Texel

5:30 p.m. with the bus to Alkmaar. 6:20 p.m. with the train from track number 3 to Den Helder. 7:12 p.m. with the bus from Den Helder central station to the boat. 7:30 p.m. with the boat to Texel. 8:00 p.m. with the boat from Den Hoorn to De Cocksdorp. 8:58 p.m. by Antea's house (the Swiss girl, remember?).
I'd planned everything out so perfectly, written it down, bought a bus card, and packed everything Friday morning so that I would have time to go to school, run, and then go right to the bus. The bus riding went well. Then I got to the train station in Alkmaar. It turned out that the earlier train to Den Helder was delayed, so it was still standing on the track when I got there. I figured I could just as well take that train as the later one so I got on. Oddly enough there weren't that many people on the train- actually, there weren't any people on the train, but I figured that I was just early. When the doors closed and there still weren't any people on the train I started to get the feeling that something wasn't right, but the doors wouldn't open when I pressed the "door open" buttons. All of a sudden the train started moving, but in the opposite direction that it was supposed to, and not very fast at all. When it stopped completely again after about thirty seconds I started to panic a little, especially since there definitely wasn't anyone else on the train. It became obvious that I wasn't on a train heading for Den Helder, but on a train with locked doors that had just parked.
Whenever I'm in a scary situation I always make a list off the worst possible things that can happen. Number one: I wasn't going to die. Whew. Number two: I probably also was not going to get seriously injured or actually hurt at all. Number three: I might have to stay on the train until the next time it rode, and who knew how long that was going to be. Usually when I go through all of the worst possible scenarios I end up realizing that the situation I'm in isn't all that bad. This time it still felt pretty bad.
Since I couldn't think of anything else to do I pressed the "door open" button about a million more times. Then I considered pulling the emergency stop break but figured that probably wouldn't work either. I also seriously considered calling Milja, but thought that I should probably first check and see if I could find someone who would let me off of the train. Plus, I do have a little bit of pride, and I wasn't really looking forward to making a phone call telling her that I'd gotten myself stuck in a parked train. Once it was extremely obvious that I wasn't going to be able to get the doors open, I started walking super fast through the train. I was so relieved when I ran into another guy who seemed to have the same problem as me. He didn't seem all that relieved to see me though. I'm guessing he was thinking that not only was he stupid enough to get himself stuck on a parked train, but he also had to be stuck on the parked train with a foreigner. At that point it didn't really matter to me that the other guy was less then friendly because I was just happy not to be stuck on the train alone.
Together we speed walked through the train and after a few minutes were lucky enough to run into the conductor. This whole time I'd been completely wound up and scared: my heart was pounding a million miles a minute in my chest, and my face had gotten all hot and red. I was so happy to see the conductor: he was my knight in shining armour. We followed him to the cab of the train where we had to climb this ladder to get down on the train tracks and then run across the rest of the tracks to the other side and walk back to the train station. I was so happy to be out of the train that it didn't even bother me that the other guy who had been stuck in the train wouldn't talk to me for the entire walk back to the train station.
It felt like the whole being stuck on the train thing had lasted for hours, but in reality it had only been fifteen minutes or so, so I still made it back to the train station in time to get on the train from 6:20 that I was supposed to have in the first place. I was still a little bit shaken up, so the entire way I was completely stressed out and couldn't relax. Then it turned out that our train was delayed too, so once we got to the train station everyone had to sprint to the bus that was going to take us to the boat. Luckily we made it.
Almost right after I'd gotten on the boat I recognized Antea's host sister and her boyfriend who I'd met one other time before. I went over to them all happy that I'd found someone I knew and told them that I was going to visit Antea for the weekend.
"Oh, really?" says her sister. "Fun. How are you getting to our house though?"
"Oh, with the bus," I said. "Aren't you guys taking the bus?"
"Um..." says her boyfriend. "There is no bus from Den Hoorn to De Cocksdorp on Friday night."
"What?"
It turns out that the bus only drives durning the summer and over the weekends. Obviously Antea didn't know that when she wrote out the directions for me. Normally I just would have been able to ride with Antea's host sister and her boyfriend, but they were staying in Den Hoorn at her boyfriend's grandma's house (I know, this is getting a little bit complicated- just try to stay with me) and De Cocksdorp is on the complete opposite end of the island. In the end we met Antea's neighbor on the boat too, and it turned out she was going home so I rode with her back to Antea's house.
It wasn't until I had made it all the way to Antea's house in De Cocksdorp that I could actually breathe calmly again. Ugh, traveling is so stressful. When I got there Antea was still at the restaurant where she works, but I had known that ahead of time. I sat with her host brother for a little while and watched t.v. and when her host dad came home a little bit later he showed me some of the yard and the Friesian horses that they have for buggy pulling. They were these huge black horses (not as huge as the Budweiser horses, but they're kind of the same build) with perfect shiny coats and this proud walk.
Once Antea came back from work we spent some time sitting and drinking tea with her host family. Then we went and laid in bed upstairs and talked. Talking to her is so nice because we can talk about everything good and bad and we understand completely where the other person's coming from. We spent the whole weekend talking about everything that we love about the Netherlands and everything that we're going to miss so much. The only things we could think of that we wouldn't miss were the wind and the rain.
We set the alarm for 9:00 Saturday morning because I had to leave again on Saturday afternoon and we didn't want to spend the entire day sleeping. Spring is finally starting to kick in here so when we woke up there was sun shining through the curtains and birds singing. We ate breakfast in their dining room which was half surrounded by windows and then found a bike for me to use from the garage.

