Study Abroad

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue

2010-06-12T00:37:00.000-07:00

This month Princess Victoria of Sweden got married, and Stockholm was all about the wedding. Everywhere you go there are boxes of chocolates, plates, books, napkins, and anything you can imagine with Victoria and Daniel.

Wedding or not, I was just happy that I got to be in Sweden again. I got to be at the cabin with the whole family, play cards with Mormor and Morfar and Milja in the evening, sleep in the room where I always sleep in, and eat everything Mormor cooked.

After the bad experience that Milja and I had trying to get to the Eindhoven airport the last time we went to Sweden, we decided to fly with KLM this time. Within two hours of boarding and without any problems, Milja and I landed in Stockholm. It's that easy!

This time we were going to be in Sweden for six full days, and even though that's a day longer than we were there over December, the time flew by. The day that we got to Stockholm, we spent the night at Mormor and Morfar's house in Spanga, and the next morning I got to eat breakfast in Sweden again.

Why I love Breakfast in Sweden:

Yogurt and musli is so good.
Morfar always slices pepperoni, and we eat half of it before we've even sat down with everyone.

There's that thick honey from Lapland that you just want to eat out of the jar with a spoon- like Ben and Jerry's.

Kalle's caviar is always on the table. Even if I don't want to eat it, I like knowing it's there IF I want to eat it.

The second my glass of orange juice is empty or I don't have any coffee left, someone fills it up for me.

Mormor's bathrobe with Chinese dragons on it.

How Morfar always slices the cheese in the most impractical way ever.

I could go on for a while...

Once we'd eaten breakfast that first day, we loaded up the car with all of the food, baked goods, drinks, towels, clothes, and books we needed and drove to "landet"- my grandparents cabin about an hour outside of Stockholm. Ever since I was little, whenever we came to Sweden in the summer, and sometimes in the winter we'd go to the cabin. My mom and her siblings have been going there with Mormor and Morfar since they were little. I love "landet" just as much as I love eating breakfast in Sweden (maybe even more). It's not that there's anything all that special about the house. It's this small yellow house with a concrete foundation and concrete steps leading up to it. Before we got there I told Milja this whole story about how incredibly steep and huge the steps were, but when we were there I realized they weren't as steep or as huge as I'd remembered. Apparently I've grown. But even though it's not a mansion and you can see concrete on the outside, it's a pretty house, and it's at the bottom of a huge green hill. When you walk inside and open the door this smell comes rushing at you, and it's the "landet" smell. Whenever I walk in there I remember all of these things from when I was little that really aren't important at all: The one time Anna got mad at me for eating a sugar cube, fighting with my cousin Sandra about the playhouse, running around naked for the whole day.

This time when we were at "landet" I spent my time a little bit differently than running around naked. I went running right away. I don't know if the air was fresher, or warmer, or if my legs were just happy to be somewhere so familiar, but it was one of those really good runs where you get sweaty and exhausted and you feel super strong.

When I got back from running my aunts were just coming with their families. That day was just like all the other days I remember at "landet." My cousins were running around outside, Mormor was running up and down the stairs between the kitchen and the table outside taking care of food, Morfar was working in the garden, Anna and Karin were trying to relax. This time, Milja was there too- in the garden, fitting right into the picture.

We were only at "landet" for two days: Saturday and Sunday. Both days I got to run, we walked through the churchyard where we always walk in the evenings, we ate rhubarb pie, slept late, had to go down the basement stairs to get to the bathroom, drank "saft" and ate cookies that Mormor had made. On the second day after I went running, I ran and jumped in the lake before I could chicken out. It was so cold, and so nice... another thing that was just like I remember it.

It's weird, because I'm seventeen. It's not like I long for my childhood or anything. I'm still in my childhood. But sometimes I wish I could go back to some of those moments at "landet" or in Sweden; moments when I was scarfing down Swedish candy with mom, stealing food from Mormor while she was cooking, and drinking coffee with Morfar early in the morning. The last few times I was in Sweden, it felt a little like I got to relive them, almost like they were before, but this time maybe even a little bit better.

Milja and I could have stayed at "landet" forever, but Sunday afternoon we had to pack up the car again and leave. We ate dinner at Anna's house, and I got to see Frida and Linn for the last time until October when they'll come to Spooner. On Monday, Milja and I went into Stockholm together and did our best to find some sort of exciting event from "Love Week," since the princess was getting married. We didn't have very much luck, but Stockholm was nice like it always is. Later in the afternoon Milja went on a boat tour and I got to spend a few short hours with Johanna. We'd planned on going into Stockholm again on Tuesday, but we were out-shopped, felt a little bit like we'd seen what we wanted to see, and I didn't feel like going that far away from Mormor and Morfar. So we stayed in the area. On Wednesday we had to leave. This time it was a little bit harder leaving than around Christmas. I know that in a few weeks I'll be much further away from Sweden than I've been this entire year, and I don't know when I get to go back. I guess I'll just have to make sure it's not very long before I do.

Something Old: Mormor and Morfar (old but loved)

Something New: Milja (new in my life... until she's been in my life for a long time)

Something Borrowed: the shorts I borrowed from a teammate in Portugal and wore in Sweden (I know, I know. But SOMETHING had to be the borrowed thing).

Something Blue: leaving Europe soon, "landet" being sold (but they'll be new trips to Europe and there's other places with smells that make me remember things)

Breaking Records

2010-06-03T07:02:00.001-07:00

As hard as I've been trying I'm still not getting anywhere close to breaking the Spooner High School 1600m record of 5:13. But on Saturday, I did set a personal record and also, I think, a Spooner High School record.
Personal Record: Fastest 1500m time ever run in Belgium.
Spooner High School Record #1: Fastest 1500m time ever run in Belgium. (To be honest I'm not one hundred percent sure on this one, but I think it's a pretty safe bet).
Impressive isn't it? I have to say that I feel after working so long towards this goal, I definitely deserved to finally reach it.

I must be getting a little spoiled by living in this tiny country, because I found the three hours it took us to drive to Duffel, Belgium kind of a drag. It felt like a long time to sit in the car. To think that I regularly ride that far just to go to Mall of America... Plus, once we were almost there, one of the other girls from our team called and said that they were completely stuck in a huge traffic jam. So then we had to turn around and go back to the Netherlands and then drive back into Belgium with a different road. It's not a stereotype that the roads in Belgium are worse than the roads in the Netherlands. I never got a chance to find out if the stereotypes about Belgium people that Dutch people have are true. Except how they talk- they do sound funny when they talk.
My first thought when we walked into the track at Duffel was that the track was huge. Seriously, it looked way bigger than any other track that I've seen before. Of course that's not possible because every track is 400 meters and 400m is 400m- even in Belgium.
Since we were about two hours early for the 1500m race, I had about an hour when I got to sit and watch the other races all nervously and not do anything else. Then all of us who were going to run the 1500m warmed up together. There were three series of about 20 girls. That's 60 girls who were going to run the 1500m. I was in the third serie, which I wasn't complaining about, I really don't feel like it's neccessary for me to race against girls who run a 4:30 1500m time. The start was brutal though. Everyone pushed and shoved and we were stuck in this huge mob of girls that took about a lap and a half to get unclogged. The pace was still fast, but it was stressful having to watch out for everyone else.
In the end I ran the same time that I ran in the last 1500m race I did. I was disappointed because after the first race I thought for sure that I could run much faster. It had felt faster too because I managed to pick up the pace in the last 300m much more than I usually can.
As happy as I am with my "fastest race ever in Belgium," I would have been happier with a plain old "fastest race ever," considering that was the only race I've ever run in Belgium. But hey, there are still more races before I go home and many years of running to come.

The Lilacs Bloom Here in May Too

2010-05-31T10:40:00.001-07:00

Technically I turned seventeen on Friday, May 21'st. But we had decided to celebrate it the Sunday afterwards because then the whole family could come, and I could have the Dutch birthday party that I've been waiting for all year.

Sunday was one of the first really warm days. As usual on Sunday, I had running practice in the dunes. It was already warm when we started training and the dunes were full of people running, mountain biking, and walking with the whole family. Our training was a fartlek run, and it was one of those perfect runs where you feel like you'll never need to stop. I was in such a good mood after running, and the weather was so nice, that I even put on a dress after I took a shower.

Milja's younger sister Connie and her family had spent the night before in a house across the street from us that's being rented out as a sort of bed and breakfast (very handy for when I come back here with all of the hundred people I want to show the Netherlands too). This meant that we already had a group of people sitting in the garden from about noon. We were spread out in the sun, completely relaxed, sometimes talking and sometimes not. Milja had decorated the garden with balloons and banners, and there were lilac bushes everywhere. I felt so much like it was my birthday. The weather was completely perfect that when it was time to walk Misha we went together to the lake where I usually run. Of course Misha got tired after about 20 minutes or so and then Milja had to carry her.
Around 3:00 everyone else from the family came and we ate cake in the garden. We ate the classical Dutch birthday cake, which is called a whipped cream cake, and had a picture of me printed on it. Milja's nephew, Matthijs, had made a sort of white sugar cake with marsipan frosting that we ate for dessert. Plus he'd made a smaller one that we'd eaten the night before. If birthday cakes were money I would be so rich.

Aren't they beautiful?

Everyone drank tea with the cake, and we sat outside for another couple of hours. Didn't I tell you? This is how it works at all of the Dutch birthday parties. We sit for hours and talk and drink. By drinking, I don't mean getting drunk. Mostly people drink tea, coffee, or juice, and once in a while a glass of wine. As soon as you've emptied a glass someone comes and fills another one. I spent the whole afternoon opening presents too. From Milja I got this fresh, springy perfume from Lancome. From Peter I got Bjorn Borg underwear (which I'd asked for, since I can't ever bring myself to buy underwear for that much), one that was "Dutch" and the other one that was "American." Very patriotic. From Adrienne- Milja's niece- I got a necklace. From Marja, Erik, and Inge I got an orange shirt (orange is Holland's official color) for the world soccer championships that are starting soon. From Connie and her family I got a little bright colored bag. From Anita I got a little wooden house from Swahili where her parents live. From Opa and Oma I got "De Hel van '63," the first movie I watched in Dutch without subtitles. And from lots of people I got money.

In the invitation I'd sent out to everyone I'd written that they had to bring walking shoes so we could go for a walk in the afternoon. After eating cake, we all got in the car and drove to a bird sanctuary on the outskirts of Akersloot. We didn't walk very far, but we looked at all of the birds, and then there turned out to be some cows too, so we climbed over the fence and tried to pet them and feed them grass, though they weren't brave enough to come very close.

When we got back to the house everyone sat down outside again and we brought another round of drinks and more food. By the time everyone was completely and totally full from all of the cheese, sausage, and chips that had been sitting on the table, we brought out soup and sandwiches on french bread with mozzarella and tomatoes. As if that wasn't enough, we had the cake from Matthijs for dessert and ice cream with it.

After dinner there was tea again, and more wine, and we sat outside until eleven o'clock around a campfire. Actually it wasn't really a campfire- we were sitting around three metal baskets with fire in them, that everyone uses here for parties. I'm not sure if there's a name for that in English? At some point when the sun started going down we'd moved around to the other side of the house. Then we could talk to all of the neighbors and wave to all of the people who walked by. There was a big group who walked by that turned out to be having a family reunion and they were so happy when they walked by and saw the whole "familie Clazing."

Maybe the Dutch birthday parties don't sound like much. I just realized that what I thought was so much to write about ended up being nothing once I'd typed it all out. Maybe because we didn't really "do" anything... But that's what's so nice. Sometimes it's nice not to have to do anything for a day, to be able to sit with the whole family, and eat, and talk, and laugh. I like listening to the story that I've already heard from Oma three times and that the rest of the family has heard a hundred times. I like watching Marja laugh hysterically and see Adrienne get embarrassed about it. I like sitting outside and being with so many people and feeling like I belong there. That's what makes the Dutch birthday parties- and my birthday party- so nice: that it's just about being together and not about "doing" anything.

Sunday wasn't the only birthday party I had. Since Monday was another school holiday (2nd Pinkster Day- I doubt that rings any bells), I gave a brunch at our house for my friends from school. Milja and I had done grocery shopping together and bought all sorts of bread, cheese, meat, chocolate spread, hagleslag, orange juice, and tea. Monday morning was a little bit colder than the day before, so we set the table inside instead of outside. There were five girls who came, all friends from my class at school. Once they were all here we sat for a long time and ate and they gave me the present from all of them which was that I get to pick out a purse. They all know how much I love the bag fashion here. The weather started getting nicer and we moved outside to the backyard where we could sit out of the wind. There was all sorts of pop and juice on the table, and after a while I brought out the cake (#4 from the weekend) which was another sort of whipped cream cake but with marsipan over the top. It was as close as anything to the Swedish princess cake that I love.

A little bit later in the afternoon Milja drove us to the movie theater in Alkmaar and we saw "Date Movie." I hadn't heard anything about it all, but one of the other girls had wanted to see it and it turned out to be good (after Evan Almighty I can't help but love how funny/cheesy that actor is). Everyone got picked up from the movie theater. Even though Monday was a laid back party, I was completely exhausted when I got home and so were Milja and Taiana. Watching America's next top model, eating Chinese take out for dinner, and going to bed early was the perfect end to the weekend.

Sixteen Going on Seventeen

2010-05-29T00:16:00.000-07:00

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.

Hitting the Ground Running

2010-05-19T10:54:00.000-07:00

After we got back from Portugal, I didn't have very much of a chance to sink into that after-vacation-depression that always happens. Even though there was a cloud of volcanic ash hanging over Portugal, we managed to get home on Monday afternoon like we'd planned. The night before there had been a lot of discussion about what we were going to do "if" the plane didn't fly, but no one had any good solutions, so it's a good thing we were able to get home. Milja picked me up from the airport on Monday afternoon and I spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking, checking my e-mail, and being completely exhausted, since we'd gotten up at 3:00 a.m. the night before to leave.
On Tuesday morning I was out of bed early again. Milja and I left at 6:30 to take a train to Maastricht for the Maastricht University College experience day that I'd signed up for a few months before. Sitting in the train for three hours on the way to Maastricht, I had my few hours of after-vacation-depression. I was still exhausted because sleeping until 6:30 in the morning didn't do much to help me catch up on the sleep I'd missed the night before. Plus it was gray and freezing cold, and we were sitting in a dirty, empty train.
Maastricht is close to Belgium. Belgium has lots of chocolate. And so, logically, does Maastricht. I've inherited Grandpa Don's love for chocolate, so seeing all the windows full of chocolate helped make me feel better immediately. Besides the chocolate shops there were bakeries, which I've really grown to love this year. It didn't take long before being around the chocolate and the bread, and walking through the streets in Maastricht drove my after-vacation-depression away. It wasn't just the stores that made me happy- right when we walked out of the train station I could tell the city was beautiful. We had to cross a bridge and after walking past more stores with chocolate and bread, we walked through much older streets full of churches and cobbelstone roads. There were cafes with terraces everywhere and little boutiques with expensive looking shoes and clothes. As we got closer to the university I started to get the "college city" feeling. There were students biking and walking everywhere with backpacks full of books, listening to their iPods, and talking on their phones. We were completely surrounded by buildings that belonged to the university- all old and beautiful.

I would say that there were a total of about 40 students at the experience day, probably half of which were German and the other half Dutch. I was immediately interesting because my English was so good (University College Maastricht is taught in English) and everyone wanted to talk to me and know what I was doing at the experience day and how my year here has been. I could tell right away that it was a different group of students than the one I'm used to being around at school.
We spent the first half of the day listening to a talk about schedules, what kind of classes you can take and how they're divided, what the college looks like, and what sorts of jobs and housing are available in the area. Then there was a lunch and in the afternoon we were split into groups to try the "Problem Based Learning" method that they teach at UCM. The "Problem Based Learning" method is based on students having only two subjects per quarter and only about ten to twelve hours of class every week. Out of those class hours, only four of the hours are lecture hours. For every subject you start the week with a lecture from the professor, then you have a discussion about the topic with a small group of students, leave and do research by yourself, have another discussion, and then end the week with another lecture from the professor. What you learn through "Problem Based Learning" then has to be applied to a paper, an exam, etc. At the experience day we had a discussion about whether or not abortion should be allowed for selecting what kind of child a couple wants to have. The practice Problem Based Learning didn't work exactly like it was supposed to, but I did get the idea that I would be able to learn a lot that way.
At the end of the day I couldn't help it- I was picturing myself at school in Maastricht, living in an apartment there, working at one of the cafes in the city, buying bread and chocolate in the stores there.

Wednesday was quite the day for me, because I mustered up all my strength and went to school for a few hours. What a big step... Two and a half weeks is pretty long time not to go to school, and to be honest, after Wednesday it took a while before I went back again. Now that the weather's nice and there's less than two months left of school, there are all sorts of holidays and days when we don't have to go to school like usual.

Thursday was Hemelvaard Dag. I'm not really sure what kind of holdiay that is, but it meant that we didn't have school Thursday or Friday. Thursday afternoon I had my first race of the track season, and my first race after Portugal. Originally I was going to run a 3000m race, but the coaches had decided that I should try 800m to work on my speed. Wednesday night and Thursday morning I managed to get myself incredibly worked up. An hour before we had to leave for the race, I was so nervous that my hands were shaking. Because it was the first race after Portugal I put all of this pressure on myself to run really well. The results ended up being just okay, which I was disappointed in. I ran a faster 800m time than I ever have before, but not by as many seconds as I had expected. Plus, I'd forgotten how hard it is to race 800m. You're uncomfortable the entire time that you're running- it's like one long tortorous sprint. I don't deny though, that it probably was good for me.

Again, I didn't have time to wallow in the fact that the 800m didn't go exactly how I wanted it to go, because right after I'd cooled down from the race, Milja and I went to pick Antea up at the train station. When I went to Texel a month or so before, Antea and I had decided that she would come to Akersloot for Hemelvaard, because after that we couldn't think of a time when we'd be able to spend a weekend together again. There was a minor incident where Milja got a cramp in her toe and had to pull over on the side of the road for ten minutes, but besides that we managed to bring Antea back to Akersloot without any problems. We didn't do all that much on Thursday night: drank tea, looked at pictures from Portugal, walked on the beach with Misha (the puppy), and watched a movie on t.v.

Friday morning I had to bring my bike to the bike shop to get fixed. It wasn't really broken, but I'd somehow ended up with a flat tire, and since I didn't want to walk an hour back home, I'd ridden my bike anyway. Apparently that wasn't a very good idea, but nothing the bike mechanics in Akersloot can't take care of. Once we'd dropped my bike off Antea and I took the bus and then the train into Amsterdam. On one hand, it was beautiful there because for the first time since September or so the sun was shining and it was warm. On the other hand, the garbage workers in Amsterdam were on strike, and there was garbage everywhere. It was disgusting. We didn't want to sit down on any benches, or stand in the square because everywhere you looked there were piles and piles of garbage. Even the side streets had canals and apartments overflowing with garbage.
Instead of going shopping right away like we usually do when we're in Amsterdam, Antea and I had decided to go the Albert Cuyp market which is a market that they have every day in Amsterdam. It took us about half an hour (and a few added minutes of being lost) before we got there, but all the walking ended up being worth it. I know I should probably stop, because I always bring it up- but walking through the market was another "Europy" moment. Everything was super cheap, and a lot of it was completely worthless too, but it was fun to look at. We walked through the food part of the market more than once because there was so much to look at: nuts, chocolate, fruit, vegetables, fish, Turkish food, Vietnamese food, stroopwaffels, ice cream, and fresh smoothies.
When we'd seen everything there was to see at the Albert Cuyp market we'd had enough walking, so we took the tram back to the street by the Dam where you can shop (I always think of Dad when I see or ride a tram because I remember him warning me more than once about how fast and silent they are: a.k.a. deadly). Our attempt at shopping was pretty weak, because both of us were exhausted from walking around the market all morning. Instead we ended up spending most of our time in this store called "Rituals" with all these expensive lotions and creams that smell really good. I don't know how we made the connection between lotion and living in Amsterdam, but we ended up talking about what it would be like if we were both going to college here, and all the things we would put in our apartment (expensive lotions included- forget the fact that we would be dirt poor).
Around six o'clock we were ready to find someplace to eat, and we dragged ourselves all the way to the Leidseplein for dinner. Ever since I went with Milja and Anita to watch flamenco dancing on the Leidseplein I've been wanting to go out to eat there, because the atmosphere is so gezellig." It's the perfect mix of tourists and Dutch people. You don't feel like you're in a trap of people taking pictures and trying to see everything in five minutes, but you can still enjoy being around everyone speaking different languages and sitting on the terraces.
Way earlier in the day Antea and I had decided that we wanted to eat foreign food for dinner. Walking up and down the long street with restaurants by the Leidseplein we had a lot to choose from. There was Turkish, Thai, Indian, Chinese, Japanase, Vietnamese, and Italian food everywhere. We finally picked a Chinese restaurant with lots of people inside and a medium priced menu. There's nothing like sitting down in a comfortable chair and being served good food after you've been walking around Amsterdam all day. We were so grateful to the waiter every time he brought us something, and we spent a good couple of hours sitting in the restuarant. When we were done it was only about 8:30, and we spent some more time walking around. There happened to be an H&M still open with way cooler clothes than all of the other H&M's we'd seen that day, which meant shopping a little bit more, and then eventually taking the train back to Uitgeest where Milja picked us up (whoops- it happened again) and brought us home.

The next morning was get up and go- again. I was out of bed at 7:30 to run, Antea had set her alarm clock and was just getting out of the shower when I got back, we ate a fast breakfast and were in the bus by 9:00. We'd bought online tickets for Madame Tussaud where both of us had been wanting to go all year. The reason we hadn't gone all year? Tickets were 20 euros and turned out not to be worth it. It is incredibly cool seeing all of the famous people almost in living flesh and blood (wax) but it only takes about an hour to see all of them and take your picture in various poses standing next to them. Add in the fact that there are mobs of tourists walking through all the pictures you're taking, pushing, and driving you absolutely crazy, and it totally wasn't worth the 20 euros. At least now our curiousity is satisfied.
Since we'd started out the day as tourists, Antea and I figured that we should just keep on going the way started, and bought tickets for a boat tour around Amsterdam. If you ever happen to be in Amsterdam, and then you happen to decide you want to go on a boat tour, then you're in luck. There are lots of companies that offer boat tours in Amsterdam. We picked a one hour boat ride for eight euros, and this time we weren't disappointed. Since we'd already spent the weekend in an "if" mood (if we went to school in Amsterdam, if we lived there) we added "if" we lived on a houseboat, or in a huge flat along the canal to the list. Even though we'd already walked by most of the places that we road by, or heard about the places, seeing them from the canals gave us a new perspective that made everything much more interesting and prettier than usual. We spent the whole ride enjoying how sunny it was and talking about "if's."
Antea and I had plans to meet Milja around 2:00 because Milja and I had tickets to see Sound of Music (yes the musical!) in Dutch and Antea had to go back to Texel. By the time we were done with our canal tour it was only about 12:00, so we sat on a terrace for a while and drank coffee. It was incredibly busy though, and there was still garbage lying around everywhere, so the atmosphere wasn't very nice. Eventually our legs were rested enough that we could get up and walk again, and we decided to walk to a shopping mall in this old church building that I had just noticed and was all of a sudden dying to go into. On our way to the old church/mall (which was about a block away) we came across this group of men in blue shirts, and one in a karate outfit. After they called us over to them, we found out that they were all at a bachelor's party and the man in the karate suit was the bridegroom. For his bachelor's party he had to have 2000 kilograms of women kiss him on the cheek. Before I got used to the whole Dutch-cheek-kissing thing, I never would have agreed to this, but now I'm a natural, so I stepped right up on the scale and gave him three kisses. We'd done our good deed for the day, and made it the rest of the way to the old church/mall without anything else exciting happening.
After we'd walked around the mall for about five minutes and gone to the bathroom there (it took a while for us to get in, because between the two of us we only had fifty cents, which meant we had to walk through the gate at the same time like we were one person- it might have looked a little weird) we went and sat at the Dam waiting for Milja. She found us there and took a picture, saying that we'd found the most touristic place to sit in all of Amsterdam.
This time it was extra sad saying goodbye to Antea, because we both knew that it was the last time we had to spend a weekend together before we have to go home.

