A few of the weeks highlights
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 our host for the day has even worked with the UN! I found it genuinely interesting to learn about The Netherlands' history with water, as well as it's present and future. I think that the U.S. could stand to learn a few things from them, though it must be much harder to build water management structures in such a large country. Still, learning about the dykes and polders was fascinating. I'm glad I had the opportunity to learn so much about where I am staying.
Thursday was a great day. We visited five farms (well, four farms and a stable). Lucky we were able to carpool between them. We started at an organic chicken farm, learning about the measures taken to create organic eggs. We went from there to a very large farm that grows mostly vegetables, but also tulips and the like. We picked out own carrots and climbed a pile of 600-tons worth of onions. The onions were being dried by large fans, which left my hair a mess but also blew away most of the dirt I had acquired that day.
The third farm belongs to the president of Rotary Batavia-Lelystad, and it a cow dairy farm. It wasn't planned, but we showed up just as a cow was going into labor. It was beautiful, and the cow was a girl (so there wasn't any melancholy about it being sold to the meat industry)! Though I did befriend a curly-haired calf that will be sold in a few months to the meat industry, poor baby cow.
The last day of the week we visited the mayor! It was raining very hard today so some very generous members of different host families drove us from location to location. We met in the morning to bake both brownies and an apple tart to bring to tea with the mayor. The recipes were all in Dutch but I think we did okay (though a Dutch>English dictionary was sometimes necessary). Before today I didn't know anything about how Dutch government worked. At our meeting with the mayor I was able to ask all the questions I had about appointments and terms and parties. For example that there are no direct elections, not even at the local level. Mayors apply, are tested, interview, and eventually nominated through a vote by a government council. The king approves that nominations and then the mayor is official appointed. Mayors are also not commonly residents of the city they preside over, which I think is quite different.
After the mayor we headed to the grocery store (which my host family owns, go Vosselmans!) and picked up the ingredients for the night's dinner. Like the apple tart we were making it ourselves, also with Dutch recipes. We made a couple dishes that I can't recall the names of because they were traditional Dutch, as well as a broccoli soep and Hollandase salad. I think we did pretty okay.
It was a very good week, but a tiring one. Tomorrow I'll probably be picking up some notebooks for school! I'm excited to be in an environment where everyone is speaking Dutch, I think that will help me learn.
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!
)
Thursday was a great day. We visited five farms (well, four farms and a stable). Lucky we were able to carpool between them. We started at an organic chicken farm, learning about the measures taken to create organic eggs. We went from there to a very large farm that grows mostly vegetables, but also tulips and the like. We picked out own carrots and climbed a pile of 600-tons worth of onions. The onions were being dried by large fans, which left my hair a mess but also blew away most of the dirt I had acquired that day.
The third farm belongs to the president of Rotary Batavia-Lelystad, and it a cow dairy farm. It wasn't planned, but we showed up just as a cow was going into labor. It was beautiful, and the cow was a girl (so there wasn't any melancholy about it being sold to the meat industry)! Though I did befriend a curly-haired calf that will be sold in a few months to the meat industry, poor baby cow.
The fourth farm was a goat dairy farm, and there were so…many…goats! 'Nuff said (btw they don't live like this, they were lining up to be milked).
We stopped to look at the windmills before checking out the horse stables.
It was a really fun day and I really enjoyed it.
The last day of the week we visited the mayor! It was raining very hard today so some very generous members of different host families drove us from location to location. We met in the morning to bake both brownies and an apple tart to bring to tea with the mayor. The recipes were all in Dutch but I think we did okay (though a Dutch>English dictionary was sometimes necessary). Before today I didn't know anything about how Dutch government worked. At our meeting with the mayor I was able to ask all the questions I had about appointments and terms and parties. For example that there are no direct elections, not even at the local level. Mayors apply, are tested, interview, and eventually nominated through a vote by a government council. The king approves that nominations and then the mayor is official appointed. Mayors are also not commonly residents of the city they preside over, which I think is quite different.
After the mayor we headed to the grocery store (which my host family owns, go Vosselmans!) and picked up the ingredients for the night's dinner. Like the apple tart we were making it ourselves, also with Dutch recipes. We made a couple dishes that I can't recall the names of because they were traditional Dutch, as well as a broccoli soep and Hollandase salad. I think we did pretty okay.
It was a very good week, but a tiring one. Tomorrow I'll probably be picking up some notebooks for school! I'm excited to be in an environment where everyone is speaking Dutch, I think that will help me learn.
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