Foto's :)

With Hadewich, my cousin, in Friesland. More family pictures will come later (my cousin has them all...)

Nordic skates! :)

Rutger, Hadewich, and Florian skating on the natuurijsbaan (a.k.a natural ice)

Some of my theatre friends (we were watching the rest of the group do their scene) :)

Dit is voor de gek maar soms ben ik zo dus doe normaal

In my usual way, I'm not at all packed, my room is far from clean, and we're leaving tomorrow at 12 to start the 8 hour drive to Switzerland. Yay procrastination! (And having rehearsal until 8 pm) We'll stay overnight in Germany and be in Grindelwald, Switzerland by Saturday mid-day :) Aaaaaaaaaaaaah! I am way beyond excited at this point- 6 solid days of skiing in the most beautiful area ever, who wouldn't be?! Not to mention that my mom worked/lived in the same town for 1 year when she was 17- pretty cool! (she's quite jealous...) :)

Hmm what's happened recently...

Indoor skiing of course! If I haven't already told you about it, I went indoor skiing with my school in Bottrop, Germany a couple of weeks ago. While it was definitely a wonderful day, I'd still go for the outside skiing any time :) The most surprising thing for me was how many people had never ever skied or snowboarded before. I guess that's to be expected when you live in a country with only a few hills though... To get to the top of the slope (piste in Dutch) again you had to take this lift that was exactly like a moving sidewalk that you find in airports except tilted at a steep angle and covered in a thin sheet of ice. Scary! I only made the lift stop once and that definitely wasn't my fault. (A boy in my class let go of his snowboard, sending it flying into my legs and causing me to end up with one ski on the moving lift and one on the side, resulting in me almost doing the splits.) Skiing all day made me realize just how much I've missed it in the last two ski-free years and made me even more excited for Switzerland :)

Theatre: I think I've written about this before but I'm part of the theatre group from my school and our first performance of The Tempest (translated into Dutch of course) is in two weeks... EEP! But I'm all memorized :) I'm glad I'm able to keep up with theatre here, I still miss the Thespians though of course.

A while ago all of the AFS students had to take this big Dutch test in Utrecht. It was only reading and listening so not too bad (no writing thank goodness). Just super boring- all the stuff was over manuals and insurance and work and blah blah. But I passed!! So that's pretty happy :)

I passed my half-way mark- can't believe how fast it's gone- and I also passed my 6 month mark (I'm trying to stop counting haha). My parents are in the process of making official plans to come visit but as of now they'll be here for the end of April and the beginning of May. I managed to convince them to be here for Koninginnedag (Queen's Day- the biggest holiday in the whole country- April 30) and for Bevrijdingsdag (Liberation day, May 5, celebrated only in a few cities-one of them being Wageningen- biggest party in Wageningen) so that should be fun :) I'm also planning to go with them when they go visit Vera in Germany which makes Vera and I both super happy :)

Last weekend, my (REAL) relatives picked me up in Wageningen and we all drove up to their vacation house in Friesland (the north part of the country). It was great to see them (the last time was when they came to America a couple of years ago) and it was quite weird (but great) to be able to finally speak Dutch with them :) It was one of those times that made me remember why I had to chosen to come to the Netherlands and it just makes me more excited to go home and speak Dutch with my grandpa! My cousin Florian and I spent a lot of time watching the Olympics- especially the speed skating- and cheering for all the Dutch people. Go Sven Kramer!!! (He won gold in the 5000 meter). They took me skating on natural ice (opposed to a skating rink) with Nordic skates (the skates with the really long blades) for my first time and I managed to avoid completely embarrassing myself and didn't fall once, though the little kids did totally outshine me.... On Sunday, we all went to the huge skating rink (Olympic size!) and did some more skating. My cousins are all very good at skating- way faster than I'll ever be! :) It was a wonderful weekend with real family and I'd love to see their house in the summer (when they go windsurfing instead of ice skating haha).

Oh! This is kind of exciting- there's another AFS student at my school now: Abbey from New Zealand. My class loves her accent and now we're the "foreign pair" haha. She doesn't speak Dutch yet but it's fun to translate stuff in class. And I taught her some animals in Dutch today so she'll be speaking Dutch soon enough :)

Also- a huge thank you to everyone who voted for me on the blog contest: I'm #15 out of 100, not too bad!! Check out the whole list here: http://en.bab.la/news/top-100-international-exchange-experience-blogs-2010

Seeing as it's now almost midnight and I have some serious packing to do, I'll end here :)

Miss you all!

xxx liefjes

P.S. In English, the title says: "This is for the crazy but sometimes I am (crazy) so be normal."