The fact that we were going to see Sound of Music- the musical that I spent hours and hours watching over and over when I was little- made me feel better. Milja and I made it just in time, because it turned out to be further walking to the Theater Carre than we thought. The musical was good, and just the same as it would have been English- except it was in Dutch, even all of the songs. There was another thing I could cross off my to do list- seeing a musical.
We walked back to the central station again, and in the nice weather Amsterdam was so... alive. Everyone was outside sitting on the sidewalks, boating in the canals, ordrinking a glass of wine by a cafe.

Pictures of Portugal

2010-05-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

I have a coach who trains us well and takes good pictures too... handy, isn't it?
www.picasaweb.google.nl/will.Conijn

Passion

2010-05-18T00:36:00.000-07:00

Passion doesn't come in moments; it's always there and it never goes away. Passion is what has made this year so important for me, and what made Portugal such an experience. And passion is what is going to make it so hard for me to leave TDR in July.
When I first started running with TDR my goal was to make the most of ten months of training with them, improve a lot, and be able to perform for the cross-country and track season when I got back to Spooner. Of course I wanted to be able to keep up with the other runners and to feel like I belonged, but I never really thought it was a possibility. Over the last few months that's changed. I've gotten so caught up in the passion of the other athletes, of the coaches, and the passion I've gained, that I don't even want to imagine what it's going to be like to train without TDR again.
It's not honest to say that passion is the only reason I love TDR- it's not. I love how professional it is, that there's a website with a real slogan, that we're sponsored by Nike, that we warm up for an hour before starting the rest of the training, that we have to send training logs to our coach every week, that we train in the dunes on Sundays, and on the track Tuesdays and Thursdays. I could go on forever about everything that I love about TDR, and it doesn't all have to do with passion. Still, passion is a huge part of it, because it's what makes everything else possible. No one can train as much and as hard as the athletes from TDR do, or coach as much as the coaches do without passion.
At the end of the two weeks in Portugal we all sat down and talked about how we thought it went, what we'd learned, and what could have gone better. When the discussion was over, the coach from the other team asked which people from the youth team thought that they could make the step over to the other team within the next year. In that moment it hit me so hard how lucky I've been. The coaches all have the same goal as the athletes: to train runners who will eventually be strong enough and fast enough to run with the other team. But I don't fall under that category. We all know that I'll be leaving in July and then I'll be done with TDR, but the coaches still coach me like everyone else, give me just as much attention, and train me with just as much passion as they do all of the other athletes. I don't know how Milja found TDR or why the coaches let me start training with them. I don't really understand how it all began, but I know it's going to be incredibly hard to let it end.
The thing is, it's just starting now. Right now, I'm starting to run faster, to be able to train harder, and to feel like I belong. In Portugal, the practices weren't about not being left behind anymore. They were about running the right times for myself and focusing on real goals. Getting left behind didn't happen very often- I ran with the rest of the team, not behind them. Now, almost every practice goes better than the practice I had before, and over two months (less than two months) I have to leave. I love running more than I ever have before.

I'm doing my best to hold on to the "Portugal feeling." I don't ever want to forget what the days were like there; training, eating fresh bread on the balcony, napping every afternoon, training again. I'm not going to forget what it's like to be taken so seriously, to run up a hill and feel like you could do it ten more times, and to run on the track with so many strong athletes.
More than anything I hope that after I leave I can hold onto the passion I've gotten through this year: through all the races, all the practices, all the long coversations about running, the other athletes, the coaches, and through Portugal.

Perfection

2010-05-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

Perfection moments are frequent. Performance moments are perfection moments and the moments that are incredibly far away from performance moments are perfection moments too. Every moment in Portugal was a perfection moment, every training here is a perfection moment, every time I train by myself, or think and talk about running is a perfection moment.

For me, the word "perfection" probably isn't the right word. Saying that I'm perfecting something makes it sound like what I'm doing is almost perfect, and that couldn't be further from the truth. Improving might be a better word, but since I'm sticking with the TDR slogan, "Passion, Perfection, Performance," this blog is still the perfection blog.

These are the things I've been perfecting this year, or some of them... everything needs perfection. And I have been perfecting everything. Even the things I'm still horrible at are much better than they were at the beginning of the year, and after Portugal they're better than they were before Portugal.

Farthest from Perfect:

Jumping high. I've never been able to jump high, but it doesn't help that I'm afraid to try to jump high. I'm still the only one who has to jump next to the hurdles we're jumping over, and in front of the box we're supposed to jump on to.
Sprinting. The joke that I'm going to be made into a sprinter never gets old.
High knees. Whenever the sprint coach sees me run by he tells me to bring my knees up. At least to a 90 degree angle he says. And the whole time it felt like they were already at a 120 degree angle...
Toes to my nose. There's this jumping exercise we do where we have to jump as high as we can using only the flexing movement of our toes. The thing is, every time we do this I automatically have to pee. Which makes it really hard to jump higher and higher. I'm going to blame the huge distance between my toes and my nose on my small bladder.
Leaping. "Loopsprong" is what you say in Dutch. The other runners look so strong and fast when they do it, but it still hasn't really clicked for me.
Elbows in. The more tired I get the further my elbows get from my body. It's a sad story.
Underwater swimming. Don't even get me started.

Really Far From Perfect:

800m dash. The word "dash" says it all. The thing is, people who are really "dashers," like the athletes who run 100m and 200m dont' really like dashing for 800m. So people like me who don't think 800m is all that far have to try to run fast, and then 800m does seem far.
Hill sprints. Hill sprints only get to be under the second worst category because they're better than my normal sprints. Sometimes I can get on my toes, sometimes I can get my knees up, and sometimes I can push through to the end.
80 second laps in an interval training. It's happened before- around 80 seconds, and it's way better than 90 second laps in an interval training.
"Zweef Momenten." A zweef moment is when neither of your feet is touching the ground. There were a few flying moments in Portugal, and now I want more.

Still Pretty Far From Perfect:

Skipping. If I focus really hard and think "tic, tic, tic" in my head, remember to keep my hips high, my feet quick, my head forward, my knees straight, then it works. Sometimes and for a few seconds.
Mental strength. I don't give up right away anymore when I hear an impossible workout. Instead, I try to pretend it's not that impossible, and focus on the series: one at a time. Before you know it we're done- whether we ran the right times or not.
Eating. If we look at every time I don't eat dessert, and every time I eat an apple instead of a cookie, or close the cupboard door when I see a bar of chocolate, then I'm doing pretty well. We'll keep it that way- focusing on what I AM passing up, and not what I'm not passing up.
Drinking water. I'm a drinking professional. I can drink glass, after glass, after glass- as long as there's a bathroom somewhere in the area.
Long runs by myself. If I feel good and the weather's nice, sometimes 45 minutes fly by and I can finish fast.
Actually, long runs in general. If I don't have to go speed up, I can go for a long time.

Performance

2010-05-16T05:00:00.001-07:00

In Portugal we woke up early every morning, trained and ate, or ate and then trained. We'd come back from training, buy fresh bread at the bakery, eat on the balcony, and then sleep for a few hours. Around 4:30 or so in the afternoon we would train again, eat dinner, sit around, maybe drink hot chocolate somewhere, and be in bed again by 10:00. The two weeks in Portugal were about running. I got to be a runner and I didn't have to be anything else. In Portugal I wasn't an exchange student who still wants to see all of the Netherlands, I wasn't a daughter who was away from home and wants constant contact with her friends and parents, I wasn't a student who has to study for a test. Because I wasn't anything other than a runner, I performed better than I have all year- or ever.
When I called my dad after we got back from Portugal and told him how we spent our days, he started going on about how the ancient Greeks were right when they said that athletes are actually lazy, because the only thing they do is train. I'm not sure where he got the whole ancient Greeks thing from, but it's true that we trained better because we did absolutely nothing else. Here, we all have normal lives with working, going to school, and doing things with people who aren't runners. Of course we trained better in Portugal without all of the other distractions. But being able to perform came from the atmosphere too. There were about fifteen of us in Portugal from the youth team accompanied by two coaches and one of the coaches wives- our "mom" while we were there. The other athletes in the youth team are driven. It's not "cool" not to want to train, or to stay up late eating tons of junk food, and not caring about how running goes. The fastest most dedicated people are the ones who are the most respected by the rest of us, and all of us want the same thing: to run faster.
Besides the youth team, Team Distance Runners had a group of 40 or so other athletes who were all in the same hotel as us. This is the group of runners that TDR is known for: the marathoners that are going to run in the European Championships in Barcelona this summer, the 40 runners with championship medals, and all of the athletes that have medals and championships coming soon. Everyone in the youth team wants to be one of them someday.
It's all those little things that added up to being able to perform in Portugal: resting well, eating well, spending time with the other athletes, and being able to focus on running and nothing else.

Occasionally when you run there's these moments where something clicks, and even when your legs are burning and your panting, you feel unstoppable. Then you're living in the moment, not thinking about how much longer you have to run, or about anything besides the way you feel in that split second and the way that your body's moving. Then you're flying over the track, and you never want it to end.
Those are performance moments, and they make all the moments when you can't peform- when you don't want to get out of bed and train, or when you skip the going out late and the chocolate cake- completely worth it. Portugal was full of performance moments. Maybe I'm greedy to ask, but I want more of them. I want performance moments in every race I have while I'm still here. I want to run personal records, and feel that flying unstoppable feeling. I'm trying so hard to hold on to the feeling of Portugal and to not forget what all those performance moments were like.

Performance moments or not, I know that the year I've had training with TDR has been one of the best things I've ever done. I don't need to run any certain times or win any races to know that- but still, performance would be nice.

So it's decided: I'm going to perform.

TDR in Portugal

2010-05-12T09:19:00.000-07:00

Monday 26/04/10
4:30 p.m. ~ 45 minute run

We're in Portugal.

Tuesday 27/04/10
8:00 a.m. ~ 15 minutes walking on the beach, 40 minutes strength training by the bridge w/sand sprints, 15 minutes walking back on the beach.
4:30 p.m. ~ "Swimming pool Training:" strength training circuit in the playgournd, strength training lawn chairs, strength training swimming pool

Walking to the grocery store in Birkenstocks and shorts. Waking up to the sun in the window. Walking on the beach at 8.00 a.m. People watching us train. Buying fresh bread from the Portuguese lady at the bakery. Talking for 45 minutes before we took a shower. Practicing the word "schatje."

Wednesday 28/04/10
9.00 a.m. ~ 20 minute warm up run to the track, 15 minutes running and jumping exercises, 5x 30m build up sprints, 2x (3x800m) tempo, 5 minutes cooling down in the water, 20 minute cool down run
4.30 p.m. ~ 30 minute easy run

Thursday 29/04/10
8.00 a.m. ~ 10 minute warm up run, 30 minutes running/jumping drills, 5x 60% decline sprints, 8 minutes zone 2&3, 4 x 2 minutes zone 3 & 4, 2 x 4 minutes zone 3 & 4, 10 minute cool down run
11.30 a.m. ~ strength training; 3x abs, shoulders, lunges, pectorals, biking circuit

Friday 30/04/10
8:30 a.m. ~ 20 minute warm up run to the track, 20 minutes individual warm ups, 5 x 75m build up sprints, 7 x 300m tempo, cooling down in the water, 20 minute cool down run
4:30 p.m. ~ 45 minute run

Saturday 01/05/10
10:30 a.m. ~ one hour strength training: arms, abs, shoulders, squats, running in shallow water
4:30 p.m. ~ 10 minutes warming up, 5 minutes running and jumping drills, 3 x (5x60m hill sprints), 10 minutes cooling down

Talking to Shannon about running. Everyone falling in the swimming pool.

Sunday 02/05/10
Rest Day

Spain. Biking through the salt marsh. Having to be quiet so the flamingos don't fly away. Taking the ferry to Spain. Forced Titanic moments. The waiter who didn't speak English. "Mixed sandwiches" on white bread with nothing.

Monday 03/05/10
8:30 a.m. ~ 20 minutes warming up to the track, 30 minutes strength with medicine bals, 4x 60m build up sprints, 2 x (3x800m) tempos with speed increase, legs in cold water, 15 minute cool down run from the trac
4:30 p.m. ~ 25 minutes walking up the beach, 20 minutes strength training: abs, arms, jumping, 25 minutes walking back

Tuesday 04/05/10
8:00 a.m. ~ 45 minute run in zone 1&2
4:30 p.m. ~ 30 minutes strength training with lawn chairs: jumping, push-ups, abs, 25 minutes shallow pool strength training: skipping w/waterbottles, arm strength w/waterbottles, etc. 20 min deep pool strength training: breaststroke, underwater swimming, front crawl, deep water running.

Wednesday 05/05/10
7:30 a.m. ~ 15 minutes walking on the beach, 30 minutes running and jumping drills, sand sprinting, 15 minutes walking back on the beach, 30 minutes light strength and running drills in the sea
11:00 a.m. ~ strength training circuits x2
5:00 p.m. ~ 45 minutes super easy run

Being taken so seriously. Super easy runs. Fresh bread w/hazelnut spread. The freezing cold swimming pool. Laughing at the Portugese waiters. Being photographed in the freezing cold sea.

Thursday 06/05/10
9:00 a.m. ~ 20 minutes warm up run to the track, 20 minutes warm up exercises, stretching, skipping, jumping, arm pumping, 8x40 m build up sprints, 2 x (500m-300m-100m-300m-500m), 20 minutes cooling down back to the hotel
4:30 p.m. ~ 30 minute easy run

Long conversations. Race planning. This year was completely worth it.

Friday 07/05/10
8:00 a.m. ~ "De zout vlakte" 15 kilometer build up run
4:30 p.m. ~ Short warm up, 10 minutes drills, 7 x 100m downhill sprints, short cool down

Being caught up to by the best from TDR. Making it to the top of the biggest hill on my toes. Red flowers by hite houses. Faster, and faster, and faster.

Saturday 08/05/10
Rest

Sunday 09/05/10
9:00 a.m. ~ 10 minute warm up jog, 15 minutes running exercises, 5x60m speed-ups, 3 x 300m tempo, 2x 400m tempo, 500m tempo, 600m tempo, 3x100m full out, 10 minutes cooling down in the water, 10 minute cool down run.

The last workout in Portugal. Shaking hands. What's going to happen this season.

There's much, much more to come: The Passion, Perfection, Performance parts of Portugal.

Two Weeks Notice

2010-04-25T08:04:00.001-07:00

To everyone who is dedicated enough to check my blog more often than every two weeks it will be a while before you get another post from me.
Tomorrow at 2:45 a.m. I'm leaving Akersloot for two weeks of training in: Portugal.
Hopefully I'll be able to catch up on everything that happens when I get back...
Wish me luck!

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words (not that I believe that)

2010-04-17T08:07:00.000-07:00

Texel

2010-04-13T05:16:00.001-07:00

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.

Goodbye

2010-04-11T08:59:00.000-07:00

I hate saying goodbye. It's not really harder to guess where I get that from, since anyone who has ever had to say goodbye to my dad can clearly see that he's not a big fan of goodbye's either. I think I've gotten a little bit better here, because the goodbyes are always extremely long and drawn out. You say goodbye to someone and kiss them three times, then you talk for a while longer, say goodbye again, hug, and after this has been repeated a few times it's finally over. Still, I'm no pro.

Luckily I didn't have to say goodbye to Johanna right away on Monday. Her flight didn't leave until 1:20 in the afternoon, and first I had a 5 kilometer race. Milja, Johanna, Anita, Isabel, and Peter all came to watch. On Sunday night I had a hyper hour or so where I got really nervous to race on Monday. It wasn't a big important race or anything, but I hadn't done a race for a while, and I wanted to see an improvement in my times. Monday morning I was a little bit calmer than I had been on Sunday night and once I had all my clothes together and I'd jogged around a little bit I was pretty much ready to go.
In the end the race went fairly well. I'd wanted to run the 5 kilometers in 21 minutes, and I ended up running it in 21:31 or so, but I wasn't too disappointed. When you race sometimes you have the feeling that it didn't go very well, and sometimes you have the feeling that it did go well. On Monday I had the feeling that I'd raced well, so I was happy. Before I came here I would never have been able to run 5 kilometers that fast. At that same pace I would have had a 4kilometer personal record, so that is definitely something to be happy about. Portugal, here I come! Only two weeks to go.

After I got done racing Milja and Peter's taxi services both got to work. Milja went with Johanna to Schipol right away while I changed my clothes, cooled down, and stretched. Then Peter and I came afterwards. We still had enough time to drink something at the airport, but we all had that kind of melancholy-there's-a-goodbye-coming feeling, so we didn't sit for too long. We brought Johanna to the security gate, and then waited until we couldn't see her anymore to go.

Then she was gone...
I'm so happy that Johanna got to come. I'm happy that I got to show her everything here, that she ate Easter brunch with us and got meet my family here, and that she was there to watch me run on Sunday. Hopefully it won't be so long before I get to see her again.

Showing Off

2010-04-05T10:09:00.000-07:00

After seven (almost eight) months of living here, I finally got to show my life off to someone. I can blog about everything I do, write e-mails to my family, and tell my friends about it on skype, but it's not the same. Until you've been here you don't really understand what it's like. Eating stroopwaffels while you're soaking in the sun in Amsterdam, sitting around the table with the family, watching fields full of windmills and lambs going by, being blown away by the super strong wind- these are only things that you can actually feel if you're here.

This weekend was show off weekend: I showed off my Dutch, I showed of the Netherlands, and I showed off my host family to Johanna. The more important thing is that I got to spend time with her, which I don't get to do very often. We always manage to jump right in where we left off when we see each other again- I guess that's what happens when you've known someone so long. Plus, over the weekend I got to cross a few things off of my "To Do in Holland" list.

On Thursday I woke up incredibly nauseous, with a horrible cold and a splitting headache. Obviously I couldn't go to school feeling like that. Instead I went for a run, cleaned my room and got ready for Johanna to come in the afternoon. After I ran I spent a lot of time sitting around and waiting. When her plane landed we had to stand for a long time and watch her on the other side of the glass while she waited for her suitcase. She did finally get to come out with it and we ran into each others arms (queu heart wrenching music). Johanna had plenty of time to study the Dutch landscape on our way to Akersloot because we got stuck in the last-day-of-work-before-Easter traffic jam. When we got back we brought Johanna with us to the grocery store (I have this weird love of going to the grocery store here, so why wouldn't she?) and then home for dinner. The weather was nice so we thought that it would be a good experience to bring Misha (the new puppy) to the beach with us for an evening walk. We made it about ten steps along the beach before we decided that it was way too windy and cold to walk on the beach. Instead we went and sat in the restaurant for a while, then braved the wind again on our way to the car.

Friday morning I woke up bright and early and went for a run. For breakfast I got to show off one of the finest Dutch delicacies- hagelslag. Hagelslag is amazing. You know the sprinkles in America that are these dried up pieces of sugar with color on them? Hagelslag looks like sprinkles, but it's complete chocolate. And you're allowed to eat it on your bread. Whenever you want. So we ate hagelslag on our bread, and then we walked to the bus station that would take us to the train station that would take us to Amsterdam. On our way to the bus stop we walked behind what we thought was a sweet old lady. She stayed sweet for a while, but then all of a sudden she turned angry. The whole time Johanna and I were speaking Swedish to each other in the bus stop and Johanna was leaning against the side of that glass wall that is always around a bus stop. All of a sudden she turned to us all angrily and said, "Kijkuit! (watch out). That was a little strange, but we didn't really think that much of it. Then, once we got on the bus she sat in front with one of her friends and the two of us sat in the back. The "sweet old lady" kept turning around and yelling at us in Dutch to be quiet, and talking super loudly to her other old lady friend about how we were talking way too loud. I'm not sure what it was about our Swedish speaking that made the old lady so upset, but we were using completely normal inside voices to talk to each other. Luckily we got away from the angry lady as soon as we got on the train and the rest of the trip to Amsterdam was fairly uneventful.

On Thursday night we had made all sorts of plans for what we wanted to do in Amsterdam and we had finally decided on going to the Madame Tusseaud or the Anne Frank house. But on Friday morning when we looked online, it turned out that tickets for the Anne Frank house were completely sold out and the Madame Tusseaud website wouldn't work at all so we couldn't order tickets. Of course without tickets we would have had to wait in line all day. Instead, when we got to Amsterdam we took a scenic route to the Anne Frank house so that Johanna could at least say she'd seen the outside of it. Then we walked back to the centrum of Amsterdam and I decided we should try to find the Red Light District so Johanna could see what it was like. The problem with finding the Red Light District is that it's a little awkward to go up to someone and ask where it is, so after wondering around for an hour or so I gave up on trying to find it. We did find lots of coffee shops, and sex stores that gave a small impression of one of Amsterdam's claims to fame.

