So I've made it safely to Holland, as of right now I am sitting here with my host family watching So You Think You Can Dance, Holland version. So I guess I should start from the moment I got on the plane until this moment.
I met up with Austin, who also is an exchange student, at the airport and we went through customs and found everyone together. The plane ride was nothing special, slept, watched some movies, watched the sun set and rise. Then we landed in Amsterdam and everything started. Someone said 'tot ziens', which means goodbye, to me for the first time, so that made it very very real. The airport was massive, with Dutch everywhere, including the wooden shoes and tulips! There we met up with other students from Thailand, Brasil, Japan, and Australia. Then we all rode a bus for an hour and a half out to the camp where we would be staying for the week. We had all thought we were going to be staying in the city, where everything was happening. Unfortunately that was not the case and we had to stay at a camp, with teepees and cabins. So we all had to get to know each other there without much to do, and without our laptops. My new good friend Katie from Australia and I watched the Brasilians play 'football', soccer, and they weren't bad to look at, haha. We all just hung out and explored until the Belgiums came later in the day. After which we all started talking, or trying to talk, to each other. The Belgiums hardly knew English, so I had to learn to talk very very slowly and carefully. The Brasilians spoke very very good English, although when they wanted to piss us off they would talk very fast Portugese, so that was frustrating.
It was such an amazing thing to be in a room and hearing four different languages going on all at once. Very crazy and interesting, I enjoyed that part very much. Then we started to learn more of the Dutch culture we were going to have to live with. The first thing we found was that the Dutch eat a lot of bread, brood. For breakfast they had bread with cheese, kaas, jam, sprinkles ect. For lunch it was the same, bread with meat and more kaas, cheese. So that was very boring and repetitive, but we had to get used to that. Then at night there was always a bigger, hot meal, the only one of the day. So that's how most families go about their meals for the day. Every morning after breakfast we would have to take three hours of Dutch lessons with Stijn just covering the basics. He was a very very funny man, his accent was the best and he had such a strange sense of humor. All the adults were very very nice and trusting, I felt as if they feel we have a more understanding of what is good and bad and that most choices were up to us. So they hardly checked on us to see if we were in the right place or sleeping ect. So of course everyone stayed up too late talking, hooking up, doing whatever they wanted. So that was fun to just get to know each other. One night we were all out dancing and walking under the stars, which are so so so beautiful, and it was just good fun.
Tuesday we got to go to a cow milking farm and ostrich farm to just check it out and see how the robots milk, and they live. That was pretty interesting, the birds were so scary, I would turn around and one would be right there in my face. The bus we took was an open wagon sort of thing, so we stood in the back and watched the beautiful landscape. On Wednesday we went to the Holland Open Air Museum where we got to see Holland in the past to future. They had a walk through old time village with wax statues explaining how the family lived and survived. We saw lots of windmills, animals, and straw roofs. We also got to try some of the beer made there at the factory, it was bitter, but interesting. On Thursday we went on a bike ride to get used to riding to town. The bikes here have a key that locks the tire, it's very interesting and I have never seen that before. The bikes are also more designed for use and not just style. The town was just filled with people on bikes everywhere, it was crazy, I had never seen that many bikes all at once! These little villages are pretty much their malls, all the main stores in the same area. Some were American, most were obviously Dutch, and I even found a fair trade store. So we spent the day there and it was very fun. The last day we had short lessons and we all just hung out. It was Carol's birthday, so we had a party and everyone sang to her in their own language, it was very interesting. That night we had so much fun I think, we just did whatever we wanted as late as we wanted, it was so fun.
And then the day came, Saturday. We were to meet our new families.....
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