That's a rough translation that makes more sense than the word-for-word one haha (for example 'doe' means 'do' in English but you wouldn't say 'do normal' in English...). It's a line from a Dutch rap song called Broodje Bakpao. Here's the video (it's supposed to be funny...think along the lines of Flight of the Conchords):

http://www.youtube.com/watch#v=0taljOkv_EA&feature=fvw

Vote for Marleigh!!

Happy February!!!!!

So I was nominated for the Top 100 International Exchange and Experience Blogs 2010 hosted by LexioPhiles (website: http://www.lexiophiles.com/).

Sounds cool, right? So your job as my faithful blog readers (ha) is to vote for me and help me at least get a high place up on the list- I'm definitely not expecting to win the prizes or anything but just as long as I don't get last :)

The voting goes from February 1st (yesterday) until February 14th. You can vote for three blogs at a time and I'm pretty sure you can vote as many times a day as you want (haven't tested this yet though).

Here's the link for the entire list:

http://www.lexiophiles.com/ix09/vote-for-ix10-here

My blog is about 10 up from the bottom- just check the box (and pick two other ones that you like) and submit. Pretty easy! Thanks for voting and sticking with my sporadic blog updates (sorry!) and I'll let you know what place I get :)

(Thanks also to whoever nominated me and all the other AFSers!)

groetjes xx

(P.S. I swear I'll update you guys within the next week!!)

The Second Week :)

*Read the post below first!!!*

Let's see... Oh! On Monday (28th), we all went to go see Avatar in the Cinemec theater in Ede. The Cinemec theater is one of the biggest theaters in the whole country, complete with a whole bar and eating area on the first floor. The big screen where Avatar was showing (in 3D) was just completed in October too (it has 1000 chairs, if that makes you realize how big it is haha). When you buy your ticket in a Dutch movie theater, you're assigned a specific seat that you're required to sit in. There's also an intermission half way through the movie where you can leave the theater and get snacks- weird, right? (Nienke's reaction when I told her that there was never an intermission in American movie theaters- even for four hour movies- was hilarious). I love cultural differences like that because that's something you wouldn't experience/learn about if you just took a vacation to the Netherlands. Anyway, we all loved the movie and Nienke and I had a great time with the over-sized glasses that made us look crazy.

The next day we had another "Christmas" dinner with Hans' family and another family who they're good friends with. I really like Hans' family- it might be just because the 4 of them are a lot less overwhelming than the 17 people in Janny's family haha. Thijs and Willemijn, my host cousins, are really fun and nice (they're both in college) and Thijs and I chatted about America and cultural things for the whole dinner. The other family was really nice too- they had two younger kids who were kind of crazy, but sweet.

On Thursday- New Year's Eve day- I went over to my friend Anoek's house with Renate and Tessel and we spent many hours making oliebollen and appelbeignets. Oliebollen are basically balls of dough with raisins that are cooked in oil- they're a Dutch New Year's Eve treat. To make appelbeignets, you cut an apple into circles, cover the slices in cinnamon and sugar, and then dip them in the boiling oil like with the oliebollen. So delicious! We made a mess of the kitchen, sang with the Top 2000 (every year, between Christmas and the last day of the year, one radio station counts down the top 2000 songs ever), and discussed how none of us had done any homework yet :)

When I got home that night, another family was over- the same family that celebrates with the Wouters every New Year's Eve. It was a little weird not watching the New Year's Show and the ball drop on TV but the Dutch go crazy with fireworks on New Year's Eve and that definitely made up for it :) We were surrounded on three sides by the fireworks and it seriously sounded like a war zone for a good 30 minutes. Unlike in Oregon, all fireworks are legal so everyone had giant fireworks, including my host dad. For you West Linn-ers reading this, picture the big fireworks that the city sets off on the Fourth of July and then multiply it by giving those fireworks to every person in the city.... so insane. We drank champagne, skyped with Anna (my host sister who is living in America for a year), and wished everyone a 'Gelukkig Nieuw Jaar'.

I have no idea what I did during the weekend but I think it involved a lot of sleeping in and dreading school on Monday... Though school on Monday did start at 9:55, not at the usual 8:30 so that was nice. Oh! On Friday, Hans and I went to Utrecht (big city) and I finally got to pick up my residence permit! So I'm no longer illegal :)

Oh, I forgot to mention this but I discovered something great during the Christmas days: KERSTBROOD :D It's bread with nuts and raisins and this spice spread and it is SO GOOD. I swear I probably ate the equivalent of a whole loaf of it during winter break. Yum.