Since we couldn't get into the Anne Frank house and we couldn't find the Red Light District, we decided to give up on being tourists, find something to eat, and shop. We ate sandwiches on ciabatta bread and then had enough energy back to shop for the entire rest of the afternoon. Around 5:00 or so we started to drag again, but we still wanted to shop a little more before we went back. Neither of us was really hungry, but we figured that we could buy something really little in a cafe and then sit there for a while. Our first mistake was that we picked a cafe in the middle of the main shopping street with a menu in English. This is never a good sign when it comes to prices. When we walked in we had to wait forever before someone finally came to take our order and then the girl behind the counter was not a nice person. Johanna and I had decided that we were going to get a tiny bowl of cheap vanilla ice cream and share it, and then just drink water. When I tried to tell this to the waitress she got all crabby and told me that they didn't have vanilla ice cream. She also didn't seem able to explain why they didn't have any vanilla ice cream when it said that they had vanilla ice cream on the menu. Usually I'm a pretty assertive person, but my Dutch wasn't doing very well since I'd spent the entire day speaking Swedish with Johanna. I was so intimidated by the angry girl that I gave up and order the super expensive and super tiny container of Ben and Jerry's for 3,50 euros. Since we were going to eat it with the two of us I asked for two spoons to go with it. Those tiny containers of Ben and Jerry's all have that wooden stick in there that your supposed to use to eat it. The cashier pointed this out to me, but then I pointed out that there were two of us. "Fine," she said. "But you can only have one spoon and you have to bring it back." Really we should have walked out of the cafe at this point, but both of us were exhausted and just wanted to sit down. Plus we were thirsty and we wanted water. I ordered two glasses of water. What was our total? Nine euros. The ice cream was 3,50. Two glasses of water was 5,50. We didn't even have ice in our water!

Once I had stopped fuming about how incredibly horrible the service was and how much we had paid for our water, we ate the ice cream (or I tried to eat my ice cream with that stupid stick that came with it) and had a little bit more energy to shop for a few more hours.

With the train and Taxi Milja we were back in Akersloot by 8:00. We ate, changed clothes, put on make-up, and at 10:00 left for one of my friends houses in another town. We went to the usual bar with four of my friends from school. It's hard enough being in a group wtih people who have three different native languages, but being in a dark crowded bar makes it much harder to. My friends did a good job speaking mostly English though and I think Johanna felt welcome. She did have the same look on her face that I probably had the first time I went out to a bar. It's the "Am I Really Standing in a Bar With a Drink in My Hand" look. We didn't stay out that late though, because we both wanted to be able to get up the next morning and have another full day.

We got up at 8:30 or so on Saturday, both took showers, ate a quick breakfast, and then left with Milja for the Keukenhof. The Keukenhof is a famous tulip garden in the Netherlands. People come from all over the world to see the tulips there in the spring. Picture all of these beautiuful green gardens with tons of tourists swarming everywhere and taking a million pictures. My dad would have had a panic attack after about two minutes. Unfortunately, Johanna came a little bit early for the tulips, so there were hardly any tulips outside. There was an inside nursery that was full of tulips though, and walking outside was still pretty because everything was so green and fresh. Milja and I decided that we have to go back, but we couldn't figure out a time when we'd be able to go before it closes. In the end we figured that it would have to be on another day when I was as sick as I was on Thursday. Apparently the Keukenhof has a theme for the whole park every year. This year the theme is Russia, so there were displays with "Russian" things all over the place. Right when you walked in there was a motorcycle with a side wagon, in one of the greenhouses there were planets hanging up (which a British tourist managed to knock down), and another greenhouse was the ballet house. We spent the whole morning at the Keukenhof fighting all of the other tourists for a good place to take a picture, and smelling the flowers.

I'd been feeling guilty about Saturday afternoon because I knew I had to go to running practice and leave Johanna. On our way back from the Keukenhof I realized it was probably okay that I had to leave, because Johanna could keep her eyes open for about thirty seconds at a time before they would shut again and she'd nod off. This reminded me of how exhausting it really is to travel and to constantly be surrounded by a language you don't understand. When I went to the training I left Johanna in bed with a book and orders to take a nap. In the end she didn't sleep very long, because instead her and Milja went to the Akersloot mill and to a farm with lambs. The mill was in the plans the whole time and I had been there a few weeks ago with Oma and Opa, so I wasn't missing anything new. The lambs are a sore subject though- petting lambs is on my list of things to do and now, while I still haven't done it, Johanna has. I'll be a good friend though and be happy for her that she got to experience something new.

While Milja and Johanna were frolicking with the lambs I spent two hours training (one hour of which was in the pouring rain, and another hour of which was in the shining sun). After the training the whole team listened to a presentation on eating right. I'd been looking forward to this presentation since I first got here, because it seems like with how much my training has changed since I've come here that my eating habits should change a little bit too. Of course, they have changed since I'm in a new country with new food, but I've felt a little bit lost when it comes to what I really should be eating; what times, how much, etc. The bottom line turned out to be fairly obvious- don't eat too much fat; eat lots of grains, different fruits and vegetables, egg whites, and lean meat. We'll see what we can do with that...

After the presentation I was whisked away without even taking a shower (I did my best with the bathroom sink and some perfume) and we drove to the train station. We took the train to Amsterdam and then the metro to the Theater Carre. Before Johanna came, we were planning what we were going to do with her and I kept saying that I wanted to go to a performance of some sort in Amsterdam- a singer, or a band, or something. We couldn't find anything good while Johanna was here, so eventually I gave up on that idea. On the Friday after Johanna got here Milja found a street dance group called Blaze in the newspaper. Blaze is an international street dance group that was began in England and just happened to be on tour in Amsterdam while Johanna was here. How perfect is that? So Milja brought Johanna, Taiana, one of Taiana's friends, and me to see Blaze. The performance was an hour and a half and it felt like only thirty minutes. Watching them dance was completely absorbing. Some of the things they did seemed physically impossible and the choreography was flawless. If it wasn't for the fact that all the girls in the group had to wear these really ugly pants with long crotches (and the fact that I can't dance at all), I would start trying to be a professional street dancer right now.

Instead of taking the metro back to the central station after the performance we walked; and we decided to walk through the Red Light District since Johanna and I hadn't been able to find it while we were in Amsterdam. It wasn't all that late, 10:00 or so, which isn't late enough for it to be unsafe yet. Still, I think we were all a little bit shocked when we got there. The street was incredibly crowded not only with tourists, but also with groups of men standing outside of the windows trying to decide which girl they wanted to go in to. The girls themselves were all wearing white lingerie and standing under blue lights which made them seem way more promiscous and exposed. To give it a little bit more of a "real" feel, the smell of pot was everywhere. Milja turned to Johanna right away and tried to convince her that not all of Amsterdam is like the Red Light District. We made it completely unscathed and a little less naive back to the train station.

On Easter Sunday we finally had time to sleep in. Once we were dressed and ready we helped a little with getting the table ready for everyone who was coming over for Easter Brunch. We were in charge of bread, hagelslag, meat, orange juice, and coffee. Inge brought tulband, which is white bunt cake. Anita made scrambled eggs with potatoes and feta cheese. Eric and Marja brought salmon and tuna salads, plus dessert which was fruit with a sort of sweet yogurt. Peter brought chocolate Easter eggs which- like any chocolate- have turned out to be a huge weakness for me. We introduced Johanna to everyone and tried to keep her a little updated on the conversation. It was hard though, because the conversation switched to something else about every two minutes, someone was always talking about something different, and people are always laughing about something that isn't funny when you explain it all over again.

We sat by the Easter brunch for three hours. I did my very best not to eat too much because I knew I had to race the next day, but it was hard. I'm one of those people who isn't very good at not eating after I'm full. If there's food sitting in front of my nose it takes a huge amount of will power and concentration not to eat it. And there was a lot of food sitting in front of my nose. As usual though, it was nice to sit with the entire family and have a big meal.

Everyone left in the middle of the afternoon and then Peter, Milja, Johanna, and I got in the car again and drove to Vollendam- a typical touristic Dutch town. Vollendam is on the sea and has a huge fishing industry plus a huge tourist industry. There's a ton of stores with Dutch souveniers, restaurants selling fish, ice cream shops, and a few stores where you can dress up in typical Dutch clothing and have your picture taking.

I promised Milja I wouldn't complain about this in my blog, so I'm going to be objective and tell this story just the way it happened:

We walk by one of these stores where you can dress up and have your picture taken and Milja says, "Come on, you and Johanna have to do this." I protest a little bit but figure it can't be that bad, so we go in the store with her. Once I walk into the store I start protesting a lot. This is because the clothes that you have to put on and have your picture taken in are absolutely hideous. They aren't okay, they aren't just a little bit ugly: they're absolutely hideous. (That doesn't count as complaining either, that's just stating the facts) Anyway, once we were inside I start protesting big time. After about five minutes of arguing with Milja I realize I could probably ask Johanna what she wants to do, or at least fill her in on what Milja wants us to do. Once she realizes that what she wants is for us to put the horrible clothes on and have our picture taken she shakes her head too and says no way. I'm finally getting to the point where I think I've won the argument and we can go back outside in the fresh air when Milja comes with her winning argument. "I'm only asking this one thing from you," she says. "You've been living in my house for seventh months, and I've taken such good care of you. Do this for me."

The people who work in the store got us dressed in layers and layers of wool clothes. The finishing touch was a white lacy cap and a huge pair of wooden clogs. Then we stood in front of painted backdrop of a green house with a bouquet each of fake tulips. The people who worked at the store took pictures and Milja took pictures. Now it's done; I've worn traditional Dutch clothing and I have a picture to remember it by. Plus it does feel good that I'm not indebted to Milja anymore for taking such good care of me. Who knew you could repay seven months in fifteen minutes and some wooden clogs?

We took a long way back from Vollendam and drove past the sea and through some more tiny Dutch towns. Johanna and I decided that at some point in our lives we're going to buy a huge Dutch house that looks out over the sea with a canal in the backyard. Then we're going to eat chocolate, cookies, and ice cream all day and get gloriously fat. We're still working out a few kinks in our plan, but in the meantime could we have a better dream?

On Sunday evening we took care of some last minute things for Johanna's flight home the next day and my coming race. We watched a movie and ate soup with left over bread from the Easter brunch. Her last night with us was a quiet one.

The blog from Monday is coming soon, I promise. First though I have another running practice to bike too, and a few more days of school- we'll see when I can fit the rest of the blog in. I'm a busy girl, you know...

Met Vuur In Je Ogen

2010-03-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

Everyone has a birthday, and when you have a family that lives close by each other, everyone gets together to celebrate everyone's birthday. There's a lot of birthday parties.
Last Saturday, Inge (Milja's older sister) had her birthday. Remember that first birthday party I went to right away when I got here? Yep, the one where I was absolutely terrified to walk up to everyone in the room and try to say "gefeliciteerd." Well, I've come far since then. At Inge's birthday party "gefeliciteerd" rolled off of my tongue and kissing everyone three times wasn't awkward at all. I guess you can get used to anything...
Standard birthday procedure is to eat cake right away when you get there, and then you basically keep getting appetizers until you eat dinner, then dessert, and then tea with a cookie or chocolate on the side. It's a lot of food. Peter, Milja, Taiana, and I got there a little bit later than everyone else, so they were all done with cake, but we jumped right in. Birthday cake from the bakery in Spooner is NOTHING like birthday cake from the bakeries here. Actually, as far as I know Inge didn't have a real birthday cake- she had all different kinds of "cakejes"- little cakes- that everyone could pick from. Anyway, at Inge's party (and the rest of them) we spent the afternoon sitting with everyone eating cake, nuts, appetizers, drinking tea, and talking. For dinner she had turkish bread, three kinds of salads, and chili. Inge makes such good food- by all of the family dinners she's always the one who brings the fresh vegetables and salads.
That was another birthday party gone by- luckily there's a few more to go before the year is over.

On Sunday we went on another day trip with TDR. We drove to Papendal which is sort of like the olympic city of the Netherlands. I'm making that sound really glamorous, but as far as I know the town itself isn't all that exciting. The place we were at is a hotel but it's sort of a "sport hotel." All sorts of sports meetings are held there and lots of athletes come there to train. The reason we went to Papendal was to listen to Ellen van Lange talk. She was the 1992 Olympic champion in the 800 meter dash. She started running when she was about 18, and she was 22 when she won in 1992. That race was so neat to watch because she ran at the back of the pack for the entire first 500 meters or so, and at the end she just starts to fly- she's running so beautifully- and passes everyone. (Here's the link for the youtube video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eis7ZxbHjU ) Besides telling us about herself and her training she talked about runners in general. She said that as runners we all know what it's like to be standing at the starting line of a race and ask ourselves why we would ever want to run- that we've all wished to be the person who's walking their dog on the street so that we wouldn't have to race. This is true, there's times before I race where I envy everyone around me who doesn't have to. But she also pointed out that we all love running enough to keep doing it even when we have those doubting moments, and that we always realize how worth it it is. She also told a story about how Paula Radcliffe was picked to be on a relay team not because she was a good runner but because of the "fire in her eyes."
I don't believe that having "fire in your eyes" can get you everywhere- or even very far- but somehow I still got stuck thinking about what she said. The thing is that when you see the best runners, skiiers, bikers, soccer players, dancers- they all have something about them that's a little bit different. When you're around someone with so much drive and dedication you feel it all the time, even if they're not running or skiing or doing whatever it is that they do. Maybe it's charisma, an aura, or just a vibe- or maybe it's fire in their eyes.

While the athletes with fire in their eyes are off winning olympic races and breaking records I'm making small strides too. You won't see mine in the news anytime soon, or even at the top of any results list, but I can feel it a little. Running is fun. Maybe it's because spring is coming, or because I can finally train as hard as I've been wanting too. For sure it's that I'm starting to get a little bit used to training hard and once in a while I can run laps in the amount of time I'm supposed too.

Right now it's proefwerkweek, but it's almost over. On Saturday there's a new puppy coming: Misha, a black flatcoat retriever. Over a week Johanna's coming to visit from Sweden, and on Easter Monday I'm racing 5km for the first time in a long time.
There's lambs in the fields, ducks crossing the street, and crocuses everywhere.

Happy Spring.

Little Pieces

2010-03-12T08:02:00.000-08:00

There is absolutely no way that I'm going to go back and write everything that I've thought about/done/experienced in the two weeks or so that it's been since I've last written (mostly because I can't remember it, and partly because that would take WAY too long).

A new grave has been dug in the garden here after Lara had to be put asleep last night. 15 years is pretty old for a dog, but it's sad that she's not around anymore. Now there's an empty dog bed in the living room and left over dog snacks in the cupboard. Milja misses her the most, and I have to admit that it's a little bit empty in our house without a dog. We had the decency to wait at least twelve hours before starting to look for new dogs online...

Last weekend I was back in Amsterdam for a Sunday afternoon. I went with another friend on the train, shopped (more like looked longingly at everything I wish I could buy), and in the evening rode my bike back from the train station. Amsterdam is still beautiful, old, and oh so European (and full of annoying tourists who speak British English).

Running. I'm one hundred percent back in action. Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday training with the team, but apparently being "careful" not to over do anything. Of course, I want to be in good shape for Portugal. Portugal = two weeks of training on the coast with TDR (special thanks to sponsor Will Conijn Consultancy ; ). Twice a day running, athletes from around Europe, and did I mention it's Portugal? What could be more exciting? Then again, it's not going to be much if I'm sitting on the side lines complaining about a sore leg. So I'm planning on staying injury free and getting fast enough that I won't shame TDR in front of the other clubs.

More about running. I'll be the last person to complain about not having keys to get on the track. Last resort training with the sun setting in the dunes is great. 3x a 1000 meter loop, half climbing up the dunes over stone steps, and half running along the huge scottish highlander bulls. The sky is pink, and the air is a little springy. "Oh what a wonderful feeling..."

Proefwerkweek number three is unfortunately right around the corner. What this should mean is that I start spending hours every day after school studying, writing chapter summaries, and doing practice tests. What it actually means is that I don't have to go to school all that much, and I have to study a little bit. But you never know... maybe this will be the proefwerkweek where I buckle down and get all 10's.

As much as I try to push it away, there's a little spark of panic starting to ignite. Every time I open my agenda to plan something and end up having to flip through three months before finding an open weekend the spark gets a little bigger. Theoretically four months is a long time. But you know the saying, "time flies when you're having fun." Right now I don't want anything to do with flying time. Where can I find some crawling time?

Beautiful Women

2010-02-28T06:35:00.000-08:00

Cabin 275 - Het Land van Bartje - Ees - Drenthe - The Netherlands

2010-02-28T04:47:00.000-08:00

Crocus vakantie. Oh, what a beautiful thing. No one likes February. Everything is boring in Feburary. Christmas is over, and spring isn't coming, and isn't coming, and isn't coming. School isn't over yet, it isn't even almost over. Everything is just so: bleh, normal, boring, gray. And then, then comes... the crocus vacation. A week in February with no school. Heaven. We'd been planning our vacation from last week for a while. It started out with Milja, me, Anita, and Isabel- Anita's daughter, and then we decided to Adrienne (14) and Joleen (9) to come too. Then we had to decide where to go.

The Netherlands is really tiny, which is why it's still so suprising to me that if you drive for an hour, the landscape is different, the weather is different, and the people speak a different dialect of Dutch. For our vacation we ended up two and half hours away from Akersloot; in Drenthe. Drenthe is a province of the Netherlands in the most northern part, next to Friesland (where they speak Fries... no one can understand it!). The landscape is a lot the same as here, but there's less cars, people, buildings, and cities. Almost everything is farm land, and the houses are white stone cottages with thatched roofs. The older houses are built attached to the barn's or "kop, hals, romp" (head, neck, butt) like Milja had learned at school. There's the house, an area between, and then the barn- all built together.

This is starting to sound a little bit like we drove right into the wilderness and spent a week living with the cows and the sheep. That's not really how it was... with six people we stayed in an eight person house. There were two bathrooms, a bathtub, a tanning bed, a sauna, and four two person bedrooms. So, we weren't sleeping in a barn stall or anything.

We left for Drenthe on Monday afternoon and drove straight to The Land van Bartje (the park where we stayed).

Every morning we slept in, showered, and ate a long slow breakfast. By the time we were out the door it was usually noon or so. We'd do something in the area, or drive a little ways, and then come back and cook dinner. One of our afternoons was spent walking in the woods, another one grocery shopping, and playing games. One afternoon we drove around the entire area looking at "hunnebedden" these piles of rocks (to put it eloquently) where people were buried under during the ice age. I'm trying hard here, but I can't work up all that much enthusiasm for the hunnebedden. The first stop was interesting, but after a few stops I'd pretty much had it.

Though, in defense from the hunnen (who made the hunnebedden), I have to say that it was probably pretty hard work to pile all those rocks on top of each other. And they are an improtant part of Dutch history. So, I suppose I'm glad I got to see them.

The day after we went to the hunnebedden, we drove to a seal nursery about 40 minutes away. A woman started the seal nursery from her house with just a few seals, and it's grown into something huge. People from all over the Netherlands call this nursery if they find a sick or injured seal and then the volunteers come get them. The seals go through all of these different phases of rehabilitation, and once they're healed they get released back into the wild. Seals are much cuter and more exciting than hunnebedden. The ones outside in the water, that were going to be realeased soon were super active. They made noise, and rolled around, and played with each other a ton. After we spent a little bit of time by the seals we drove back to our "Drenthe huis" through a big city called Groninge. In the fall I ran a four mile race there, but I didn't get to see very much of the city or anything. This time we walked through the centrum and went in a few of the stores. We drove back home in the dark, and everyone collapsed on the couch.

On Friday we started the drive back to North Holland, but we made a few stops along the way. Our route was through Friesland, so I can check another province of The Netherlands off my list. The first stop was a town called Sneek, where we drank coffee and Anita bought a ton of things to hang up in the garden of our school. The next stop was much longer, and that was at a planetarium in a small town. The man who lived there had built a working model of the solar system in the 1600's. Don't expect an explanation of how he did it, but the earth, the sun, the moon, and all of the planets rotated around each other at the same speed that they actually do. It was a sort of huge clock made out of 10,000 rotating pegs. There was a weight hanging from a pendulum, and the weight made the pegs move and everything else with them. There were clocks that showed the date, the time, which star sign it is now, and the year. There I was in Friesland- looking at our entire solar system!

After we left the planetarium we made another very short stop by the afsluitdijk. It's a dike that separates the North Sea from the Ijsselmeer. The road is 32 km long, and that's all it is. The road, on water on both sides. We got out of the car for about 30 seconds, took a picture, and then got back in. The wind here is nothing to laugh about!

There you have it. A week of vacation in Drenthe, the Netherlands. Now when I read about the things we went to see, it doesn't sound like that much, but it was vacation, and what made it vacation wasn't running around all day long seeing even more hunnebedden, and museums, and who knows what. What made it vacation was being able to sleep in until 8:00, and sitting at the breakfast table for two hours. It was playing games when it rained outside, putting on mud masks, drinking cappucinos, sitting in the bathtub and the sauna, watching the younger girls get incredibly hyper from all the candy they ate, and baking chocolate chip cookies in the microwave. Vacation can't get much better than that.

FYI

2010-02-11T06:36:00.000-08:00

For everyone who has just been dying to know.... I passed the Dutch test! 78 out of 83 points, so it wasn't as much of a problem as I thought is was going to be. Whew! I'm so happy that's out of the way. Not that there's any real consequences for not passing the test, but like I said before: I would have been SO embarrassed.

Since it's almost next weekend, I think it's about time to write about last weekend. Friday night was another non-fitness night for Milja. When I first got here, she told me right away how she likes to go the the fitness center every Friday after work. Well, that hasn't happened in about two months. T'here's always SOMETHING, and even though I won't take the blame for every Friday she didn't get to work out, I do have to say I'm probably responsible for the majority of them. I had worked out earlier in the day, so by the time Milja came home I was completely showered and ready to go watch salsa dancing in Amsterdam. Anita loves things like salsa dancing and concerts, so we all (Milja and me, Anita and Isabel, and Anita's friend and her daughter) got tickets to go watch some salsa dancer in a theater on the Leidseplein (sp?). Basically the only place's I've really been in Amsterdam are the Dam, where the main shopping street is close to, and the Red Light District. The two most important places, right? I'd never been to the Leidseplein before, and I don't know if it's just a really different part of Amsterdam, or if everything changes at night, but I had another one of those "I'm SO in Europe right now" moments. There were lights all through the streets, and all of the restaurants and cafes were full of people. It's hard to explain; there's not just one thing you can point out that makes it feel so Europy (yes, I just made that word up), it's more of a feeling. And the feeling was definitely there. Before we went to the theater we ate at a Mexican restuarant. I was a little bit surprised at how many English speaking people there were walking through the streets, and ordering food in English. I guess not all of the tourists that come to the Netherlands come to Akersloot where I can see them.

After eating we walked to the theater and went in right in time to sit at the last of three tables. Other than that it was standing room. At first we thought we were really smart for coming so early and getting a table, but as soon as the theatre started to fill up we realized that we had to stand up anyway, or we wouldn't be able to see anything. Once the dancers started, though, I forgot that I was standing up, because watching them was so interesting. The group was about five girls and three guys. A few of the girls could speak enough Dutch to tell the crowd what was going on, but all of the songs were in Spanish. The beat to salsa music is so fun to listen to- you don't get bored at all. And watching them dance is amazing. When they first walked into the theater the girls just looked like normal people, and after they started dancing they were incredibly beautiful. Their dancing has inspired me to be a salsa dancer in my next life- since we all know it's definitely not going to work out in this one. My favorite song? First, the one about bon-bons, because everyone likes chocolate (I take mine liquor free though) and second, the song about going on a diet. They sang about all of the amazing Dutch foods that make them fat when they come here, and how they always say that they're going to start on a diet... tomorrow.

