Surprise, Jim from the gym was there! He talked to me for a little bit when I was biking. He was just asking me things about football games, and my school at home, and all of that. Of course, because I was speaking English, everyone else in the gym was looking at us too. I'm starting to get used to that by now though, whenever I'm in school people are always looking at me, either because I'm speaking English, or because I speak Dutch so weird.
It's really nice at the gym here, it's a lot smaller than the one at home, but everyone who goes there knows each other and is always talking while they're working out. And every evening they do a fifteen minute ab workout session, so people just put their mats on the floor in the middle of all the weight lifting machines and we do abs together.

In the afternoon on Saturday, Peter and Milja had decided to take me around to some different tourist places. Originally we were going to go to the Anne Frank museum, but the tickets were sold out, so we have to go there some other time. Originally, I was also going to ask one of the other exchange students who live around here to come with me, but the girl I was going to ask was gone, and by the time I was got around to thinking about asking someone else it was a little bit too late, so the three of us just went together. The first place we went was to these old mills that are pretty close to Akersloot. You can go inside the mill and look at the places where people used to sleep, and then you can see the water churning underneath you from the mill moving. We also climbed up almost to the top of the mill, and saw how everything turned inside. I've always had a little bit of a fear of climbing up high places with open stairs, but I made it.
After the mills, we went to the "Zaanse Skaans" (or something like that... I think that's how it sounds, it's probably not how it's spelled). It was basically a bunch of streets of houses that are part of a town called Zaandem, but on the streets where we walked it is only old houses, and inside a lot of them there's museums. You can look across the water and see all of these house that people actually live in now. (Fun fact: the town of Zaandem is where the Dam tot Dam race I did a few weeks ago finished). Saturday night, Milja's parents came over, along with the friend of Milja whose class I went to visit, and her daughter came over for dinner. Nasi (fried rice, meat, and vegetables) for dinner, and tiramisu for dessert.

This morning after coffee, a bread roll, and some yogurt, I went out the door to bike to the place where I always meet my coach on Sunday mornings so he can drive me to the dune training. There's all these hedges around the yard of our house, and then there's a really narrow little path that goes out to the road with a sharp turn at the end. Taiana can always go through the path on her bike, and lately I've gotten pretty good at it too. I would say about fifty percent of the time I can make it to the end and around the corner. Milja has gotten used to how entertaining it is the other fifty percent though, so usually she sits at the table and watches me bike away. Today, unfortunately, was one of the other fifty percent days. Except today, instead of just having to stop and walk the rest of the way, I went right into the bushes and tipped over. Milja, being as nice as she is, ran out to make sure I was okay, and picked up my bike. She saw the whole thing of course. Embarrassing moment (not that I don't have a lot of those every day)!

The last thing that we had to do for our workout at practice today was a two kilometer tempo run (that's what the coach said. I'm pretty sure it was more like three though). Usually, there's at least one person that I can keep in sight when we go for a longer hard run, but today the girl I might have been able to almost keep up with was hurt, so I was on my own. They gave me super clear instructions for which way to go though, and I kept the other runners in sight for about half the way. Somehow, right when I should have been about done, I realized that I was not where I was supposed to be. About ten minutes later, I did end up back where we had started, but coming from the complete other direction than I was supposed to. Everyone else was looking the other way all expectantly, but I came up right behind them. The thing is, I know I was going the right way! I don't know how I ended up in the wrong place... But hey, I got my two kilometers in.

Oh gosh, this got really long again. I'm going to start working on writing shorter blogs more often. Then it won't take an hour to read what I write, or to write it. We'll see how that works out.

Tot volgende week!
xoxo

P.S. Get ready for a blog about Paris. We leave tomorrow morning!