United States > Netherlands 17/18

Text Adjust the music on their iPod  Eat Drink Eat and Drink (each hand individually occupied) Offer a friend licorice while also eating that licorice Smoke Scream monkey noises into the phone while another friend on a different bike also screams monkey noises into their phone Bike while holding an umbrella Bike with their hands in their pockets Bike with one hand on another person's Vespa so you don't actually have to pedal Hop on the seat side-saddle and then swing your feet over after the bike is already moving Hold hands with someone on a different bike

Every Friday for the next three months I'll be spending my day volunteering at a local primary school. The idea is that I'll be giving back to the community while simultaneously putting myself in a learning environment. As the 4-6 year-olds I work with learn how to read and write (in Dutch of course), I'll be learning right beside them. And since 4 and 6 year-olds here can't say any more English than "my name is…" and "one, two, … ten", it forces you to have simple Dutch conversations.  Today was my first day helping out, I was the new play thing. It was interesting seeing how different the grade school education system here seems to be from America. The children look like they have a lot more freedom, the teachers aren't watching their every move. The daily schedule is a bit loose because they work, to a certain extent, at the student's pace. When recess was over they waited for all the kids to walk themselves back inside, they didn...

The foreign exchange students joined school a week late. Luckily for me though, the other American exchange student and one other Dutch kid that I knew had the exact same schedule as me, so it wasn't hard to find a familiar face. Biking to school was easy, though while I did get caught in the rain I'm accepting that this will probably be a common theme in my life this year. None of the exchange students have books yet, so we couldn't do anything in class besides sit there and try to read out assignments as best we could. The only class taught in English is English, so hopefully that will motivate some fast learning. For the most part the other students are talking in English, though I've been encouraging them to speak Dutch to help me. I brought jolly ranchers to school, so I was very popular during free time when everyone wanted to try American candy.  Here's a link to the school's website if you want to check it out. The Dutch school system is a l...

This past week school started. However, they wanted to wait until the second week to have the exchange students join class. Instead, Rotary arranged a program that would have all of the exchange students doing a new thing around Lelystad everyday. Everyday the other exchange students and I would meet and bike to a different part of the city. Usually this means giving one person a phone and having everyone else follow them. On Monday we all met for a Dutch "lesson". We mostly just talked about what we were going to do that year. We also ate poffertijes, a traditional dutch pancake! On Tuesday we had the opportunity to meet with Lelystad's volunteer water search-and-rescue team, KNRM. They took us out on a boat and showed us different rescue techniques, how to board another boat, (and even how to drive the boat! ) On Wednesday we met with a Rotarian who spent his career working in Water Management. The Netherlands leads the world in water management techniques, and ...

I arrived at 8am Wednesday morning, the 30th. My host family greeted me with a flag and we all had coffee together at a Starbucks before taking the drive from Amsterdam to Lelystad. I understood my first Dutch sentence, a whopping 5 words, ``Dit koffie is niet lekker”.  My family talks to me mostly in English, but I listen in when they speak Dutch and I am able to recognize some words, and very very basic sentences. That first day we went to the grocery store that my host family owns, and stopped at a toy store to buy a gift for my host parents’ niece. I have two host siblings with this family and I am glad to find out that the extended family also lives near by. After the shopping I met with the long-term inbound coordinator, Barbara Tusveld, and her Canadian exchange student (Abbi). It was a good bolt of energy I think. That night I watched some Dutch TV with my host family and I was able to stay awake until 10:30 (10:30!). Jet lag wasn’t a problem at all. I have my own r...