Sixteen Going on Seventeen

If you're a student in 4HAVO at Jac P. Thijsse College, like I happen to be, then there are three days towards the end of the year when you have to do a "snuffelstage." This translates to something like "sniffing internship." This "sniffing internship" is three days long and you're supposed to do it by a company or a business that does the same kind of work you're interested in doing and studying once you've graduated from high school. Since I've wanted to do something in writing since I was about ten and stopped wanting to be a veterinarian (every child has their veterinarian phase) I figured right away that I would try to do my internship at a magazine or a newspaper.
When Milja heard that I had to do an internship she started helping me right away and asking everyone she knew if they had any connections with a magazine or a newspaper. There were a lot of places who didn't have time, or didn't respond at all, and she also found a few which I shot down fairly quickly. Finally, Milja's brother-in-law Eric found someone at the magazine "Bovag Krant" who was willing to have me come there for two days. At first I hesitated a little bit because the "Bovag Krant" is a magazine written about cars/transportation for people who work in the automotive industry. Still, it ended up being the "Bovag Krant." I went there for the first day on Wednesday, and I had to take the train to one of the earlier Amsterdam stations, then step onto another train, and then walk five minutes or so to get to the office building. The office from the "Bovag Krant" is right next to the World Fashion Center.
I'm hoping everyone who just read that is thinking impressed to themselves, "Oh wow, the World Fashion Center," without really knowing what the World Fashion Center is. Because that's what I did. "World Fashion Center" sounds extremely impressive and looks extremely impressive, but I'm doubting whether it's actually internationally important or not. Since I was about 40 minutes early the first day of my snuffelstage I wanted to go in and see what it was, because to me it looked like I huge shopping mall. Except then there were these huge and scary revolving doors and a reception desk with security guards sitting at it, and there wasn't anybody else inside. So basically I just went 360 degrees through the revolving doors and walked away really fast again. The thing is- I still don't know what the World Fashion Center is.
After my short experience in the World Fashion Center, I was still 38 minutes early, so I sat and drank coffee at this coffee shop with all sorts of organic juices, and carrot muffins, and that sort of thing.
When it was finally time to go inside, it took me a while to figure out that I had to buzz myself in before the revolving doors would turn (I HATE revolving doors) but eventually that worked out and I went up to the seventh floor and introduced myself to the secretary. One of the journalists came and got me and gave me a tour around the building, because the director of the magazine wasn't there yet. When he came, he gave me a huge stack of all of the different magazines that their company makes (lots of other publications about cars and also about restaurants) and I spetn a few hours reading. Generally I wouldn't be too thrilled to spend hours reading about the automotive industry, but there was such a professional atmosphere in the office with the journalists making phone calls and typing away at their computers that I actually managed to get through a pretty big stack. For lunch at the office they had a whole big table set with all sorts of bread and things that Dutch people put on their bread (that's a story for another day) where they can eat every day. In the afternoon I got a little bit more of a description about everything they do at the office, who does what, and how it finally ends up getting published.
Thursday morning I took the train a little bit earlier than the day before, and got to sit in at a team meeting they were having. Basically the team meeting was two and a half hours long of a fairly heated discussion. This was probably the most interesting thing I saw in the two days I was there, because I've never thought about you have to work together at magazine. I've always just thougth about it as people writing their own articles and discussing with the editor, but at the Bovag Krant they had all sorts of things to discuss about how the magazine works and etc. In the afternoon on Thursday I got a little bit more of a detailed tour, and left pretty early in the because everyone had meetings they had to get too.

As far as how you could spend your last two days EVER being sixteen, the two days at the Bovag Krant were pretty good. And the next day was Friday... all of a sudden I wasn't sixteen anymore.
Since the rest of my class has to do their internships for three days, I didn't have any school on Friday. For Milja it was just a normal work day, and she offered to take off of work, but I had a 1500m race on Friday evening, so I didn't want to spend the day doing anything active, so I thought it was kind of pointless for her to take the whole day off.
Even though we weren't officially celebrating my birthday on Friday, it was a good day. When I woke up Taiana was at school, because she's had final exams for the last two weeks. I ate breakfast, read all the e-mails and cards I'd gotten, and laid on the couch watching a movie because I didn't HAVE to do anything. When Taiana got home the weather was warm, and she went to the store and bought strawberries. Then Milja came home early anyway, even though she wasn't supposed to, and Opa came over too, and a friend of Taiana's. We spent the whole afternoon sitting outside in the sun. My mom called, and Brooke called too, which I totally hadn't been expecting and was such a nice surprise.
Early evening I left with Milja and Opa for my first 1500m track race. It was a pretty small race, there weren't that many girls in teh 1500m, and I was the only one in JuniorenB, which does mean that I won. I was nervous before I raced, but not as crazy nervous as I had been before the 800m race, and I ran much better too. I'd forgotten how nice running the mile (or 1500m) can feel. It was a good birthday race.
After the race I went to a friend's house where I spent the night, and on Saturday morning I biked home, and Milja and I bought groceries for the rest of the weekend, which was going to be quite the production.