Saturday was a quiet day. I slept in, went to the fitness center, did a little bit of homework, and grocery shopped with Milja. For dinner we ate fish by Opa, and everyone was in bed early. On Sunday, Milja, Peter, and I drove to Haarlem to do a walking tour of the "hofjes." Haarlem is another big city about half an hour away from us with the car- in the same directino as Amsterdam. "Hofjes" are houses from the olden days that are all really small and built around a type of courtyard. I did learn a little bit more about the "hofjes" than that, but I don't want to explain it innacurately, so I just won't try at all. When we first got to Haarlem in the morning it was all misty outside, and there was no one on the streets at all. Everything was so quiet and pretty, and we looked at the houses on the canals, and all of the hofjes. The "I'm SO in Europe right now" feeling came back again for the second time in the weekend. We took a break about halfway through the morning and sat in a cafe, then kept going on the route. The streets got a little bit busier as we went along, and before we went back at the end of the day we went in a few of the stores that were just starting to open. In the afternoon we watched Taiana play handball and Opa came and ate dinner with us.

Another important thing this week: I finally started running with TDR again. The physical therapist wrote a two week program for me, so I get to go to the practices, but not do all of the same things that the rest of the girls on the team are doing. I don't feel like I'm doin very much; the training plan involves lots of slow repeats and lots of resting, but I guess it's important to start slow. Mostly I'm just happy not to be spending my Tuesday and Thursday nights on the stationary bike anymore. Or worse- in front of the t.v. Hopefully it won't take too long to get back in shape, and I'll stay healed and inury free!

A Few Moments...

2010-02-02T01:54:00.000-08:00

Strange Things

2010-02-02T01:17:00.000-08:00

It doesn't feel that long ago that I walked out of security in the Amsterdam airport, went home with some strangers to their strange house, in a strange town, in a strange country. I ate some strange food, heard a strange language, went to a strange school, talked to strange kids.

Slowly it became a little bit less strange. The strangers became my family, the strange house became a home where I lie on the couch and leave my clothes on the floor. The strange city became a place where I wave to people, the strange country became a place I don't want to leave. I cook the strange food, the strange language rolls off my tongue, I find my way through the strange school, and the strange kids want to come to Wisconsin someday.

And just after the strange things all stopped being so strange, and I started getting used to them not being strange, I realized that ten months was halfway over.

There's a pink piece of tagboard hanging on the kitchen door with things I still want to do here. Lots of people have written things on the list, and it's getting so full it's going to be a strain to get even half of them done. I want to do all of the things on the list, and much more than that. Also though, I just want to be here. The things on the list are all fun Dutch things to do, but most of the things that are the best for me here aren't the things that you think of when you think of the Netherlands, they're just... "life things" and people, like sitting for an hour after dinner and talking, biking to school in the rain, grocery shopping in the tiny grocery store, candles on at night, drinking tea.

But then I miss the "life" things at home too, and the people. There's a million little things a day that make me think of home, the most random things bring this wave of memories over the tiniest, most unimportant "life" things that aren't a part of my life here. The other day I missed the Cosmopolitan magazine I always used to get in the mail so much. And eating out a few weekends ago made me think of my mom and how when we were little she always used to tell stories about what was going on in the kitchen while we were waiting for our food to come. The sound of bike wheels on the pavement still says "Dad" to me and the youngest kids in school with their gameboys and tough swagger are so Joakim. I see my friends in everything too, and even things that remind me of people I didn't even realized I missed.

Strange things that aren't strange anymore, "life things" I'm going to miss, "life things" I do miss. There's no way to describe everything going on my head. How incredibly happy I'm going to be to go home again... and how incredibly sad I'm going to be to leave.
Deciding to come here was the best decision I've ever made in my life.

"The Test"

2010-01-27T08:36:00.000-08:00

Once again, I missed a few weeks, and though I could go back and write about everything that happened in great detail, I won't because it would be boring to write, and boring to read. I will say that Taiana turned 18 (the poster with "eindelijk volwassen"- finally grown-up- is still on the wall) and she had a great party to celebrate. Also I spent a day in Den Haag with Milja and her dad picking up my Swedish passport, visiting the Dutch government buildings, and seeing some Dutch art. And, I'm still not running with TDR, but am getting closer every day.

Saturday was "The Test." All of the hours that I spent doing lessons out of my blue "green book" that I got when I first came here, the Dutch grammar I've worked so hard to perfect, the nights I spent listening to Dutch tapes before I fell asleep, finally paid off.

Not.

There were no hours spent doing lessons out of my blue "green book" (well, maybe one, but not much more), no hard work spent perfecting my Dutch grammar, and definitely no nights listening to Dutch tapes. What there has been is countless mistakes that made me blush bright red, a varity of imitations of my "Wisconsin" accent, Swedish words that I creatively turned Dutch, several nights of poorly dreamt Dutch, physics books in Dutch, and months of hearing almost nothing other than Dutch. And I can only hope it paid off. We knew from the beginning of the year that we would have a Dutch test halfway through the year, which is why we got the blue "green book" from AFS Netherlands to study from.
In my own defense, I really didn't need the blue "green book" to learn Dutch. Now, after five months here I can get across just about any point that I want, even if I have to repeat the sentence a couple of times. The worst case scenario is that I get frustrated after the third time and end up yelling what I wanted to say instead of using a normal tone of voice, but it always works out in the end. Nobody speaks English to me anymore except for people who have just met me, but I'm not even going to get started on that because it makes me SO MAD. Phone conversations with people I don't know are also still hard, but most of the time they work out.

About the test. All of the AFS Netherlands students, whether they were from Indonesia, Hong Kong, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, or America, had to take the test. Half of us took it last Saturday and the other half took it on Sunday. We had to go to a city called Utrecht- an hour away by train, which turned out to be an incredibly beautiful city. The test started out with a 100 minute reading test. The instructions, the text, and the multiple choice questions were all in Dutch. When I first started the reading test I panicked a little right away because the first thing I saw was a packet full of text about all sorts of complicated subjects. Once you started reading though, and trying to answer the questions, it turned out that you didn't have to know the exact meaning of most of the hard words to be able to answer the questions. The difficulty of the words did make it harder to focus on the text, but overall I think that the reading part of the test went okay. After the reading test came the real hard part.
I was expecting the listening test to be easy, because listening tests aren't hard. Though I guess that my experience with listening tests doesn't go much further than my English class here, which definitely should be easy for me. The subjects of the interviews in the listening test were so boring and complicated, I can't even remember most of them. I know that the first one was about a lady who made jewelry, that one wasn't too hard. Then, there was one about a woman who gives driving lessons to people who have to drive company cars- or something like that, I know that part didn't go very well. The last one I can remember was supposed to be a lesson in higher education about caulking (sp?). Really, where would I ever have learned the words about that in Dutch? Besides the fact that the subject of all the questions in the listening test were hard, it was hard to focus for a full 70 minutes. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it went well, but I'm really not confident about the listening test- or the reading test for that matter.

Sometime this week the results from our tests come in the mail. There's no real consequences if you don't pass the test except that you have to take another one in a few months. If your test results are in the best top three, then you get to take another harder test (yay! who wouldn't want that?) that is apparently the standard Dutch test for immigrants, or something like that. I know for sure I won't be in the top three, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I passed, because I will be extremely embarrassed if I didn't. Milja says that it's okay as long as I did my best, but she always says that and it's something we generally disagree about. So, if my best wasn't good enough to pass the test, I'm still going to be embarrassed!

And the rest of you are all keeping your fingers crossed for me too, right?

Days of the Week

2010-01-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

Should we start by talking about my feelings? The week started out a lot bit rough, not because I was homesick or anything. Homesickness is way behind me now. I mean, the year is almost halfway over. (THE YEAR IS ALMOST HALFWAY OVER?!) My frustration with not being allowed to run, combined with proefwerkweek (I explained that already- exam week, remember?), combined with who-knows-what-else, made me go a little bit crazy during the beginning of the week. On Thursday the week started to go a little bit better, though I did have an incident with my debit card.

The incident goes something like this:

Thursday afternoon I decide I need to go to the ATM and get some money so that I can pay the lady who's going to cut my hair later in the afternoon. I ride my bike happily to the ATM on my way to the fitness. Standing in front of the ATM I start to think about my pincode. "Gosh, I think to myself, I haven't used my debit card for a while. Do I still know my pin number?" I laugh at the idea of forgetting the number I've punched in so many times, in so many different stores. Like that would ever happen! I punch in the number and choose the amount of money I want to get from the ATM. The machine takes a while and then says, "You have entered the wrong pin number. Please try again." I laugh joyfully to myself, thinking that my finger must have slipped, and punch the pin code in one more time. I look around at all of the seagulls flying in the air, and the bikers riding along the canal as I wait for the machine. It beeps. "You have punched in the wrong pin code, please try again." My smile begins to slowly turn into a frown. "Did I really have the wrong number?" I think. I stand still looking at the machine for a while and contemplating it some more. Finally I smile again. I had punched in the wrong number! What was I thinking? Singing along to my iPod I punch in the right pin number that has just come to me. I stand patiently with my hand at the slot in the machine waiting for my money to come out. It doesn't. The machine beeps again. "Your pin number was not correct. This bank card is no longer usable." Oops, apparently my epiphone of the right number wasn't so brilliant as I'd thought.

What did I do next? Well, I used all of the independence that I've gained from being on my own in a strange country to contact the person I've become very dependent on. Milja! She didn't answer her phone right away, but of course she called me back during the next two minutes. Her first suggestion of going to the bank and asking them to fix it for me didn't work, since the bank was for some reason closed. After the second time I interrupted her meeting with a client (in my defense, I didn't know she was in a meeting), she convinced me that we would figure it out, and I let her get back to work.

Friday was also a day with a lot of feelings, though I didn't majorly mess anything up. First, I had to go to the physical therapist early in the morning, and she said that I wasn't going to be allowed to run again until all the pain in my leg was gone. It's not that I'm ever in a lot of pain, it's that most of the time I have a little bit of pain and if someone (for example the physical therapist) were to press down on the spot where it hurts, then I would temporarily be a lot of pain. The fact that she said I had to wait until the pain was completely gone was scary, because until then it hadn't been going away very quickly, and I hate the thought of not being able to run when I have the opportunity to run with TDR. After going to the physical therapist, I went to school to take my Spanish test. Let me just say that my Swedish is barely making it through the process of learning Dutch and my English is also suffering a little. My Spanish is completely gone. This made the Spanish test a little bit of a struggle, and when I was done I had a horrible feeling about how I did. We still don't have the results back, so that horrible feeling hasn't been put to rest yet.

When I got home from school around 11:00 on Friday, I spent a few hours feeling sorry for myself and laying on the couch. I tried eating some chocolate to make me feel better, but that didn't work very well, and only made me feel guilty for eating junk food when I wouldn't be able to run it off. Luckily, I didn't have to spend the entire afternoon laying around, because Danique (one of the few girls I know who lives in Akersloot) and the neighbor girl, Pip who's eight, came over to help me make apple pie. They do have apple pie in the Netherlands, but it's more like apple cake. We made apple pie (though the Dutch kind is really good too). The afternoon with Danique and Pip made me feel much better for a while, which proves the fact that it's hard to feel sad if you're busy. After they left I still didn't have much time to wallow in self pity, because the kitchen was an absolute disaster area and I wanted to clean it up before Milja came home.

When Milja got home from work though, I told her everything that the physical therapist said and of course in the process of explaining it got myself all worked up again. Then Milja decided that we weren't going to sit on the couch all night, we were going to do something. She called Anita, and then we went to her flat for a few hours in the evening and planned the trip we're going to take in the February vacation. We're going to Drenton, another province of the Netherlands, and staying in a cabin there. Who would have known, Planning the vacation did actually make me feel better (the house has a sauna! and a tanning bed!).

What else happened over the week? Saturday I went out with Danique, for the first time without Taiana... I'm growing up!
Sunday we ice skated with all of the other students from AFS, which was fun, because I got to see everyone that I hadn't seen in forever, and catch up on what was going on in everyone else's lives. Also on Sunday we went out to eat, "gezellig" as usual, plus I spilled a glass of water all over the table.
Monday was Taiana's 18th birthday, plus it was on January 18th, so she was 18 on her golden birthday. I don't think they do anything with golden birthdays here though. Peter drove me to the foot doctor that morning, and he had good news. Apparently my calf muscle is short, and my foot tilts inward. The combination is pulling too much on the tendon that runs underneath my foot, and makes it hurt. See, it wasn't even that complicated. The good news is that after I get new insoles for my shoes, it should stop hurting. We got back home early in the afternoon, and then people started coming for Taiana's birthday. By the end of the evening, almost the whole family was there, plus about ten of her friends. We all ate soup and sandwiches for dinner and sat around talking. Plus, there was a cake with a picture of her on it. And on Monday I only did one thing wrong. It involved a plastic bag of bread sitting on the stove, and a burner that I turned on... but hey, everything was okay in the end!

The Fitness Center

2010-01-13T01:37:00.001-08:00

The sun shining down on the snow is making everything sparkle like crazy. The sky is huge, and this perfect bright blue color that's usually covered by clouds, and the seagulls are flying around all light and free. The temperature is perfect for winter... that right amount of cold where your cheeks get pink, you can see your breathe, and the snow crunches a little when you walk on it, but you don't freeze to death the second you go outside.
If you go running when the weather's like this you warm up after five minutes, and you feel like you could run forever, because the air goes through your lungs so easily and it supercharges your arms and legs. When you get done your skin stays cold, but your muscles are warm, and you feel so healthy all you want to eat is fruit and vegetables. Your clothes smell like outside.

If you're biking at the fitness center when it's not too busy and the weather's like this, you can pick the bike furthest to the left and then you'll be able to see quite a bit of blue sky and a few seagulls out the window. If you're an optimistic type of person and you have to work out on the elliptical machines instead of on the bike, you'll tell yourself it's okay because you get to see much more out the window. On the other hand, sometimes the seagulls fly away, and after a while the blue sky isn't so exciting anymore.
Luckily, there are friendly people who go to the fitness center, and friendly people who work there. They have all the machines there I need for my strength training and no one ever complains when I use the bike for 70 minutes. The people trying to do a relaxed workout for physical therapy don't seem to mind that I'm panting, bright red, and sweating all over the place. So, if I have to be at a fitness center and not outside running in the crisp snow, I guess I'm at a pretty good one.

Patience is a virtue, so it's good for me to try learning it. Shin splints are not a very serious injury. With a little bit of patience I'll be back with TDR before I know it. An hour of warming up with the trainers, a hard interval practice, and then a long cool down. It will feel so good! And Sunday practices in the dunes again...

It's just that 70 minutes on the stationary bike, or 40 minutes on the elliptical feels sooooooo long.

Things That Might Happen in the Netherlands if It Snows

2010-01-07T07:47:00.001-08:00

1) It might take you four hours to go somewhere with the train that would usually take you two hours.

2) The buses might also run "a little" late.

3) Maybe the highway will also get packed up for 30 kilometers, and it might take people until 10:00 at night to get home from work.

4) The snow might melt, get rained on, refreeze, and then get snowed on again.
If this happens:

It could be extremely dangerous to bike to school.
Or to walk outside your door.
You will see lots of people fall.
Training gets canceled because the track is pure ice, and the bike path is ice and slush.
There will be no more road salt left in all of Holland.
You'll see lots of people walking with their bikes.

5) The boys who usually stand in the park and smoke might abandon smoking and throw snowballs at you when you bike by.

6) Biking might be really hard because if you look straight up the snow flies into your eyes and makes you blind.

7) When you look across the fields the only thing you see is white, and you might hardly be able to tell where the sky starts and the field stops.

8) Maybe it will be just as beautiful as it is in Wisconsin when it's just snowed and the sun shines, and there's ice on the trees- just in a different way.

9) Maybe you'll want to sit inside drinking tea, eating borenkol, sitting at the dinner table for hours, and not doing your homework.

One Little Toenail is Not That Big of a Sacrifice

2010-01-07T05:12:00.000-08:00

Something very traumatic has been happening to me over the past week. In the second toe on my right foot I have what is, according to GoAskAlice, a subungual hematoma. If the case of subungual hematoma (something which commonly occurs in athletes) is extremely serious, it could result in a lost toenail. What happened yesterday night? My toenail fell off! GoAskAlice also says that a subungual hematoma is caused if your toes are repetedly jammed or slammed against shoes or another object. I have to conclude then, that my subungual hematoma and my lost toenail (I'm not sure if they're the same thing or if subungual hematoma is what comes before it falls off) comes from the three days I spent in Soest training with Team Distance Runners. But, let me also say, that it was worth it.

On the Tuesday before New Year's (that would have been the 29th, I think), I rode with Will (one of the coaches, remember?) and another one of the athletes to Soest which is about an hour away from where we live. The whole way there Top 2000 played on the radio. Every year starting on Christmas day and until New Year's, a radio station in the Netherlands plays the top 2000 songs in Holland, starting from the bottom of the list and working their way to the top. All the way until midnight on New Year's Eve.
We had already been organized into separate houses before we got to Soest, but when we got there, there had to be a little bit of rearranging so that none of the girls would end up all alone in a house with just boys. Our house had Will, four of the boy atheletes, and another girl in it. For the entire team we had three houses.
Almost right away after we got to Soest we had to get changed and ready for the first workout of the day. We ran along the bike path to the woods, and then spent about an hour or so running there. Actually, the woods in Soest were the first woods I've seen in Holland that aren't part of the dunes, and they were really pretty. After the first workout we ate lunch, everyone took a nap, and then we all went out for the second workout of the day. Again we went all the way to the woods, did a few series of speed ups, and ran back. Then we cooked and ate dinner, though there was a little bit of battling for the shower in between the running and eating. The next day in Soest was the same routine as the day before: eat, run, sleep, eat, run, eat. It had snowed a little bit the night before, rained a little bit the afternoon before, and then frozen, so we had to be careful running the next day, and just stayed in the woods nearby. On the second day my legs were still exhausted from training twice the day before. It was nice being outside though, eating only healthy food, and spending the whole day with athletes.

Both the nights that we spent in Soest, the athletes had to give presentations about themselves. The first night we were there the group I was in- the new athletes, had to give presentations about themselves, why we decided to run with TDR, and how we see running as a part of our future. I barely managed mine in Dutch, but it was successful. The presentations that I really found interesting came on the second night. All of the athletes who had been with TDR for a year or more had to give "self-reflection" presentations. They used points that the head trainer from TDR had given as important points for an athlete to think about in a presentation at the beginning of the year. The points are authenticity, being able to learn and ask the right questions, self reflection, passion and self-motivation, performing when it's necessary, separating the more important issues from the less important issues, pro active solving of problems, courage: daring to choose, self-esteem, surrounding yourself with the right people, criticism of your environment, and resistance. Each of the athletes had to pick five of the points, and discuss how the points were relevant to themselves in addition to writing goals for the following season.
It was first of all interesting to hear their presentations about themselves, but secondly it was interesting to hear the coaches ask questions afterwards. The coaches wanted to hear things about the athletes that they found most relevant to each athlete. Watching, you could tell that the coaches asked questions that were meant to make the athletes think about themselves and how they could be better. And, you could watch the athlete really thinking about what the coaches asked.
Before TDR I'd never done anything that had to do with mentality and running, but from being a part of TDR, I can see a little bit more how incredibly important it is. All of the athletes are strong enough mentally that it helps them during the races, and in getting through the workouts. By listening to all of their presentations I could see the things that I need to do to make myself stronger mentally... an area that I've always been fairly weak in.

The third day in Soest we had a race called the Sylvester cross. I raced in the Junioren B girls, which is girls ages 15-16, but there were all sorts of different races. For the males and females who are in about their 20's, the race is much more competetive. It is also a part of the NK series, which (I think) means Dutch Championships. Those races are fun to watch, because the runners hardly even look like they're trying; the way they run is completely effortless and perfect.
For me the race went fairly well. I finished further away from the end than I usually do here, and felt strong the entire way. It was cold, something I really don't mind, and the woods were incredibly pretty. I did struggle at the end of the race where we had to run up a hill through deep sand, but that was to be expected.

We drove home from Soest with the Top 2000 playing again, and the songs were better and better since we were getting closer to 2010.

And to sum it up? Soest was definitely worth losing my toenail, even more than one if it would have come to that.

The Three Days of Christmas

2010-01-03T08:39:00.000-08:00

Now that Christmas and New Years, plus another half a week, are already past, I figured that it's time to write a little bit about all of the things that are going on here. Hopefully there are still a few people reading this after the ages that it's been since I wrote...

Christmas Eve: This is not one of the above "Three Days of Christmas." Most people here just go to work like normal on Christmas Eve, and then in the evening a lot of families go to church (actually, I think that's basically the only time that anyone ever goes to church here). To be honest I can't actually remember all that far back to Christmas Eve, but I think that we mostly just spent the day at home, nice and relaxed. In the evening we watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire until we left for the church at 11:15. Milja's parents, a friend of hers, and all of us crammed into the car and drove to the church. There was a choir singing at the church, and lots of people from the town who all knew each other. The service officially started at midnight and was mostly singing with some talking in between. As hard as I tried (not all that hard), understanding the priest didn't work out very well at all. But the Christmas songs were nice, and reminded me of the Christmas Eve services at home.
When we came out of the church at 1:00, it was snowing. How perfect is that? In this country where it's hardly ever supposed to snow, it was snowing. And huge, perfect, white Christmas snowflakes too.

The next day counts as the First Day of Christmas. The plan had been all along to drive to Peter's families house nearby Eindhoven and celebrate it with them. There was a few inches of snow on the ground when we woke up, and the road was slippery, but Milja decided that she could drive anyway, so at 9:30 we left in the direction of Eindhoven. It took us a good two hours to get there, but I've been missing long rides in the car. You have to get used to it when you live in Spooner, right? Peter's sister's house is huge, and there were tons of people there. When we got there we made the usual round of saying hi to everyone. Here's how it works: whenever you go to a party, family gathering, or actually anything with lots of people, you have to walk around and say hi to everyone individually. Most of the time you also kiss three times. When I first got to the Netherlands, I felt really weird and awkward kissing people I didn't know (and people I did know), but I'm starting to get a little bit more used to it now. It at least doesn't make me blush anymore.
The afternoon there was spent talking to everyone and playing guitar with the other kids. Then in the evening came the food. First, everybody changed into nice clothes. Then we sat at the long table that was set with all different kinds of forks, and glasses, and plates. It took us four hours or so, and we ate a five course meal. The main course was the best, and it was the classic Thanksgiving dinner- only for Christmas. There was a huge, real American sized turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, chestnut sauce, green beans, and everything that we usually eat for Thanskgiving. Then there was dessert which was "cappucino cakes" and after the dessert coffee with little chocolates on the side.
We had already decided ahead of time that we were going to drive back late at night, so after dinner we decided to make it a little bit later and go out with Peter's nieces and nephews. We left the house around 10:30, riding on the back of their bikes. It took a while biking through the snow, the ice, and the darkness, and the entire time I was absolutely terrified. All the girls here do it so elegantly. They sit sideways, and then just sort of jump on to the back of the bike while it's moving. The problem with me is that I'm not elegant, and I definitely can't jump onto the back of a moving bike. Once I finally manage to get on, I have to focus extremely hard on staying on, and on not making the person actually biking have an accident.
Anyway, we made it to the street with all of the bars safely, and after we put our jackets in one of the bars, we went into a different one. Since Milja was going to pick us up at one o'clock, we weren't there very long, but it was fun with the music and the entire Christmas atmosphere. Milja picked us up, and then drove us all the way back to Akersloot while Taiana and I slept in the back seat. I tried to stay awake and ask her occasionally if she was still awake, but I didn't manage it very well. We were home at 3:00 in the morning, and all went exhausted to our beds.