Texel is one of the five "Waddeneilanden" from the Netherlands. The Waddeneilanden are north of the Netherlands and Texel is the biggest of the five. It's the biggest, but it's definitely not big. It's 20km long and about 8km wide with only 14,000 or so people that live there. Apparently it's a huge tourist destination for people from the Netherlands, Germany, and lots of other places in Europe. Since it's and island, it's not as cloudy there as it usually is in the rest of the country and everything is surrounded by the sea.
Whenever anyone hears that Antea lives in Texel they always say how sorry they feel for her being an exchange student and being "stuck" in Texel. But Antea absolutely loves it and I understand why. Living there maybe makes it harder to see the rest of the Netherlands but she's happy with it.

Since I'm going back to Texel over two weeks with a group from AFS, Antea didn't want to show me everything that we're going to see then. Instead we spent all of Saturday near De Cocksdorp. First, in the morning, we biked to the lighthouse which is on the end of the island, and climbed to the top of it. We spent some time walking on the beach there, taking pictures, and sitting in the sun. Then we biked a little bit further down the beach until we got to the restuarant where she works and ate lunch and sat in the sun for a long time. After we had eaten we biked back to De Cocksdorp, walked through the street, ate ice cream, and sat in the sun some more. In the afternoon we spent some time with her host family and at 4:00 I had to take the bus back to the other side of the island again. While we were biking around, walking on the beach, and sitting in the sun on Saturday, we talked some more about everything. Our list of things we're going to miss here kept getting longer and longer.
Everything was so beautiful on the island, and biking there with the lighthouse and the sea all around with the sun shining and the wind on our backs I had another one of those Europy moments. Sometimes I still can't believe the things I get to do here. I never could have begun to imagine them before I came and even now some moments don't feel real. It's like I'm watching a movie with someone who keeps experiencing these incredible things, but I'm lucky enough that it's my life.
The trip back to Akersloot went more smoothly than the trip to Texel. There was a little bit of an inconvenience because something was wrong with the trains and everyone ended up having to take buses back to Alkmaar, which took way longer than it would have otherwise. Still, I didn't have any terrified moments and Peter came and picked me up in a city before Alkmaar saving me half an hour or so on the train.

Sunday was another day for running practice, and even though the sun was still shining and the birds were still chirping it turned out not to be a very successful training.
I watched the Rotterdam marathon for a while in the afternoon because TDR had three guys and a girl competing to qualify for the European Championships in Barcelona this summer. Of course the stupid t.v. station only showed the very first runners come in and then they switched to soccer so I didn't get to see TDR's runners finish. They did qualify though.
In the afternoon we went to the beach with Misha (the puppy) and to Egmond to buy Joakim a birthday present. The first thing we saw when we stepped onto the beach was this huge lady wearing a swimsuit and standing in the sea. I know I said that it's starting to be spring weather here, but it's not that warm yet. I would say it was about 50 degrees outside on Sunday with a strong wind. Everyone was already staring at her because she was absolutely crazy to be swimming, but then she got even crazier. She came out of the water and completely stripped off her swimsuit. Everything, completely exposed. All of the families with their kids and their dogs were all staring. As far as Sunday goes this was probably the most exciting event that happened. Of course I reacted completely innappropriately and started laughing so hard I couldn't stand up straight.

That's the latest update from the Netherlands. From beautiful island to naked ladie, I guess we have it all here.