The Second Day of Christmas was another relaxing day for us. But, in the Netherlands most people celebrate two days of Christmas. "Eeerste Kerst Dag" en "Tweede Kerst Dag." So, technically it was still a holiday. We spent the day getting ready for the Third Day of Christmas, which actually we just made up... it's not a Dutch tradition or anything. Milja's whole side of the family was going to come over to eat on the Third Day. Everybody was assigned to some sort of food that they had to bring, so we ended up not having to make very much food. We'd already done the grocery shopping and we couldn't bring the tables in yet since they'd take up the entire house. If I remember right I went for a run, watched TV, and generally did nothing.

The next day, the "Third Day of Christmas," was full of things to do.
The first big project was getting the tables to fit in the living room. Taiana and I had talked Milja into buying a huge Christmas tree (huge for the Netherlands, normal for America), and ever since then Milja had been worried that the table which had to seat 17 people wasn't going to fit. We kept assuring her that it would fit, and in the end it did. But, it did take up the entire living room. We carted one huge table over from the neighbors house, along with all of her chairs (I'm not sure where their family ate that day). Another table came out of the shed, and then some plastic lawn chairs came from Milja's parents. We connected all of them and spread white sheets over the top. Taiana and I were "officially" in charge of decorating the tables, something which it seems like people do pretty seriously here. Milja had bought all sorts of silver things for us to decorate the tables with. There were silver coasters on the table, silver candles, silver balls, silver tress, and silver snowflakes hanging over. The napkins were silver and white, and wrapped in silver ribbon.
At 4:00 all of Milja's family came, plus Anita and her daughter, which with all of us made seventeen. Again we had different courses, but it started with soup and then went on to the main course. We ate cold slices of pork, potatoes, cranberry sauce, applesauce, broccoli, pears, and lots of different vegetable dishes. Desert was creme brulee which was to die for. And then of course there was more dessert with the coffee.
Everyone stayed for a long time, sitting at the table and talking. I think this was about the time when I was supposed to get homesick, but it never really happened. I guess that's what good company does for you... and you can't really be homesick when you feel so welcome in the family you're with.

The Third Day of Christmas was a Monday, and I'm going to skip Monday since there weren't Four Day's of Christmas (we just cleaned). Tuesday is coming soon though! Tuesday I left for Soest with TDR, so there's a lot to say about Tuesday and the days that followed.

~SWEDEN~

2009-12-23T01:58:00.000-08:00

On Thursday morning all of us slept in.

When I was little and we were in Sweden I always used to wake up at six thirty or so and then I'd run into my grandparents room and crawl into their bed. They would always be awake already, and then at seven or so my grandpa and I would go downstairs and he would let me drink coffee.
Well, I'm not really sure what happened to us, but they're not awake at 6:30 anymore, and I'm definitely not awake at 6:30 anymore. So, coffee drinking is officially moved to after breakfast.

I love huge American breakfasts with french toast, pancakes, muffins, bacon, eggs, and hash browns. I also love Dutch breakfasts with bread with chocolate sprinkles, or nutella. And I really love Swedish breakfasts. I always eat yogurt with musli, and my grandpa puts out all these different kinds of bread with three different kinds of sausages, and caviar (the cheap kind, which is the only good kind). He puts piece of bread after piece of bread into the toaster and pours new orange juice every two minutes. Every time in Sweden breakfast is the same, my grandma always has to drink her orange juice, and we eat the same kind of bread, and the same kind of tea, and the same kind of musli.

After our long breakfast on Thursday, Milja and I drove with Mormor to Vallingby, which isn't very far from Spanga where they live. Mormor went home after a little while and then Milja and I walked around for a pretty long time and then back home in the snow. There was so much snow on the ground, and so much snow coming down on us. I finally got all of the snow that I had been wanting. Mormor had bought a prinsess tarta for us in Vallingby. Prinsess tarta is only the best thing you can ever eat. It's my number one favorite food. Ever. The frosting is made of marsipan, and there's a marsipan rose. And underneath the marsipan is this fluffy white layered cake with whipped cream and sometimes jam in between. The rest of Thursday was a relaxing day, reading, playing cards, talking. Of course Thursday in Sweden also means pea soup and pancakes for dinner. I was pretty full on Thursday night.

On Friday, Milja and I took the train into Stockholm. I found the way without any problems, because it turns out the train system in Sweden, which I remembered as being pretty complicated is way less complicated than the train system in the Netherlands. We met my aunt Karin at the big ring in the Central Station and then we walked to Riksdagen where my other aunt Anna, works. Anna and Karin are always so familiar to me. When I see them it never feels like it's been a year or two years since the last time we saw each other. That was really the nicest thing about being in Sweden... being with people who I've known for my whole life. They were the first family I'd seen in four months. Anna gave us a tour of Riksdagen (the parliament building of Sweden) and then we all went and ate lunch together. Anna had to go back to work, but Karin, Milja, and I walked around for a while. Then Karin went home and Milja and I walked around some more. After we ate dinner on Friday I went shopping again... with Maja, a friend from Spooner who lives in Sweden but was an exchange student with us for a year. Of course we talked about everyone in Spooner which was nice, because no one else really understands how important the little gossip from Spooner is.

Saturday was the official preparation for Christmas day. Karin and my cousins Pia and Sandra came over pretty early in the morning. We were all ready to help bake gingerbread houses, but Mormor had her own ideas about how she wanted to do it. Milja and Karin went out walking, and Pia and Sandra and I sat in the living room playing cards and eating candy. Later on there was a little bit of a discussion over how much candy we actually had aten. When we started the bowl was full, and later that night Mormor discovered that the bowl was almost empty. The thing is, that we really only did eat half of the bowl. So nobody knows what happened to the rest of the candy. Later in the afternoon Anna came with Goran, Frida, and Linn. Two years is always a long time, but it seemed extra long when it came to Frida and Linn. The last time I'd seen them they were still just little girls, and sure, they still are little girls, but they were little girls who seemed a lot older. We played outside, and decorated the Christmas tree, and then all of us ate dinner together. Chili and Morfar's homemade bread.

Sunday I got to see Johanna! It was only a year since the last time I saw her, but I haven't been the best at keeping in touch so seeing her was long overdue. Milja and I took the train together into Stockholm. Then Milja went to the Museum of Modern Art, and Johanna and I went shopping. First we sat in a coffee shop for a while, because the stores still weren't open. We drank hot chocolate with lots of marshmallows and ate muffins, and exchanged presents. At 3 o'clock Milja and I had to be back at my grandparents house so Johanna and I didn't have very long, but it was something. Hopefully it won't be another year before we see each other again.

Right when Milja and I got back to Mormor and Morfar's house, Anna and her family came again. I had no idea, but Mormor had made a Christmas dinner just like we always have in Sweden at Christmas, and everybody had brought presents. So, I got my Christmas in Sweden even though I'm back in Holland now for when it's really Christmas. Of course, it was hard to say goodbye when Anna and her family had to leave. We couldn't just say "Bye, see you later." It had to be, "Bye. See you..." Because of course none of us know when we're going to see each other again.

On Monday, Milja and I had to take the plane back, and we had to say goodbye again, this time to my Grandma and Grandpa. I take after my dad a little bit I think... I hate saying goodbye, and maybe I don't always do it that well. Still no crisis though...

And now, we're back safe and sound in Holland on Christmas Eve. It did take a really, reeeeaallly long time to get back to Akersloot with trains because all of Holland was in chaos from the ten centimeters of snow that they'd gotten (if even). But, we made it. My excuses for how newsy and dry this blog is, but I could write for hours and never be able to do justice to what it was like in Sweden. The snow was beautiful, Christmas felt just like all those times we've celebrated it before, and I got to see my family. Every time I leave Sweden I always realize a little bit more what I'm missing there, and how sad it is that half my family lives across the ocean. I guess I'm stuck with missing places from now on. Sweden, Holland, or Wisconsin: I can't be in all three places at once.

Merry Christmas! To everyone in Sweden, and in Holland, in Missouri, California, and Wisconsin. And everywhere else too!

Plan B

2009-12-22T04:09:00.000-08:00

Since I'm already in Europe, it seems like a natural thing that I would want to visit the half of my family who also lives in Europe. I mean, just about all the countries in Europe are so close together that you can travel between them in only a few hours. Right?
A couple months or so ago, Milja and I decided that we would go to Sweden for a few days before Christmas. We booked our tickets with Ryan Air, a cheap flight company that flies between big cities in Europe. The only downside to our 35 euro a piece tickets were that we had to pay an extra seventy euros for the luggage and that we had to fly from Eindhoven airport to Skavsta airport. This meant that first we had to take a train for an hour and a half to get to Eindhoven and then once we got to Sweden we had to take a bus for an hour and a half to get to Stockholm. But, we figured that it was worth it, because in the end it was still a lot cheaper than flying with one of the major flight companies.
Trains really aren't that expensive, and they go really fast, so getting to Eindhoven wasn't really a problem. Until, half an hour into our train ride, they made an announcement that the train rails to one of the most central train stations in the Netherlands was broken. This basically made it impossible to get to Eindhoven with the train.
Right away after they said this Milja looks at me and goes, "We might not get there. Are you going to cry?" I sat there (not crying) well Milja called a million different people and talked to all the other people on the train trying to figure out what we were going to do. For some reason we had to take a train first from Amsterdam to another train station. On the way to this station we met a younger couple who was also going to Sweden on our same flight, and we decided to all take a taxi together to Eindhoven. At the next train station we found a taxi driver who thought he could get us to Eindhoven in time for our 3:30 flight. Of course, I really had to go to the bathroom. So while everyone else waited in the taxi, I ran back into the train station. But, I didn't have the fifty cents it took to go to the bathroom, so I ran back to the taxi, put on a brave face, and decided I would just have to hold it.
We had a pretty good taxi driver. He drove super fast (you don't want to know), and dodged most of the traffic jams. Everything was going well, and we were starting to think that we might actually make the flight. After about 45 minutes in the taxi, though, I was really suffering from the brave decision I'd made earlier. The taxi driver helped me out. "I have to go to the bathroom too," he said, and within five minutes we were pulled over. I sprinted into the gas station and sprinted back out, and we were on our way again. By this time it was starting to seem like we were definitely going to make the flight. We had plenty of time and we were still gaining extra. Then we got to Eindhoven.
After the first wrong turn it was still okay, we had enough time. Even after the second turn it was still all right. After the third wrong turn I was starting to get a little bit of a nervous feeling in my stomach again. After the fourth wrong turn, and realizing that the GPS just wasn't going to work, Milja suggested that we ask someone the way. We had one lucky moment, and the first person we asked actually knew the way there. When we finally got there the taxi driver parked illegally and we all ran out of the car and into the airport. Luckily the gate wasn't closed yet, and we made it in, we even had to wait in line for a little while before we got on the plane. There weren't any major incidents on the plane, just a minor moment when a woman had an asthma attack and they had to call for a doctor, but it seemed like she was okay in the end. When we went to pay for our tickets for the bus to Stockholm, Milja's credit card wouldn't work, and we didn't have any Swedish kroner's yet, but we paid the younger couple that we'd travelled with back in Euros and they bought us a bus ticket. Then we got on the bus and saw that that Milja's blackberry needed a pincode to turn back on, which she had never used before. And what a surprise, so did my cell phone. Eventually I remembered the pincode to my cell phone and managed to turn it on and send text messages to everyone asking for help with Milja's pincode. We managed to call my grandma and grandpa though, so that they could come get us.
When we finally got to Stockholm from the bus they were right there waiting for us. We went home with them in the car and ate keish for dinner. Their house smelled just like Sweden always smells, and there was snow all over the ground outside. And, I got to sleep in the same bed I always sleep in there.

More to come...

Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piets

2009-12-10T06:41:00.000-08:00

Happy belated Sinterklaas.
After waiting, and waiting, and waiting Sinterklaas finally came! He did already come to Akersloot one time, but that time was just to say hi (or something). He didn't actually have presents with him. Last Saturday though, he came with presents. But, first Thursday.
I went to school... not very exciting. Then I had running practice as usual at the fitness center with strength training circuits. After the strength we always run, which we did in the rain. Did I mention that it rains a lot here? I remember when I was little, like fifth grade or something when the school didn't actually make us where snowpants anymore, but my mom did. Every day we would have this huge argument about whether or not I had to wear snowpants. Finally she decided that if it was colder than 20 degrees I had to wear snowpants, but then it always ended up being a huge discussion about whether I had to wear them or not when it was 18 degrees. I'm pretty sure this went on at least two or three winters long. The point of this story is that the issue at home was snow pants. The issue here is rain pants. Rain pants are in many ways similar to snow pants: 1) they come in horrible gray and black colors 2) they make you look fat 3) they are extremely high waisted 4) you absolutely do not want to be seen in them by anyone you know. I would say that about half the days when I bike to school it's raining, or at least drizzling a little bit, and if Milja's home she always asks me if I want to wear my rain pants and I always say no. Which means that every single one of those days I end up at school in soaking wet pants. So Thursday... it was raining, and I thought of the rain pants because I actually wore them for the first time on Thursday.
After getting rained on at practice, which isn't actually bad, it's nice to run in the rain, I went out with Taiana. I know... it was Thursday night! Usually she doesn't go out on Thursday nights, but it was "Old School Break" at the bar we went to, which means that they played only old music. Also, because the next weekend was Sinterklaas, all of the bar men were dressed up as Zwarte Piets, and there was one dressed up as Sinterklaas. Luckily, it wasn't raining on our way to the bar, or on the way home, so we stayed dry.

Friday morning (after going out) I got up at six to go to Anita's school in Amsterdam again. Fridays at my school aren't that important anyway... what happened at Anita's school on Friday was definitely important. Sinterklaas is celebrated in the Netherlands on December 5th. Friday was December 4th, which meant the day that Sinterklaas came to all of the schools. You can easily compare Sinterklaas to Santa Claus. I mean the name sounds the same, they look kind of the same, and every Dutch person will happily tell you the story about how Sinterklaas was stolen by Coca Cola and is now used in America as Santa Claus. The idea is the same too... a jolly man that brings presents. But, let me tell you, it's completely different. The kids absolutely, completely, believe that Sinterklaas is real. And it's not just a handful of kids that believe, it's practically every single one. Naturally then, when they see Sinterklaas walking towards them on their school playground they are going to go absolutely insane. They did. It was like in a movie, all of the kids screamed and charged him. There was music everywhere, and the Zwarte Piets were running around throwing papernotas and candy to everyone and all over the ground. After Sinterklaas came to the playground where everyone was waiting, all of the kids had to go back inside. This was the hard part. First they got to see Sinterklaas, and now they had to go back to the classroom and wait for him to come to them. For two hours. Anita handled it well though. She turned the Sinterklaas music up really loud, spread candy and papernotas all over the tables, and let the kids just play. When Sinterklaas finally came to our class they all had to sit in a circle, and the Zwarte Piets and Sinterklaas handed out presents to all of the kids.
I'm still not completely convinced if it's morally right to make the kids in the whole country believe that Sinterklaas is real when he actually isn't. But it's definitely a lot of fun, so maybe it's worth how completely devastated they're going to be when they finally find out he's not real.
The kids all went home around noon, and Anita and I were left with a classroom that had crushed papernoten, toys, and wrappers everywhere. We ate lunch first and then started with cleaning up. I finally had the floor all nice and swept up, and then the Zwarte Piets came by. Sinterklaas was still in the school with all of his Zwarte Piets because he had to visit all of the older kids too, and on their way to the gym they saw that our classroom was clean. Of course we ended up with papernoten all over the floor again. And again, and again, and again. Finally at the end of the day everything was clean for the last time, and then we had to decorate for Christmas. All the teachers took down the Sinterklaas decorations and started hanging Christmas things in the hall. I sat in Anita's classroom in a daze of absolute exhaustion and wrapped white paper around old toilet paper rolls to hang in the hallway (remember kindergarten? You use all sorts of cool things!). The evening ended with all of the teachers drinking beer with Sinterklaas and the Zwarte Piets, which was nice too.

Saturday at 4:00 the entire family came to Oma and Opa's house (remember that Oma and Opa is Grandma and Grandpa?). There were fifteen of us all together, and only one true believer left. Joleen is nine, and at the beginning of the holiday season no one really knew if she still believed in Sinterklaas, but then decided that she did. So, everything was hush hush, and we had to be oh-so-careful not to say anything that could make her suspicious. It still wasn't quite dark at 4:00, so everyone sat together eating papernoten, spekulaars, and chocolate until it was dark. Then, when it was dark everyone all of a sudden started singing all of the Sinterklaas songs. I had heard some of them at the school on Friday, but most of them I couldn't really sing a long with (mostly I just hummed... and listened).
Are you ready for the next part?......
All of a sudden there came a knock on the door. Joleen ran to the door followed by the rest of us. After a desperate struggle to get the door open, in which Opa finally had to come help, we saw that there was no one there. "Check upstairs!" someone yelled. We all sprinted up the dangerously steep stairs, and began frantically searching all of the rooms. Finally Joleen opened the door to Opa and Oma's bedroom. She shrieked loudly and we all ran over to look. On the bed was a gigantic pile of presents, and there was candy strewn all throughout the room. The window stood wide open.
So, Sinterklaas did come to us, but we missed seeing him. Everyone helped bring the presents downstairs, and then Taiana gave them out one at a time. After two hours or so we were barely halfway done, so we all ate dinner. Then there were more presents. Around ten or so all of the presents were done, and Sinterklaas was over. The way that it worked with presents was that each person had been sent a name in the mail a month before Sinterklaas. We had to buy a present for the person whose name we got, and write a poem to go with it. I didn't write my poem alone, Oma helped me, but in the end I had one. Besides that, all of the adults bought presents for all of children. The poems were really fun... I think we'll bring that to Christmas in Spooner next year. I wish I could write them here, but they're in Dutch, so it wouldn't make sense to very many people.'

My time on the library computer is running out, and it's almost time for another training at the fitness center, so this post is done for today. I promise there's more to come though... I wish I could just dictate out of my head. I could spend hours writing every night, and still never be able to explain everything that happens here.

Sweden is coming up next Wednesday. And then no more school until after New Years. I'll be in the Netherlands in 2010!

Things That Seem Sad But Maybe Actually Aren't

2009-11-29T07:15:00.000-08:00

I've done a lot of adapting here. A lot of adjusting to culture and trying new things. But, I didn't want to miss Thanksgiving. Knowing that every single person I know from home was going to be sitting with their family on Thursday afternoon watching the Packer game, eating turkey and pie, would have made me feel just a little bit too far away.
A month or so ago when I mentioned to Milja and Taiana that I wanted to do Thanksgiving here they were all for it. Milja hunted down a turkey (not literally, they don't have wild turkeys here) at a meat store. She had to have it specially ordered, and then specially made, because neither of us thought that we would be able to make a turkey without it being completely dried out and gross. Taiana helped me make invitations and we gave them to Anita and her daughter, Marja and her family, Milja's parents, and Peter. I e-mailed my mom for all of the pie recipes, and we decided to skip the stuffing. Then, closer to Thanksgiving we decided that it was better to do Thanksgiving on Wednesday, because then I could still go to running practice in the evening.
So, on Wednesday, I went to school for the first three hours, and Taiana called in sick, which she actually was sick, so it made sense. I was not sick, and Milja decided that honesty was the best policy. Her note for the school said, "Sofia will not be at school today, because we are going to be celebrating Thanksgiving which is a very important holiday in America." I wasn't very sure about this, but luckily I just had to leave the note in a box. Then I walked away really fast before anyone could come.
I came home around noon on Wednesday. Milja grocery shopped and cleaned, and I made two apple pies the American way. They both went in the oven by Milja's mom. Then we picked up the turkey from the meat man in Alkmaar, who was very proud of the turkey he had made and tried hard to sell us some more meat. This was no American turkey, it was definitely a Dutch turkey. It was about the size of one of the rotisserie chickens that we all buy from Economart when we're too lazy to cook. With the eleven of us we picked it compeltely bare, but it was the perfect amount for eleven people.
After we had picked the turkey up we moved the piles of papers off of the table and brought in an extra one. We put red table cloths over the top, and candles on the both the tables. Peter came earlier with bottles of wine, I brought the turkey to the neighbor (Marijka, remember?) to bake (only for half an hour since it was premade) and Milja made mashed potatoes and green beans. Milja's dad had made pumpkin soup. The story behind the soup is that I was originally going to make pumpkin pie, but when I found out that they don't have any canned pumpkin here, I was too lazy to actually carve the pumpkin out and boil it myself. So then her dad did all of that work instead, and made pumpkin soup. Milja's mom made cooked pears, and homemade applesauce. Once the whole table was set we had so much food, just like any American Thanksgiving. Eric (Marja's husband, remember?) carved half the turkey, and I carved the other half, or tried too. Before we ate we went around the table and everyone said something that they are thankful for. Everyone was so sincere, and said something that they had really thought about beforehand that this part of the evening turned out to be a little emotional for everyone. But, it only made it that much nicer.
We ate all of the turkey, all of the pears, all of the bread, almost all two of the pies, almost all the mashed potatoes, and almost all of the ice cream.
Thanksgiving is an American holiday. We celebrate it because the Indians in America helped the pilgrims survive their first winter in the new country, and without them we would have died. This makes it a little ironic that the very first Thanksgiving I spent in a country other than America, was the first Thanksgiving that I really stopped and was thankful. First of all, being gone has made me much more thankful for everyone I have at home. So I was thankful for my family, who I sometimes forget to treat nicely and appreciate when I'm actually there, and for all of my friends. Secondly, I'm thankful that I somehow ended up in the Netherlands, in Milja and Taina's family. And then that they're extended family and so many of their friends, who didn't even decide to have me come here, have made me feel more at home and a part of everything than I ever would have hoped for. They all stopped in the middle of their busy week, and were happy to take part in a holiday that doesn't mean anything here. This year I celebrated Thanksgiving just as well as I ever have in America, where the indians and the pilgrims actually gave thanks for the first time.

Milja's birthday was on Thursday, but we didn't actually celebrate it until Saturday. Then she had a party with people from the family, some of her friends, and Peter and his mom. We all just sat around together for a long time eating and talking, and then later ordered pizza. After the pizza, I left because at 7:30 I had a Sinterklaas party with the girls from my class. A few weeks ago everyone had drawn a slip of paper with the names of one of the other girls on it, and then we had to buy a little present for her, and make a "surprise," which is just what it sounds like. Something out of paper mache, or aluminum foil, or card board, that is funny and homemade that you can put the present in. Then we also had to write a poem about the surprise. There were seven of us who did it, and we had a lot of fun with the surprisen, the poems, and the presents.

Today we didn't have a race: just a normal practice in the dunes. It wasn't raining very hard, and we had a nice workout. Today though, one of the runners from the girls team told us that she isn't going to run anymore. It shocked me to hear, and I know I'm going to miss having her on the team. She's one of the runners that I always look at and think, "that's the kind of runner I want to be." But the fact that she recognized the point where it was better for her to stop than to keep going is admirable. Anyone who has anything that they love to do, knows how impossible it would ever be if you had to stop.

So this is crisis month. After three months, the exchange student is supposed to lose it and have a "crisis." I don't feel any crisis coming on. But maybe it's not something you can sense?

The First Part of Everything I Haven't Written

2009-11-29T06:10:00.000-08:00

I have a huge cup of tea in front of me right now, because I have a feeling that everything I have to write is going to take a long time. Actually, if I wrote everything I have to write, this would be like the 8th Harry Potter book. So I'm not going to write everything, I'm going to edit out a little bit. But, I'll try my very hardest to write all of the important things.

The first thing we're going to skip over is two weeks ago, because nothing very exciting happened then. I had a cold, I ran horribly at practice, and other than that I can't remember anything (actually, maybe that was the week before... I have no idea). On the Saturday of that week Peter, Taiana, and I had a surprise for Milja, because her birthday was coming up on November 26th. For her birthday Taiana and I bought her a session of "koe knuffeling" which is "cow hugging." I think it's something we should start in Wisconsin. Maybe the Link brothers would be willing to lend us some of their jerky cows for hugging? The only thing I knew about koe knuffeling before we went there with Milja was that it was a day of relaxation where people spent time around cows to help them relax. It took an hour and a half to drive to the place where the koe knuffeling was, and we didn't tell Milja before we left what she was going to do, so the whole way there she was on edge trying to figure it out.*
After a while of driving all of the countryside started to look much more quaint, and farm like than the land where I live. Really I was just waiting to see a sweet old woman walking through a field of tulips and wearing her Dutch clogs. Milja still didn't know what we were going to do when we drove up the driveway to the barn, but she figured it out pretty quickly since there was a sign there that said "koe knuffeling." Peter, Taiana, and I had to leave, because they don't want people watching, since obviously that's not very relaxing. We went to a nearby city and were just planning on walking around, but it turned out that Sinterklaas happened to be coming to the Netherlands once again on that Saturday (seems a little bit suspicious, don't you think?). The whole city was pretty crowded with all of the Svarte Piets, the little kids, and Sinterklass's whole entourage. We still spent the day walking through the city, but it wasn't as quiet as we had been planning on. Still we got in a fresh stroopwaffel each, and time for coffee and cake at a cafe. Also on our walk my camera was suddenly broken. But yesterday I finally used some serious force to make the lens go back into the camera, and now it works again. We'll see how long that lasts... but it will teach you: if something's broken you just have to push on it harder.
When we picked Milja up from the koe knuffeling, you could tell that she'd had a lot of fun, so our birthday present was successful. There's lots of pictures of her lying on the cows, and actually it does look a little bit relaxing. The cows here are a lot cleaner and nicer looking than our cows in Wisconsin.

On Sunday almost everyone from TDR had a race in Tillburg, which is also about an hour and a half drive. At this race there were way more people than at any of the other races, and also some girls from Belgium. There were a bunch of races, all of them that were different distances and age groups. My distance was 3,7 kilometers, with the Junior B girls. It wasn't actually raining on Sunday, but it had the night before so the entire course was really wet and muddy. There also weren't a lot of really big steep hills, but more than half the course was made up of twists, and turns, and tiny steep hills. Most of the hills were about like a ditch you find on the side of the highway, and at the bottom was a huge puddle of mud. I ran way to timidly on all of these hills, way too slowly the whole way, and over all the race just did not go well. My time was worse than the times I ran in 4 km cross country races at home, which is depressing to see. But hey, there's more races coming. I loved watching everyone else run. One of the girls from "the" TDR team won her 2km race, and it was so much fun to watch her. The way the fastest girls run seems so effortless, it's like they're not even tired.

That's the first week that I skipped. We're half way caught up!

*Just a warning to anyone who might want to drink a cup of tea in front of the computer: Sometimes you might try to take a drink out of the tea but its too hot, and then you might move really fast, and spill the tea all over the desk your sitting at, and then the tea might spill all over the papers that your supposed to use to learn Dutch. I've known people who've had it happen to them before.

Sinterklaas Comes to Town

2009-11-15T09:25:00.000-08:00

Friday night was the yearly "Team Presentation" from TDR. Every year in the fall there's a presentation for "the" TDR team, meaning the presentation is actually for the main team from TDR... I run on the youth or the "jeugd" team. Anyway, everyone was allowed to invite people, we got these cool looking invitation cards to give out. I brought Milja and her friend Anita (remember, from the school?!). All of us had to wear Nike clothes to the presentation, because the Nike people who sponsor the team were going to be there, and apparently it's important for them to see us wearing Nike clothes. Unfortunately for me, I don't have a very great supply of Nike clothes, and I have no supply of casual Nike clothing. Some of the girls from the team lent me clothes to wear though, so all of us went in magenta Nike clothes. At the presentation we all sat together, and the other team sat up front in chairs. The Thursday before the presentation the team had gotten their package of Nike clothing, so they started out the night in matching yellow and grey sweatshirts. Then at the end of the presentation they changed into the sweatsuits... the girls got light blue, and the guys got yellow.

The main part of the presentation was a slideshow of "Top 10 Moments" which was the best moments throughout the year. They showed video and pictures of all the athletes winning races, or finishing at the top of national races. It was definitely inspiring watching the same athletes that I get to train with sometimes beat people from all over Europe. It makes me want to run faster!

After the presentation, Milja and Anita drove me to Alkmaar, where there was a party going on for two of the exchange students from our region. They invited 25 exchange students from all over, and then we all slept at different people's houses who lived in Alkmaar. By the time I got there on Friday night, the party was already over, but it was still nice just being with the other exchange students there. There were four of us at Andria's house (a girl from Indonesia). Antea was there (remember?!), Sara from Belgium, Lauren from Minnesota, and me. It's not that we did anything particularly exciting on Friday night, but it was nice just because we all relate to each other so well. Every time anyone would say anything, everyone else would be like, "hey, me too!" It's a good feeling that there's other people going through the same type of thing that you're going through, whether it's good or bad.
Saturday morning, we started out walking at about 10:30 to meet at one of the boy's houses whose birthday it was. After we'd walked for about fifteen minutes, we realized that it was going to be another half hour to walk, and that we could actually take a bus. So, we took the bus. All of the exchange students who were in Alkmaar for the weekend met at Francesco's house (from Italy) and from there we walked to an ice skating rink. The ice skating rink actually was two rinks, one that was like a track (only made of ice) where everyone was speed skating, and then another rink. Really, I wanted to speed skate, because it made me think of skiing, and winter, and Wisconsin, and... you get the picture. I wanted to speed skate! But everyone else was using the normal skates on the normal rink, so I went with that too. The regular skates made me feel like I was at home too, and it was fun watching everyone who came from places with no ice skating rinks try to do it.
We were at the ice skating rink for a really long time, and at about four in the afternoon we all went back to Francesco's house again and ate cake. After that, the plan was for everyone to take the train about ten minutes to Rafael's house (from Venezuela, who also had a birthday) and eat and have a party there. But, we had already told Andria's host parents that we were going to eat dinner with them, so we went back to her house (again with the bus). Antea and I basically stood in the kitchen and watched while Andria made an Indonesian dish for dinner. It was spicy chicken with rice, and of course it tasted amazing. Then, she told us that they usually would eat it for breakfast, though for us it was definitely a dinner meal.
Once we had eaten, we did go back to Rafael's house with the train for the party. There were lots of us there, but it didn't go until very late because everyone still had to take the train back.

All right. Sunday morning Milja drove ("Milja drove" is going to become a very popular frase I think... it happens a lot, usually involving bringing me somewhere) back to Alkmaar to pick up Antea and me. We knew Sunday was going to be an exciting day because.... Sinterklass was coming to Akersloot! Whatever you do, don't get Sinterklass confused with Santa Claus. They do look kind of the same (except Sinterklass was waaaay taller), but Sinterklaas brings presents on December 5th, which is his birthday. Also, Sinterklass doesn't have elf helpers, he has lots of other helpers called Svarte Piet. The obvious question is, why was Sinterklass coming to Akersloot on November 15th, if he doesn't bring presents until December 5th? To be honest, I don't really know. I do know he lives in Spain, so maybe he just wants to rest for a while after his long journey on the boat.
Antea and I walked to the lake by Akersloot with Danique, a friend from school. It was raining, but that wasn't really a surprise. At the lake there were tons and tons of little kids with their families watching and waiting for Sinterklass to come. He came across the lake by Akersloot with a boat, and with all his helpers in the boat with him. The helpers all came through the crowd and gave out papernotas, and candy, and talked to the little kids. Then Sinterklass got in a horse-drawn carriage and rode through the town while all the rest of us went to the church. While we were waiting for Sinterklass to come to the church, everyone sang songs (about Sinterklass) and the Svarte Pieten gave out more papernotas. Then (suspensful music)... Sinterklass came! He was extremely tall, and his beard was may more real than Santa Claus. The most exciting thing about all of this was that all of the kids who were in the church actually believe that Sinterklass is real. Which, actually, how can you really blame them? I mean, he was there. He came in the church, and so did all of his helpers. It's not that hard to believe. Once Sinterklass came to the church, we sang some more songs or "litjes," and Sinterklass talked for a little bit. The whole thing was nice and exciting, and made me glad that I get to be here for Christmas.

Who knows, maybe Sinterklass will even come to Spooner next year. All I need is a white beard and a red costume!

Dear Mom

2009-11-11T07:48:00.001-08:00

I would like to dedicate this post to my loving mother, who I am not going to forget even though I'm going to be gone for another eight months, so she doesn't need to worry. Also, I would like to point out that I really DID write her an e-mail a few days ago, but I don't know where it went. That's cyberspace for you!
Now. On to the other, less important, things.

Proefwerkweek: One of four weeks during the Dutch school year where all of the students have to study super hard, get extremely stressed out, and take tons of tests which then count for basically their entire quarter grade. Except me, I didn't have to do that.
Last week was proefwerkweek here, and yes, I did do a couple of the tests, but not very many, and I wasn't very stressed out about any of them. I decided before the test week with my mentor at the school that the tests I was going to take were Spanish, Math, Science, English, and Dutch. This meant that I had to go to school for three hours on Monday, two hours on Wednesday, and two hours on Friday. I studied for the spanish test and science test a little bit. Science, did not go very well. Spanish went very well, English went very well (duh, I would hope!), and Math went fairly well.

Since I didn't have to go to school on Tuesday and Thursday I went back to the primary school in Amsterdam to help Milja's friend again. Remember, I went there earlier in the year too? It's nice to have somewhere to go when I don't have school, because otherwise I know I would just be sitting bored at home. But, I have to say, I have no plans to become a teacher when I grow up. First of all, the kids don't listen to me at all. I don't know if this has more to do with the fact that what I actually can say in Dutch comes out in an extremely heavy accent or the fact that I'm just not not their teacher. Second of all... well, there's not much else to say. Just that I know I would never ever want to be a teacher!
One of the days when I was at the school, Anita (Milja's friend) had to leave the classroom for a while for a meeting or something, and the school was really short staffed so I was alone with the kids. I wasn't supposed to teach a lesson or anything- just keep things under control while they played at their different stations. The first five minutes went great. The next ten minutes were all right. Then they realized that they were alone with me, and all hell broke loose. There were three boys in the "playing house" corner, but they were not playing any normal kind of house. Somehow their game evolved into running around the entire classroom, rolling on the floor, and tackling each other. There was a group of girls in the middle of the room building a block tower which was great- it was probably about five feet tall- until it got crashed by the boys playing "house" and ended up all over the entire classroom. The table of kids that had been coloring did well for a lot longer than the rest of them, but somehow a sort of conflict broke out and half the kids ended up with their drawings ripped in half. My favorite table was the table of kids I had been helping to make paper lanterns, and they lasted for quite a while, but then spread throughout the classroom. I did have a few kids on my side who felt bad for my lack of control. They helped me out by running around and trying to grab other kids to put them in the time out chair, and by clapping their hands and yelling as loud as possible.
This absolute chaos went on for a while, but finally, after two of the kids had fallen and hurt themselves and the noise had gotten extremely loud, one of the teachers walking past outside noticed what a complete disaster I had going on in the classroom and came in and helped me. Of course, the kids listened to him right away, all he had to do was walk in and raise an eyebrow. By that time my face was completely flushed and I was all stressed and panicked. He pretty much saved my life.
I make it sound horrible with the little kids, but actually it's not bad most of the time. They say funny things, and are really cute sometimes. So the next time that I could be sitting at home watching tv because I don't have to go to school, I'll go back there again. Plus, next time I have to babysit two kids for an hour, I won't complain.

On Saturday our family spent the day in Breda, a town about an hour away from Akersloot. We went there early in the afternoon to look at a school Taiana might want to go to after she graduates. It was a small school for the study of "leisure management," which was interesting to see, especially since a lot of the studies are international and done in English. After we went to the school we walked around in the city for a while. We shopped for a little bit, and then stopped at a cafe. In the evening we drove back to Amsterdam and ate out. Going out to eat is completely different here than at home. It's not a go-there-and-eat-as-fast-as-you-can-then-leave type of deal. The first time we went out to eat here, we probably sat at the restaurant for three hours. This time wasn't as long, but we did sit there for probably close to two hours. We ate a first course, a main course, and then dessert, with quite a bit of time in between. The whole atmosphere of the restuarant was nice with everyone talking quitely, and long tables with lots of candles. The food was delicious. And of course the company was perfect.

There is a holiday here on November 11th called Sinter Marta. Think Halloween, but instead of costumes all the kids carry paper lanterns with lights inside that they've made in school. Also, there's a lot less teenagers running around with pillowcases and knocking down all of the little kids. Yesterday I walked with our neighbor Marijka, her daughter Pip, and a group of other moms and kids around the town for Sinter Marta. Instead of "trick-or-treat" the kids sing songs at people's doorsteps. There's sort of a rule that they can never ring the doorbell, because if they have to ring it, that means they haven't been singing loud enough for the people inside to hear them. We walked for about two hours, from the time that it was dark, and all of the kids got so much candy. There's another Dutch thing for me to add to my list.

Taking tests, teaching, trick-or-treating (not really), eating out... it's been a full week. Busy is good for me, it keeps me happy. Which by the way, I am... happy. Even with all the people and things I have to miss, I still am really happy that I came here, and that I have a long time left to be here.

What's In and What's Out

2009-11-04T02:35:00.000-08:00

In:

snail mail
skinny jeans
crime shows
brussel sprouts
Dutch
sheep and cows
coffee and tea
paper lanterns
worm funerals
missing your parents
skating
waving through the window
Nike
running in the rain
rain
wind
hyves.nl
TDR
swine flu
Thanksgiving
vacation
reflectors

Out:

too many potatoes
spandex under shorts
tans
American football
cheerleaders
homesickness
Halloween
bathtubs
being cold
Christmas Eve
wet butts
frizzy hair
"crisis month"
snow : (
slow warm ups
desert past 8:00
walking
having your drivers license

Dutch Runners Run Fast

2009-11-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

The first good thing about the race I did today is that I remembered everything I needed to remember. To be honest, I didn't have a bib number yet, so there was no possibility of forgetting that. But still, I didn't forget anything.
At the race, their was frighteningly few people. I never like races with few people. I would way rather do a race with tons of people and not place as high, than do a race with few people and risk finishing last. I was a little bit excited for this one though because it was actually a real "cross-country" race. Also, the weather was the best running weather with lots of leaves everywhere. And it smelled like fall. I love the smell of fall.
We ran the course once through before the race, and it was the perfect race course. There were leaves all over the path, a tiny part with sand, bridges over water, and one steep hill. We had to run the lap twice, and in total the race was 3.1 kilometers, so about two miles.
There was a good half hour after we ran the warm up where I was just kind of standing around, warming up for a few minutes, wondering if I should take my warm up clothes off, and standing around some more. All the confidence that I usually have from familiarity: knowing the runners I'm racing against, knowing the course, knowing the routine, knowing the people watching, and knowing about how I should place was gone.
Right before the race everyone was putting their running spikes on and someone asked me why I wasn't running in spikes.
"Um...." I say. "My spikes are under my bed. In Wisconsin." So I missed my spikes in this race. Who knows, maybe if I would have had them I could have run two and a half minutes faster and won the entire race. We'll go with that!
The beginning of the race was extremely hectic. Everybody stood in this huge clump of people and when the gun went off you just had to push to try and get out of the clump. I ended up finishing in 13:15, which I was pretty happy with. But, I placed 8th out of 11 runners, which I wasn't very happy with. The girl who one ran it in 10:58, and a girl from our team placed third, she also ran a crazy fast time.
And picture this; when we were cooling down afterwards, we ran past a pond with three swans in it. Right then all three of the swans started flying away at the same time. We saw them from behind, and their wing spans were huge, and they were all flying perfectly next to each other over the lake, with water spraying up all around them.

At home, right after I got out of the shower Antea (from Switzerland, remember?!) called me to talk about plans for a few weekends from now, and we ended up talking for an hour or so. She had lots of news from the trip that AFS went on to Berlin while I was in Paris. Then we talked about everything else important, and some things not important. But get this: the entire conversation was in Dutch!

The rest of the afternoon Taiana and I sat at the table and did homework. She was studying really hard for the test week this coming week, and I was studying a little bit, but not very actively. It was dark early and outside it was pouring rain and windy, so it was cozy inside.

Right now the couch, and tea, and the show called "Farmer Seeks Wife" are calling my name. Really, what could be better on a pitch black, stormy, Sunday night?

Tot laater!

High Bars and Other Things I Can't Jump Over

2009-10-30T12:38:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween!
Mostly that's for myself, because it's not Halloween here, so no one else is telling me Happy Halloween. I'm sure all of you in the U.S. have plenty of people telling you Happy Halloween, you probably don't need to hear it from me. Not that Halloween is a very important holiday, or anything...
But now, my missing Halloween is officially over, because I'm eating these chocolate things filled with fluff called "zoenen" or "kisses" and I'm pretty sure they're way better than any Halloween candy I would have gotten anyway. The amount of calories that is in them, I do not want to know.
Weight.
I think the expression should be "foreign exchange student fifteen" instead of "freshman fifteen" because I'm sure any freshman in college has a much easier time keeping weight off than any exchange student. I haven't gained anything close to fifteen pounds, but I can see how it would easily happen. Everywhere I go, there are cookies. And there's so many different kinds of cookies. Plus, there's candy, there's vla, there's delicious meat and pasta, and there's bread with everything. I really am trying to eat healthier because I know it's better for running, but my discipline when it comes to food is lacking. We'll see how that works out for me with all these tempting things around all the time.

On October 19th, I had officially been here for two months. All the AFS volunteers, and people who have been exchange students (i.e. my mom and dad) say that after three months you all of a sudden get really homesick. That means if they're right I'll really start to lose it around Thanksgiving. So far, I don't think homesickness has been all that bad for me. Regularly there's probably about one day a week that I miss home a lot. And this week was a lot better for me than any of the other weeks have been. Monday was little bit of a rough day for me, but after that I didn't feel like I thought about home all that much, definitely less than usual. Every week and every day is different though, so who knows what next week will be like.
We are always busy doing things here, and that makes it a lot easier. If I was always sitting at home I know I would be much more homesick than I am now.

Team Distance Runners on Tuesday did not go well at all. I don't think the vacation in Paris was that good for my running, because the workouts we do with TDR are so intense and I did just easy running on my own. The first part of our workout on Tuesday was with 2kg weights. Actually, they're bullets. Everyone has one in each hand, and we do different exercises, mostly to strengthen our shoulders, but also for our abs, biceps, and triceps. That part of the work out was fine, but the second part- the running part- was supposed to be 5x1000 meters. For the first 1000 meters we were supposed to run each lap in 100 seconds, then for the second 1000 meters each lap was supposed to be 98 seconds, then the third interval was supposed to be with 96 second laps, etc. Hearing the coach tell us the work out, I felt like I should be able to do it, so I was upset when I could only keep up with the group for the first two intervals. In the third one I barely made it for a lap and a half and then fell back a lot. Then the coach told me just to run 600 meters of the next two intervals at the same pace that the others were doing. This worked okay for the first one, but I was absolutely exhausted. On the last 600 meters I couldn't even keep up with them for the whole way- and they were still running 1000 meters.
Thursday practice with TDR was at the fitness center where we always work out on Thursdays. Our circuit of stations on Thursday had been upped to 3 times the circuit of 40 seconds at each station with only 20 seconds in between. The first circuit was with the same stations that we had been before, then for the second circuit the trainer changed it a little bit, and for the third circuit he changed it a little bit more. The third circuit is where the high bar comes in. They brought two bars out onto the floor, one that was probably about 4'6" tall and the other that must have been at least 5' tall. I used the shorter bar, but pretty much all of the guys and some of the girls went on the tall bar. What we had to do was put our hands on the bar and then jump up so that we were suspended over the bar with our arms. The thing was, we were supposed to be using only the strength from our feet to jump up, and not bending our knees very much. Mostly, my goal was just to get over the bar, so I bent my knees and jumped, but even then I couldn't get up. Later, some of the other athletes demonstrated how it was supposed to be, and watching them was insane. They would jump three feet or so into the air, just by flexing their toes a little bit, and the whole thing looked completely effortless. Is it really so much to ask that I can be like them and jump over the bar?! So the circuit training was much harder than usual, but I like it, becuase when we're done I feel much stronger. I can still feel it in my muscles today from the training on Thursday, but it's a good feeling!
After the circuit training we almost always do a run of twenty minutes out and then fifteen minutes back, with the first twenty minutes at an easy pace. We supposedly did the same thing on Thursday, but I'm pretty sure that the first twenty minutes were way faster than usual. The run was really nice though, because it was pitch black outside, and we were running by the lights in the street. The weather was perfect for running, and their weren't very many of us. Some of the runners that we started with turned back early, and some were way ahead of us, so on the way back it was just me and my coach. He stayed close enough to me the whole way that I didn't feel dropped, but that I still had to try hard to keep up with him. Until about the last seven minutes or so of the run, I felt strong, then at the end- like always- it was hard to keep up the pace. Thursday was good practice!

Tomorrow we have a race, or "wedstrijd," with TDR. It's in another town, not all that far away, but this is an actual cross-country race. It's 3.4 km which is a little bit shorter distance than our normal cross-country races at home, but it's closer to the same distance than the other races so far have been. We'll see how it goes- I'm nervous, so keep your fingers crossed for me.

Paris: Chapter Four

2009-10-29T08:02:00.000-07:00

Thursday morning was a little bit of a late start for everyone. We were going to have breakfast at 9:30, and Milja and I left at 8:00 so that I could run. We still went along the Seine, but since she was walking, and not on roller blades, I ran back and forth. Really, it shouldn't have been that complicated for me to figure out that after thirty minutes of running we could turn around and go back, and we'd get back in thirty minutes, since she was walking the same pace the entire time. Somehow I did manage to make it complicated though, and waited 40 minutes to turn around. Then we actually ended being gone for about an hour and a half total. Everyone else was running a little bit late too, so by the time we'd eaten breakfast and gotten out of the apartment it was 11:30.
Again, we took the metro for a little ways (I had metro tickets falling out of my pockets for few days after we got back), and then walked to Sacre Coeur. The church is at the top of this really big hill, and first you have to walk a ways up the hill through these streets that are basically just tourist shops and nothing else. A ways before the church there are stairs, and just like at the Eiffel Tower, there's tons of immigrants trying to sell things.
We went almost all the way to the top where the church was, and then there was a man standing on the stairs playing his guitar and singing. Tons of people were sitting on the stairs listening to him, and we sat down too. From the stairs you could see over the roof tops, and the apartments with lots of chimneys on top. The weather was really sunny and warm, and sitting there listening was just relaxing. For probably an hour we sat and listened to him playing his guitar, and then we went back up into the church. A lot like Notre Dame, it was really quiet and dark inside, with lots of candles. We didn't stay there for very long, but afterwards we stayed at the top of the hill and walked around a square which was full of artists selling their paintings and making caricatures.
On the way back from Sacre Coeur the first thing we wanted to do was eat, since it was almost 4:00. We sat in a park and ate French bread with brie, while we watched these groups of men play a game with metal balls. Another moment where it felt like we were really just "being in France." Then we walked some more (surprise!) to the museum where Napoleon is buried. By the time we got there though, the museum had just closed to visitors, so then we had to turn around and walk back, which took us about 45 minutes, though we were walking really slowly and relaxed along the Seine. We all ate dinner together again on Thursday night, and then played cards all of us together for a long time.

On Friday morning, we had to be out of our apartment by 10:00 in the morning, so we got going a little bit earlier than usual and cleaned out the rooms. Then we walked (!) to LaFayette which is this huge shopping building that sells products from a lot of different high end stores at lower prices. Still though, everything there was super expensive, so we went to H&M for a little bit, then met everyone else at the very top of the building for coffee. After we ate, it was back to the apartments for all of us. Then our family went to the train station, and Erik and Marja loaded back up into the car for the drive.

That, my friends, is the end of my novel about Paris! I know this post is a little bit rushed, and not very detailed, but I am definitely ready to get back to writing about life here. Paris was a ton of fun, but having been there, I am still really happy that I chose to come to the Netherlands. I think it fits me much better!

Paris: Chapter Three

2009-10-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

The Eiffel Tower was classic Paris thing number one that I did. And on Wednesday was the Louvre.

I was really surprised when the nice glass pyramid in the middle of the square by the Louvre was actually the place where we had to go into the museum. There's an entire room underneath- who would have thought? Tickets at the Louvre are free for students. I have this great student ID from AFS that proves I actually am a student, and it's very useful for things like getting into museums. I left it at the hotel. I did manage to get in anyway though, Esmee had an extra school ID, and the people at the entrance didn't look carefully enough to notice that there were two Esmee's with the same birthday.
Walking through the Louvre there's absolutely no way of seeing everything. You can't see the whole museum, but you can't see a whole section either, or a whole room, you can hardly even look at one painting for long enough. The rooms I most remember walking through are the Spanish, Greek, and Egyptian rooms. Then of course there was the room with Mona Lisa, and we also walked through a few rooms with Dutch art. A lot of the Spanish art had to do with pictures and sculptures of Jesus on the cross, a lot of them which were super gruesome, but still interesting. The Greek art was all white marble statues of men and women without very many clothes on. And the Egyptian rooms were a lot of hieroglyphics, and smaller statues. Before I came to the Netherlands, I never would have recognized the Dutch art for Dutch art, but now that I've been here for a while, I could easily recognize that the paintings were Dutch. There were lots of sailboats, sea, flowers, sheep, and cows. Just like in real life!
The Mona Lisa was a bit anticlimactic. There was a huge room, and then the Mona Lisa was hanging on this really big wall, with a glass box around it. There was a rope in front of the painting (which, let me just add, is actually pretty tiny), and then behind the rope there were probably 70 tourists standing, all taking pictures. I'll admit it, I did join take a picture, because I figured I have to prove I'd actually seen it, but I felt incredibly cliche doing it. It is a neat painting, because it actually is true that her eyes follow you wherever you go. I just wouldn't say seeing the Mona Lisa changed my life or anything.

We were done at the Louvre fairly early in the afternoon, but everyone was tired from walking through the museum all day, so we went back to the apartment for a little bit. Almost everyone wanted to stay there for the rest of the day except Milja, Peter, Adrienne, and me. Then we ended up convincing Joelien to come with us too. We took the metro for just a little ways to The Bastille, which is basically a sidewalk on top of buildings. When I put it that way, it sounds really boring and pointless, but it's a pretty place to walk. The sidewalk is straight ahead, and it's through a garden. Then you can look at all of the apartments around you. Apparently, the sidewalk is right where there used to be a train track. I say apparently, because I really can't understand how that''s possible. Can there really be a train talk on top of houses? I don't think so! Though everyone who explained it to me did sound pretty convincing...

The walk didn't take very long, and when we got back down we were in a street with all these gallery type of stores. It was nice there because you could look in the windows at all these super ornate pieces of diamond jewelry, hand carved instruments, bejewled wedding dresses, huge chandeliers, and all sorts of paintings. Also, it was the first place in Paris that we had really gone which wasn't a major tourist attraction. It felt like we were actually in Paris, just being in Paris, and not rushing to get from one tourist attraction to the other. We took our time walking back to the metro, and then we took the metro to- guess where?!- where my mom used to live when she was a nanny in Paris for a year. Mijla had thought of the idea to go there before we even left for Paris, so she asked my mom for the address. The street where she lived is also full of galleries now, but smaller ones. We stopped and took a picture in front of the door, and then we walked around the corner. It's weird to think that almost thirty years ago (sorry Mom, I'm rounding up a little), my mom was walking on the same street, and going through the same door I stood in front of. And that was all way before I knew her, or she knew me. We've both been in that exact same place, so incredibly far away from home.

Right around the corner is the president's palace, and streets and streets full of high end designer stores. just to let everyone know, I've decided that I'm going to be rich when I grow up so that I can buy all of the amazing things in the stores. Of course, I realize that money doesn't buy happiness, but I'm pretty sure you can have happiness and money, even if they're not the same thing. I'm still trying to figure out how to make that happen, I'll let everyone know when I have a set plan.

When we got back from our walk on Wednesday, everyone was getting ready for dinner. Walking into the warm apartment, and smelling food, and having that warm feeling you get on your face after you've been outside for a long time is one of the nicest things ever. While we were in Paris, we spent a lot of the evenings all of us sitting in the same apartment, playing games, and drinking tea. One of my favorite things so far about being here is that Milja and Taiana have so much of their family close by. My extended family has always been so far away my whole life, and now I get to be a part of a family that is always together and I love that.

Bare with me everyone, the novel about Paris is almost over, and then we can get back to everyday life! I'm starting to panic a little bit, I'm falling so far behind...

Paris: Chapter Two

2009-10-25T05:41:00.001-07:00

Alright, everyone, we're on Tuesday. Because I was missing two days of practice with TDR in Paris, I had to run twice on my own there, each time for an hour. Of course, anyone could figure out that sending me for an hour long run by myself in Paris was not a good idea. Erik had brought his roller blades with him though, so at 8:00 on Tuesday morning we went out in Paris; him with his roller blades and me with my running shoes. Just running through the streets of the city at that time of the morning was fun, because it was like the city was just waking up. There were all these moms dragging their little kids to school, people walking in business suits, and street sweepers. The street was busy, but it still was somehow quiet everywhere. We first ran in one direction along the Seine, and then after half an hour turned and ran in the other direction. But, since I'm me, nothing works out the way it supposed to (not that things don't work out, they do, just not usually the way they're supposed to). Right at the beginning of the run when we got to the river we decided to go down so that we could run right next to it. I didn't even think of it, and left poor Erik way behind trying to make his way down the completely rough cobblestones on his rollerblades. After about five minutes I realized that there was no way he could rollerblade there, and that was probably why he wasn't with me anymore. I turned around and ran back the way I had come but... surprise, he wasn't there anymore. I ran back and forth for about five minutes and finally found him again at the end. There were definitely a few minutes though were I thought to myself, "Okay, so I'm in the middle of Paris, alone." That didn't last long though, and the rest of the run was so beautiful. On the way there the Eiffel Tower was in front of me, and on the way back the sun was rising over the city and all the bridges on the river.
Tuesday morning, and every morning after that, we met for breakfast around 9:30 in the downstairs apartment. Every morning someone would by regular croissants and then croissants with pieces of chocolate inside. We were in France, eating croissants and drinking coffee with the Louvre right outside our door. Besides the coffee drinking and croissant eating, there was also quite a bit of discussing what we were going to do that day. When the discussing was finished it ended up decided that we were going to see Notre Dame in the morning.
We walked (prepare yourselves, I'm going to say "we walked" a lot in this novel about Paris) to the church and went inside, of course it was incredibly beautiful. I was a little bit disappointed by the outside because I was expecting there to be huge gargoyles all around like in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" but you could hardly see the gargoyles, they were so high up. Inside was absolutely beautiful though, walking into a church like that makes me understand why the churches were able to hold so much power over people back in those days. If you're living in a time with no machinery and technology, but you sit and listen to a preacher in a building like Notre Dame every week, then I think it's impossible not to believe in a higher power.

After Notre Dame we went shopping, though there really is not much to tell about that, because I learned a Dutch saying about shopping. The saying is, "kijka, kijka, niet kopa." That means, "look, look, don't buy." Generally, I wouldn't really agree with that, I'm definitely the buying type of girl. But new money comes at the beginning of the month, and it is the end of the October...

What's the first thing you think of when you think of Paris? The Eiffel Tower (for me at least). On Tuesday night we went to the Eiffel Tower after dinner. It was just starting to get dark when we got there, and there were lots of people everywhere. In front of the tower are tons of immigrants with these cheap metal Eiffel Tower keychains that they're trying to sell to everyone. These guys would seriously come up to you and grab your arm, or call your name if they heard someone else saying it. And they're so desperate just to sell something that when people bargain with them they sell their things for almost nothing. Anyway, we waited in line for a super long time. I was so scared, because I thought we were going to have to walk up the stairs inside of it... I hate walking up high places with open stairs. Instead though, we went in the elevator first to the second level, and then all the way up to the top. Which, the eleveator was also incredibly scary, but I survived. Looking down from the top of the Eiffel Tower you could see so much of Paris, and all these lights from the city everywhere. If you stood outside it was pretty scary because there was a lot of wind and you felt like you were swaying, so mostly I stayed inside and looked out from the glass. And, fun fact, there's a bathroom at the top of the Eiffel Tower for people like me who always have to pee in impossible places. But isn't that crazy? I used the bathroom at the top of the Eiffel Tower!

Look forward to the following chapter of my Paris novel!

Paris: Chapter One

2009-10-24T05:18:00.000-07:00

From Spooner, WI:
One and a half hours in the car will bring you to Duluth or Eau Claire. Christmas shopping, anyone? In two and a half hours you can get to Minneapolis. There's the airport there, so you can fly away to Sweden, or Florida, or The Netherlands. Or, you can go to America's biggest shopping mall. You can go to a water park, you can go to the Children's theatre, or to an art museum. You can go to Ikea! Four and a half hours in the car will bring you about to Houghton, Michigan, to Green Bay, or to Madison. In Houghton we can cross country ski if there's not enough snow in Wisconsin. Of course the Packers are in Green Bay, and Madison is Madison- the capital of Wisconsin, home to the Wisconsin Badgers, delicious bagels, and state street. Nine hours in the car will bring you to Kansas City, Missouri. There're Grandma and Grandpa, good Thanksgiving meals, and ideal Christmas shopping.
From Spooner, WI:
Eight hours on a plane will bring you to Iceland, then another two hours will bring you to Sweden. Three hours on a plane will bring you to New York, and then another seven hours to Switzerland, another hour to Holland. Three hours on a plane will bring you to Florida.

From Akersloot:
5 minutes by car will take you the Uitgeest train station. 30 minutes by train brings you to Amsterdam central station. Then 4 hours on a super speed train brings you right to Paris.

Just a little bit more than two months ago, I was in Spooner. In four hours I could have gone to Minneapolis and almost all the way back, to Houghton to visit Jess and Seth, to Madison, or halfway to Kansas City. But last Monday, four hours took me to Paris. There's so many times since I've been here that I feel like Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. At the part where she looks down at Toto and goes, "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." Going to Paris was definitely one of those moments, and being in Paris, it was like that the entire week.

Last Monday morning our train left from Amsterdam Central at 8:30 in the the morning, by 1:00 in the afternoon we were at our apartments right by the Louvre in Paris. Just walking in the metro station in Paris is something new. Everything is dirty and smells bad. But walking right through all the gross dirt, and right past the drugged out homeless people sleeping on benches are some of the most glamorous people that you've ever seen. The station was really close by our apartment, so we walked there from the station with our suitcases. Milja's sister Marja and her family got there right when we did, so that made nine of us. Milja, Taiana, Milja's friend Peter, Taiana's friend Esmee, me, Marja, her husband Erik, their daughter Adrienne who is twelve, and their youngest daughter Joleen who is nine. The apartments weren't ready for us yet, so we left all of our suitcases and things there and then walked to the Arc de Triumph. Which is... well, an arc of triumph. It was a pretty long walk to get there, and on the way we stopped and had crepes from a stand. I had mine with chocolate, what else? They were amazing. Once we got to the Arc de Triumphe we had to climb a lot of stairs to the top. At the top though you could see all over Paris, we saw Notre Dame, and the Eiffel Tower, and the street that had followed all the way there. We spent quite a bit of time on the top, and then took our time walking back to the hotel.

Okay, chapter one is over now, because we're eating dinner. Hopefully chapter two will be a little bit longer. We don't want more than say... five chapters in this novel!

Another Novel...

2009-10-18T04:27:00.000-07:00

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!

This is real!

2009-10-10T02:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I did a four mile race in 28 minutes and 32 seconds. The first Dutch man to finish raced a time of 18 minutes and 41 seconds. So approximately... ten minutes faster than my time. Incidentally, this is the same man who brought me my race number and chip (which I somehow managed to drop in a soaking wet parking lot on Thursday night) so that I could do the race. The reason he had my information is because he lives at the race headquarters of Team Distance Runners. Is everyone understanding this? I'm training with the same organization as a man who runs a sub 19 minutes four mile time! There are runners with this organization that are national champions and European championship finalists. Every time I think that I can't be any more impressed, something more impressive comes along.

These athletes run in zones, they drink protein shakes, and time their laps. They keep training logs, keep track of their goals, meet with their coaches, and so much more. Every minute I spend with the runners and the coaches of Team Distance Runners I learn something new.

Yesterday, before our race, we went to a meeting for "invited athletes" or all of the top of athletes at the Groninge race. A group of African runners walked right by us to get to the front, and when the meeting started they were introduced. They all had olympic places, world championship places, or they held some sort of record. From the minute I walked into the room for the meeting, until the minute the race started, the same thought was going through my head, "How did I end up on this team?"

The race yesterday had 16,000 people and we were the very first ones to start. The runners from our team were all packed in at the starting line with the professional runners, and we went out right with the first gun. No one was wearing spandex under running uniforms, or long pants, like we do at home when we race cross country. All of us wore tank tops and short spandex shorts, but because we warmed up so well, it wasn't at all cold at the beginning.

It started so fast, I was supposed to keep up with two of the girls from our team. One of the girls took off right away, and I stayed close enough to the other girl that I could see her for maybe half the race, but then she was gone too. The whole time I was running as hard as I could and people were flying by me like I was standing still. It was fun though, with lots of music, and people cheering, and so many fast runners.

After the race I stood around and froze for a while because there was a total mess of people and trucks everywhere, and I had absolutely no idea where to go. Also, instead of the long pants and long sleeved shirt I would usually wear, I was wearing that skimpy little spandex outfit which made it extra cold (though, I have to admit, it probably did make me go faster- I felt way more intense). I wandered around for a little bit, and then found some of the other people from the team. Finally one of the coaches found my clothes, and then put one of the guys on the team in charge of walking me back to the hotel where our cars were parked. The poor guy was probably just wondering how he got stuck babysitting the clueless American girl, but he was friendly anyway. The long walk back to the hotel wasn't bad, because Groninge is a beautiful city. We walked over all sorts of bridges, there were house boats in the canals, and the leaves are just starting to turn here.

Once we finally got back to the hotel, everyone wanted a shower, but they wouldn't let us in to take one. In the end, the coaches finally bought two hotel rooms for us to shower in, but that whole process took a while. Then, we drove to this absolutely enormous Chinese restuarant. Let me tell you, I don't think I've ever been somewhere with that much food that I wanted to eat. The dinner was a buffet. And there was a sushi bar, a stir fry bar, and (get this): a chocolate fountain. We sat at the restuarant for three hours, and I ate so much food. The food was great, but most of all it was nice to sit with the other girls from the team and just to talk. I know enough Dutch by now that when they have a conversation I can understand enough not to feel left out.

Sunday was the kind of day that for a while makes me feel confident that I can stay here and be happy for a whole year. It doesn't make me miss anyone at home any less, but it makes me feel like I belong here too. Sunday night when I was sitting there, completely stuffed with chocolate and sushi, it felt a lot like the weekends we spend at home during the ski season or the evenings after a cross country meet. It was familiar, but different too. I never would have dreamt that I was going to come here and find a running team like Team Distance Runners, and that I would get to be a part of a team like this. There's been so many moments when I'm with the team, and actually all over here when I just have to stop for a moment and think, "I'm really here, this is actually happening to me."

To sum it all up, this was a good week. There were the regular moments when I felt frustrated and stupid (for example, how did I lose my racing chip five minutes after walking out of a meeting about dedication and focus?). Before this week though, every time something frustrating like that would happen, I would start to be homesick right away. Something about this week was different, I'm not really sure what, but it can only be good. I can never tell, maybe two weeks from now I'll be more homesick than I've been before. For now though, we'll count it as a step in the right direction.

Slaap lekker!

xoxo

I decide to play volleyball.

2009-10-06T06:45:00.000-07:00

There's two girls I know that live really close to me in Akersloot. One of them is in my class, and I bike to school with her in the morning, and the other one is in my Spanish class. Actually, they're the girls I made cookies with last week; Annemarieke and Danique. Both of them play on a volleyball team in town, and they always talk about how much fun it is. The team only practices Monday nights for a couple of hours, and it only costs like five Euros per month. How could I resist?

So yesterday night at seven I went out in the rain, and biked to the gym in Akersloot. There were only like eight girls or something there, and a coach.

In case there's anyone reading this who doesn't know, I'm horrible at volleyball. Absolutely horrible, terrible, not good at all. Is that clear? But, on this team, I wasn't the worst. I felt like a volleyball pro or something, people kept telling me how good I was. After we played for an hour or so just with us, we played with the older ladies who actually have a pretty serious team.

The coach of their team came up to me and introduced himself. "Hello," he said. "I am Jon. I am a bitch." I really did not know what to say to that at all, so I just kind of nodded a little bit. Also, I couldn't talk, because I was trying not to laugh. I guess he didn't really understand that wasn't an appropriate thing to say the first time you meet someone.

Unfortunately, when we actually started playing with the other women, I wasn't all that good anymore. Whenever I hit the ball this one lady would say, "Well. At least you made a try." That doesn't sound very encouraging, does it?

And that's the end of my adventures with volleyball, though I guess there might be more to come.

A few of my friends at school have told me that I should play volleyball instead of run when I go back home. I don't think they understand that the Spooner Rails volleyball team probably wouldn't be very happy to have me. I'm probably more wanted on the cross-country team... so that's where I'm going to go. No worries, anyone!

"Gefeliciteerd"

2009-10-04T07:19:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning I was feeling pretty ambitious when I woke up, so I got right out of bed and put on my workout clothes. Once I actually had my workout clothes on, I didn't feel all that ambitious anymore. So then I ate breakfast, went on Facebook for a while, read through some of my PSAT material, went on Facebook again, checked my e-mail, and then finally went out the door and on my way to the fitness center. When I got there, it turned out that they were actually having an open house for their free trial of spinning classes that they're just getting there. Spinning class is one of those things that I've always thought sounds really hip and cool. Kind of like yoga, and pilates, and especially pole dancing classes (the kind for exercise!). And, since they didn't have any open fitness, it was the perfect opportunity for me to try spinning, just like I've always wanted. I guess though, that everyone else who was going to the free trial class had already done it. Leaving... only me. Luckily, the instructor is this really friendly guy (Jim from the gym), who always helps me when I go there. So, he did the lesson for me anyway. Spinning is just as hip and cool as I thought. You bike to the beat of the music that they play and there's three phases: climbing, speed, and jogging. I couldn't really tell the difference between the climbing and jogging phases, but the speed phase was not fun. Basically you start by pedaling as fast as you can, and at the end of it the bike is pretty much pedaling you, because your legs are going so fast and the pedals won't stop, and if you try to make them stop you would probably fall of the bike.
When I got home from the gym, Milja and I went to the grocery store, and Taiana and Peter went to Alkmaar to get Taiana some new pants. Then later in the afternoon, we all drove to Milja's sister's house for her niece's birthday party (she just turned nine). It was a family party, which I guess you always have for someone's birthday. Oh, I have to add that I drove to the party with Peter in this extremely cool car he got to use for the weekend. BMWz4, which doesn't mean anything to me, but maybe it will to someone who's reading this. I'll put a picture up here after we take one with it.

Anyway, there was a ton of people at the party, most of them who I didn't know at all. The thing is, apparently at these parties, when you get there you have to walk around and say "gefeliciteerd" to everyone. Every single person who's there! It took Milja two times of telling me that I had to do this before I actually realized that I HAD to do it. Once I stumbled through this big long word about five times, it wasn't so bad, but it was scary at first. You all know I'm not really a shy person, but that's one of the big cultural differences that I've noticed. At home we are not as friendly to people when we first meet them, and here they are extremely friendly. When I think about it though, it's a lot nicer the way that they do it here. Within five minutes of a party, you've already said something to everyone, and the whole atmosphere is a lot nicer.

The party was fun too. People sat around for a long time and talked, and Milja's sister and brother-in-law kept bringing out appetizers. At six they gave everyone dinner; mushroom or tomato soup, and salmon quiche. After we ate people started to leave, and around eight or so there weren't very many people left. We played a card came called 31. The whole thing was just really nice, again... "gezellig." The things that they do here with the family remind me a lot of family days in Sweden, which makes me miss it, but also makes me feel more at home. All of the people speaking Dutch and the noise makes me tired, but it was one of those things where you sit and just feel tired and happy.

Today is Sunday, and I've decided that Sunday is officially one of my favorite days of the week. First of all I have the training in the dunes, which I think I've already mentioned that I love. Then in the afternoons, we almost always do something nice, and in the evenings we can just relax. Also there is this show called "Farmer Seeks Wife," about these farmers that are trying to find wives (obviously). It's funny though because it's not like any of the American reality shows. Half of the farmers are old and overweight, and the ones that aren't old and overweight aren't even remotely cute. Then women who want to try and be their wives write these letters, and the farmers pick the ones that they want on the show. Except some of the farmers only get ten letters or something. But anyway, then they do these dates and stuff with the farmers. Kind of like the Bachelor, except I don't think they make out with as many people. Anyway, the nice thing we did this afternoon was we went shopping in Alkmaar for a winter coat. That was fun, but it was so busy everywhere. I have a new coat now, though, which is lucky, because it's starting to get really cold here.

Ik mis jullie!

xoxo

Hmmmm...

2009-10-02T07:12:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure this blog is supposed to be here so that everyone can read about my exciting life in the Netherlands and all the exciting things that I'm doing. I really am sorry to let you down, but between this Monday and today, I don't have anything all that exciting to write. It feels nice actually, that nothing all that exciting happened. Exciting things are good, but because there aren't any, it also feels sort of like I'm settling into life here. I'm used to going to school every day, so that isn't very exciting. I'm used to going to running practice, I'm used to the meals we eat (but, I'm still not so used to the cookies, candy, and desserts that I've stopped eating them all the time). Of course, everything I do here still feels different. But most things aren't scary, and I've gotten a lot of the "first time" things over with. For example, though, I still feel incredibly cool and European every time I ride my bike to school, or wear a scarf, or a pair of boots. The point is, I'm getting into a routine, and that's the sort of thing that makes me feel at home.

I did learn a few new things this week though. At running practice, I learned that the girls on the team stick together. If you start a work out with four people, you end the workout with four people. Even the girls who could run twice as fast as me if they wanted to will wait if we started the workout together. The miracle is, the fact that they're waiting for me makes me go so much faster than if they just left me behind. Also at running practice, I learned that the first time you do a circuit of 12x 30 second strength stations, it's not all that hard. But, the third time you do it it's very hard. (Brooke- they do box jumps on three foot high boxes!) And the build up run you go for after that is even harder. The coach always says to me "Kom op, Sofie!" Which is like "come on!" He's nice and helpful, and so are the other coaches. There's so many though, I don't know them all taht well.
At school, I learned that the girls here are really honest and upfront with each other. If someone asks a question about their hair, or the clothes their wearing then they give an honest answer. Or, if they don't like something that someone's doing, they just come right out and say this. I learned this while sitting through a twenty minute argument between some of the girls in this group project we're doing. It was so civilized though. Us girls at home mostly just role our eyes, and gossip about each other. But they just said everything they needed to say, and then the problem was completely fixed. Crazy how that works!

Okay, what else have I done this week? Hmmm...
On Friday I had two girls from my grade over to my house. We made chocolate chip cookies (everyone here wants to try American chocolate chip cookies), and then watched Never Been Kissed. It was a lot of fun, and the cookies were good, of course. I've decided I really shouldn't make any more American cookies though. If I'm going to consume that many calories, then I really should do it through Dutch food, and not American food. Personally, I think that pretty much any Dutch cookie is better than any American cookie. Any day!

Vrijdag, Zaterdag, Zondag

2009-09-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

I must be doing something right here, because on Friday, I was walking with Antea (another exchange student from Switzerland), and a lady came up to us and asked if we knew where the shopping centrum of the town was. Of course, we didn't know, but what matters is that the lady asked us. So she must have thought we were actually Dutch! Which means that it can't be completely obvious I'm American.
But, that was not the most exciting thing that happened on Friday. I took the bus after school to Alkmaar, which is a pretty big city that's about a fifteen minute drive from Akersloot, where I live. Antea took the train in from Texel where she lives. I think it's about an hour and a half for her by train, plus she has to take the ferry from the island in to the mainland and then take the train. We walked around Alkmaar for a little bit and shopped. It was so nice to spend time with someone who is doing the same thing that I'm doing right now. Also, Antea is just fun to be around. Then, one of the exchange students who lives in Alkmaar called, and said that she was with two other boys who are exchange students nearby too, and that they all wanted to meet up with us. We waited for them (Andria; from Indonesia, Francesco; from Italy, and Rafael; from Venezuela). And then we went shopping with them for a little bit longer, though the guys were not very cooperative.
If the same lady who had asked us where the shopping centrum was early would have seen us around six or so, she definitely would not have asked us where to go. We were all walking with a big map between us, and looking down all the streets, trying to find somewhere to eat dinner. In the end, we asked someone for a pizza place and ended up at a nice Italian restaurant. It was so much fun with the other exchange students, the whole dinner we were all laughing and talking.
After we ate, we walked back to Francesco's house and played a board game. Well, some people played. I tried, but I had absolutely no idea what to do for most of the time. It's so funny when all of us are together because even though we speak English , it can be really hard to communicate sometimes. So, I didn't really understand the instructions in Francesco's Italian accent very well.
On Friday night when we were done in Alkmaar, Antea came back home with me. We tried for a long time to get the dvd player to work, and we had just given up, but then Taiana called, and of course it was really easy. We watched.... (guess my favorite movie)...... Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants! What else? Milja and Antea liked it too. Antea said afterwards that it reminded her of her friends. She's right, now I know what movie to watch when I'm homesick.
It was so nice having Antea stay over. Talking to her at night was great, because she really does feel a lot of the same things that I feel about being here and missing home and everything.
When we were talking about it, we decided that it's like this:
We always miss home, we miss our friends, we miss our family, we miss everything. But we're not always homesick. The missing people never stops at all. It's constantly there, whatever time, whatever place. It doesn't make a difference if we're doing something exciting and fun, or if we're lying in bed trying to fall asleep. No matter what, we are always missing people. We decided though, that it isn't always a bad thing, it's just something we're not used to feeling all the time.

Saturday, we took the train into Amsterdam at 10:20, and got there at 11:00. We met with all the other AFS students, and went on a walking tour of Amsterdam. It was nice to see the city, but there were so many of us, and so few guides that a lot of the day was just standing around waiting. We went to the Red Light district, and walked through the smallest street. That was extremely uncomfortable, because it feels like you should not be there as a tourist when the prostitutes are working. Then we went to the Dam, and to this park with the big letters that say "IAmsterdam."
I was so tired after walking all day, but it was fun. And it's always nice to see everyone and hear how people are doing.
When I got home from Amsterdam we ate dinner and then were all sitting on the couch. Taiana came home with a friend just a little later though, and they brought me out with them to a birthday party. It's nice when she brings me with her places, because even though I know people now and I have friends at school, I don't do things with them outside of school very often.
The party was a lot of fun, all of Taiana's friends are nice and friendly. They ask me things about home, and always seem like they really are interested in what I say. It's a little hard because I don't understand the other conversations that they have, but it's still nice to stand and be with people.

Today, Sunday, I got up and rode my bike to the hotel in town at 8:30. I have to wait there on Sundays for the coach from my running team to come pick me up, because then we drive half an hour to run at the dunes in a town called Schoorl. The weather was so nice today, it was really crisp and cool, and there was sun, but also a lot of mist. Once we are in Schoorl we do a warm up run for about 20 minutes, and then do strength training for another fourty. The strength training is things like ab workouts, sprints, planks, push ups, lunges, jumping, and stretching. Today we did it with "the team" as everyone else calls it, which is just the people who are too old for our team, and have made it to the more serious one, so they still get to train with Team Distance Runners. After the first hour of strength training, we went for another short run, and then did four fast repeats of about a 600 meter loop. Because we were at the dunes though, there's a lot of hills and they are sandy. It's a good workout!
Sundays are my favorite day of running, because I love going to the dunes. Everyone on the team is fun, and nice. The atmosphere is the way that it can only be when you're with other runners, and I love that. Then there are so many other people in the dunes. Everywhere people are walking, running, roller blading, riding their bikes. Every time I hear the sound of the mountain bike wheels spinning, I think of Dad!

After the practice in Schoorl, Milja and I went and watched Taiana play handball. Then because the weather was so nice, we went for a long, slow, bike ride. We biked around the lake with all the sail boats, and through the little towns right on the canals. It was all so pretty.

Tomorrow, back to school. Another week! And who knows, maybe I'll miraculously understand a little bit more Dutch when I get to school.

xoxo

A Week in the Life

2009-09-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

Things that happened to me this week:

Story number 1- Wednesday afternoon. Taiana, another girl from my grade, and I are all biking home together. The weather is gorgeous, the sun is shining, and we're all happy because we got done with school early. Now, technically, you're not supposed to bike with three people next to each other on the bike paths. But, everyone does it, and then when other bikers come from the other direction you just get closer together, or one person falls behind. We start to come up towards this older couple who are riding their bikes towards us. They're getting closer, and closer, and closer, until we're right next to them. Then, out of no where this scooter comes flying towards us and tries to go between us on the path. Unfortunately, there was not enough room for him to go through. His mirror knocked into my handlebars and I sped off the side of the path. But, don't worry. With my quick reflexes I kep the bike standing up, and I didn't even fall! Let me just say though, that it was extremely scary, and very embarrassing. Everyone was looking at me. Maybe it was worth it though, because now I did get to tell this story, "when I got hit by a scooter."
Story Number 2- Sometime this week (I can't remember what day), I decided that I was going to download iTunes to the computer here, and then put my music onto iTunes so I could get new songs, move my old ones, etc. You know, everything that you do with iTunes. I went through the whole long process of downloading it, and then I plugged my iPod in. Of course, the iTunes program was in Dutch. Thinking that it would be obvious when the computer was asking every me something important I clicked "ja" to basically every question. But then, I looked at my iPod, and I saw... no songs! There were no songs on my iPod. All gone. Kapoot! No more Lily Allen, or Taylor Swift (she's the only country singer I like, don't worry), or all of the songs I listened to on the way here.
Story Number 3- Actually, I guess this one isn't really a story. I just want to make it known that I was not very happy after I deleted all my music from my iPod. So then I was really frustrated when I realized that I have to take the PSAT in two weeks. And I was really frustrated when I ran into the dog's bed about four times in a row. Everything was frustrating!
Story Number 4- Another bike story. Thursday at school, one of our classes got canceled, so one of the girls in my class and I decided to go the mall for a little bit. But, then I realized that I didn't have my bike with me because I'd gotten a ride to school. So she says, "Oh, it's no problem. You can just ride on the back of my bike." Of course, I'm totally terrified to go on the back of her bike, but finally she convinces me that it will be fine. We bike to the mall and nothing happens. I was terrified the whole way, but we made it there safely. We walked around at the market, we ate Ben and Jerry's, we walked around in the mall. Then it was time to go home. Somewhere, something went wrong when we were trying to get started. We ended up crashed, in the middle of the road, with a ton of people watching. Another embarrassing bike story for the records.

Besides all those exciting things, the week was normal. School all week, then on Tuesday and Thursday I practice with the running team. I do homework, I write e-mails home, we watch t.v. together (sometimes Dutch, sometimes English).

And then there's the weekend. Just hang on, I'll get there!

Pancakes, Movie Nights, and Races... Almost like home.

2009-09-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

Everyone always asks me what food I miss here, and on Friday when I told the next door neighbor, Marijka (sp), that I miss American pancakes, the first thing that she said was that I should come over to their house the next morning so we could make them. So on Saturday, I went to the grocery store (all by myself!), and picked out everything that we needed (all by myself!). The thing is, I don't think they actually sell baking soda in any of the grocery stores here. And self rising flour worked fine when I made chocolate chip cookies. Naturally then, I figured that self rising flour would work for the pancakes too. Well, they didn't work all that great, but in the end we did still have pancakes. The batter that we made looked just like the regular batter. I guess that's sort of obvious though, since baking soda and baking powder don't really make the batter look any different. And the pancakes still looked normal when we put them on the frying pan. It was just after they had been frying for a while, and the batter didn't really rise at all, and never bubbled very much on the top. In the end, we had lots and lots of pancakes, and they were kind of a mix of Dutch and American pancakes. Also, we didn't have any maple syrup so we put "stroop" on top, which is kind of like syrup, but it tastes better in cookies, and not so great on pancakes. They were all right though, and with butter and sugar they were pretty good. And you know, I figure it's a good lesson. Because I'm here to learn Dutch, and learn about the Dutch culture. Really, I shouldn't have been trying to make American pancakes in the first place. I should have been learning to make Dutch pancakes!

After we made pancakes in the morning, Taiana (my host sister, if everyone doesn't know that already), Marijka, and her daughter Pip, drove to a bigger city called Alkmaar that's pretty close by. Marijka and Pip went to the market, and Taiana and I walked through the big shopping street in town. I say walked, because we did go in the stores, and we did look around, but I didn't actually buy anything. It's just so hard, because I want EVERYTHING that I see in the stores. I can't pick just a few things to buy because there's so much! All the stores sell a ton of different types of cute boots, and bags, belts, skinny jeans, long shirts, and scarves. Everywhere you go it's like fashion central. So for now I'm being responsible and holding back a little bit on the shopping. For now. We came home from Alkmaar pretty early in the afternoon, because Taiana had a handball tournament later in the afternoon, and we both had homework. She was totally shocked when I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. I'm not really sure why though, because she was eating this chunk of meat that she had fried for maybe five minutes. It was pink almost all the way through... but to each her own, I guess (or whatever you say).
Later in the afternoon, Milja came home from Amsterdam, where she walked the 16km Dam tot Dam race that I would run the next day. She told me everything that I found out on Sunday when I actually got to do it. "En heel mooi dag," was her description I think. Which means "a lovely day."

On Saturday night, I rode my bike over to a friend's house in Akersloot. She lives just a few blocks away from us, and we usually bike to school together in the morning. Anyway, she was having a big group of girls over to watch Twilight. Most of the movies that they watch here are American actually, and of course Twilight is a classic. Even in the Netherlands! There were eight girls there, I think, and they all brought food, and pastries, and candy. One of the girls works at a bakery, so she brought this whole plate of croissants, and scones, and apple turnovers. Oh my gosh, it was amazing. Then of course there was chips, candy, and pop. Also they had these tiny cookies that apparently they eat mostly around Christmas. They taste a little bit like gingerbread, but I have to say I actually think they're better.
The movie night was nice though. I can't really understand a lot of what the girls say when they are talking to each other- they talk so fast- but it's nice just to be there and be included.

Sunday:
Dam tot Dam loop, 16.24 km (10 miles), from the middle of Amsterdam to a town called Zandaam. 45,000 runners. I went with a group of men from this company called Forbes, that makes floor tiling. Somehow someone told them that I wanted an entry, and they had a spot, so I ended up going with them.
The race was a lot of fun, there's people everywhere, and we ran through these small towns on the brick roads. The people in the towns had strung up flags between the houses, and they were all playing music and clapping as we ran by. And so many runners! The whole atmosphere was really nice.
As great as the race was, it made me miss doing the Short and Fat a lot, since that was this same weekend. The atmosphere was the same, but it wasn't the same people, and it wasn't the same place. I guess you just can't have it all though, because I know that next year when I'm racing the Short and Fat I'll be thinking about Dam tot Dam and wishing I could be there again.

Tot laater!
I hope you're all having a great fall.
xoxo

Italians are loud, but Belgians aren't stupid, and Dutch is not easy

2009-09-16T11:07:00.000-07:00

Since nothing very new and exciting has really been happening this week (I've pretty much just been in school). But the camp I went to last weekend was amazing, so I can write about that.

When I thought about coming to the Netherlands, I thought about eating Dutch food, meeting Dutch people, living with a Dutch family, going to a Dutch school. What I never thought about was that I was going to meet other students from Italy, Belgium, Turkey, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Germany, Switzerland, and everywhere. Everybody has such completely different lives, but because we are all in the same country and going through the exact same things, it feels like we've known each other for a long time. And not at all like we've just met.
On the last night that we were at the camp (which was only for the weekend), there was a talent show that everyone had to be in. We got to see belly dancing, Indonesian dancing, Thai dancing, and the Italians sang songs.
It's like nothing you can even describe being there and being a part of all the different cultures at one time. All of the Italians were always singing, and they would clap whenever any music was played, and the South Americans always were laughing and hugging.
During the day at the camp we did language lessons and talked about adjusting and etc. But then at night everyone got to go and dance. They played music from everywhere, and everyone danced together.
It's crazy to think that now I know people from so many different places in the world.

Besides the camp, things are going good here. Though, I do have to admit that learning Dutch is not going all that great. I feel like I can hardly ever say anything that I want to say, and that whenever I do say anything, I say it wrong. But everyone else tells me I'm doing well, and you know they say that Dutch people are honest! I keep hoping that one day everything will all just click, and suddenly I'll be able to talk. We'll have to see about that.

I've joined a running club here called Team Distance Runners. They're online if anyone wants to look them up! They are all way faster runners than me, and the team is extremely serious. But I think that in the end I'm going to be a much better runner. Everyone on the team is nice and friendly too. It's nice to have something here that is like what I did at home. The girls on the team want the same thing as the girls on the cross country team in Spooner. We all just want to be fast!

So between the girls on the running team, and the girls at school, I think that slowly but surely I might be making some friends here. Of course, it's impossible to make friends like the ones I have at home in one month. I've known the people at home all of my life, and everyone here for just a little while. But I'm starting to feel comfortable, and it's nice to see people outside of school occasionally. I went over to a girl's house after school today... major breakthrough! And on Saturday there's a movie night with the girls from my class, which should be fun.

It's family time here now. Tea, Italian chocolate, and t.v.
Here they call that gezellig, which they say means cozy. But they say it whenever anything's nice. At least I can say that in Dutch!

Doei!

#1

2009-09-14T09:18:00.001-07:00

Well I realize that so far I haven't written anything at all about being here in Holland. But then I started thinking about it and I realized that I never have time even to tell my parents about everything that I'm doing here, and definitely not everyone else who I think (hope) might want to know what is going in my life. I also realized that since I've been lazy and haven't been keeping a journal or anything about what I'm doing, it might be nice for me to keep a blog so that I can actually remember what I'm doing here.

Wow, so much has happened since I got here, I don't think I'm even going to be able to remember everything that I've done. I guess we'll have to skip details on almost everything that has happened so far and I'll try to be better about writing. But some of the things I've done:

I bought a bike, and I ride it to school every day with tons of other kids. It's about twenty minutes one way.

Seen lots and lots of sheep and cows. We think we have cows in Wisconsin... we have none compared to how many they have here. The weird thing is they're really skinny. Probably because they don't eat them... they're for milk. The sheep are everywhere too. The path that I run on has trees on one side, and on the other side is a lake for part of the way, and then the rest of the way sheep, ducks, horses, and cows.

Drank wine (but don't worry anyone, not all that much).

Gone shopping in a Dutch city (Alkmaar)

Visited the Red Light District. I have to say, that it's shocking to see half dressed women from the ages of 18 to at least 40 standing behind glass dressed in only a thong and underwear grinding at the windows. But, as sad, and weird as that was to see, I have to admit it was very interesting!

Eaten lots of cheese, and lots and lots of bread.

Gone to a Dutch birthday party.

Met an entire family of Dutch people and kissed people who I have only just met (the people here think that Americans are cold and way too formal when they meet here, and maybe I am, because I am still a little bit schocked every time someone kisses my cheek).

School, in Dutch of course.

I've said "ja, ja" a million times, and tell people I understand what they just said when really I have no idea.

Talked on skype... I guess that's not a Dutch thing, but still, I never did it before I came here.

Joined a running team where everyone- literally everyone- is a way faster, stronger runner than I am.

Run in the dunes, and on the beach, in the sand right by the sea.

Seen goats standing on barrels.

Met students from Italy, Finland, Belgium, all over South America, Germany, Indonesia, Thailand, Belgium, Canada... everywhere.

I'm sure there's way more that I'm going to think of five minutes after I post this. Every day something new happens. Sometimes things are exciting and fun, and sometimes things are hard. I miss home every day, but I don't feel "homesick" if you know what I mean by that.

I have way more than this to say, and I don't think I'll ever catch up. But I'll try!

Tot ziens!

The Beginning

2009-04-04T11:04:00.001-07:00

So, I've never had a blog before. But it does seem like a good idea to give people a way to follow me when I am gone next year on study abroad.
And there it is: I'll be in the Netherlands all next year. I'll be leaving sometime in the middle of August, and am still waiting for placement in a family which feels like it's the most important thing, even though it maybe shouldn't be. Since the only thing I know about next year so far is that I'm going to be in the Netherlands, I've tried to do a little bit of research. I have learned that though marijuana may be legal, the drug does not dominate their culture as some people here seem to think. The people in the Netherland's are on average the tallest people in the world (I wonder if my 5'4" will be considered short?). Road biking and speed skating are some of the most popular sports. Before I go this summer, I'm hoping to pick up on a little bit more information about the country; but these are the things that have stuck with me so far. And they speak Dutch there, which I do not know one word of. Also something I'm hoping to improve on before I leave.
I'm excited to leave this summer. Both of my parents and a number of my other family members all traveled on study abroad, so my entire life I've been encouraged to go. I know that there is more to see in the world than what is available in my small town and hopefully I'll get the opportunity to see that next year. The chance to be a part of another culture for a whole year isn't often something that you're given and I'm going to take advantage of it. I hope to gain some understanding of another part of the world, and in turn give the people I meet an understanding of American culture.
Of course, besides the excitement for next year, I'm also scared. I'm happy now, with my friends, my family, school, and the sports I do. Everything is going well for me, and to just turn around and walk away from all of that scares me more than anything. I know nothing about what my life is going to be like in the Netherlands or the people who are going to be there. Obviously though, I've decided to go despite that fear and everyday since I've made the decision to go I get more used to the idea, and more excited about it.