Okay, enough writing for one day, I caught you up on the important things at least :) I have to do my photo project for CKV class now anyway (that's not a very hard assignment for me though haha).

xx Marleigh

Catching up... again

So obviously I'm not very great at the "write every week" thing... Sorry :(

Let's go back to the beginning of winter break...
On the last day before break, we only had two classes (!) and then all of 4VWO gathered together in this cafe by our school and we had oliebollen (a Dutch New Year's tradition-more on that later) and hot chocolate and other scrumptious things. It was pretty low-key, just celebrating the end of school, the snow, and the holidays. Santa showed up too :)

On Monday morning, we (as in the family plus Puck) piled all our stuff into the car and were on the road heading north-east to Germany through the snow by 6:30 am. Despite difficulties in the beginning (the Dutch don't know how to handle snow...), we drove safely to Groningen to drop Kees off for work and made it to the harbor with plenty of time to spare before catching the ferry to the small German island- Juist.

Juist is one of the seven inhabited East Frisian Islands located in the North Sea. It's only 10.5 miles long and -at it's biggest (when the tide's out)- is a little wider than half a mile. That's a really small island for those of you who aren't good at picturing distances :) There are also no cars on Juist, meaning that all the transportation is done by bike or horse-drawn carriage (not that it matters really, it doesn't take long to walk anywhere on the island...). The first day Hans, Janny, and I went on a walk down to the beach and it was amazing to see the beach covered in about a foot of snow. There were almost no footprints either so it was almost like we were out in the Artic... Except then there was the sea. It was gorgeous, snowy, freezing, and I took many pictures on that first adventure on Juist. We wandered through the town on the way back to the house and found lots of little stores and finally a post office (that's where I mailed my package to you Americans haha). It was weird being a tourist again and not being able to understand/read any of the things in the stores (okay, some I was able to guess at).

One of the other days we walked to the other side of the island (back to the harbor) and walked around the tip of the island, with the (dune) dike on one side and red German houses on the other. We were lucky that we got to see Juist in the snow, as it rarely snows more than a few centimeters there (if that). We went out to dinner at this fish restaurant by the harbor one night- it was definitely weird not being able to read the menu but the food was delicious and we even found a group of Dutch people there :) Another highlight was when Janny, Nienke, and I went swimming in this huge saltwater pool (inside of course!). We had the pool almost to ourselves and it was cool to look out one window and see the North Sea and then look out the windows on the other side and see the Wadden Sea and the harbor.

We spent a lot of time walking the beach, putting together a puzzle (1000 pieces!), watching movies, and reading books. Quality relaxation time :) We didn't really do anything for Christmas Eve- except listen to Christmas music on the computer. We took the ferry back to the mainland on Friday (Christmas) and then drove 3 hours back home. We stopped at this nice Dutch restaurant for dinner and though it was a little weird to not be home on Christmas, it was certainly nice to be back in the country where I could understand everything :)

While the Dutch do celebrate Christmas, it's quite different from how Americans celebrate it. For the Dutch, the holiday of Sinterklaas (Dec. 5) is their Christmas- it's the holiday that little kids wait all year for, the whole month of November is spent preparing for it, and it's a time for family and presents. Because Sinterklaas is the big Dutch holiday, Christmas means to them a week off from work (two weeks off from school) and another reason to eat and drink too much and spend lots and lots of time with family. Not that that's bad of course, just different :)

On Saturday (the day after Christmas but the second day of Christmas for the Dutch), we started frantically preparing for Janny's family to come over that night for Christmas dinner. I also gave my family all the gifts from America that my mom had sent and we had a little gift giving celebration, which was really nice- It made it seem more like Christmas to me :) I think we were 15 people altogether, so we had three tables pushed together and of course a LOT of food :) Three courses plus the mandatory coffee/tea and chocolates afterwards. After everyone left, we all went to bed exhausted and slept in late on Sunday.

I'll write about the second week of break in another post, but I promise it'll be done tonight :)
Liefjes xx

SNOW!

Photos!!

Snow = Sneeuw My road
That looks like about 3 inches, right?

The cemetery

My house! (from the other side than you usually see it in pictures)

Me and the yard and my bike :)

Love

Tradition...

The view from my house (looking towards the city)

Riding back from school

Riding to school- see the difference? (snow didn't actually melt, they're just two different spots haha)

Snow snow snow

Yes, I am still alive

In fact, I'm doing very well :) This week has been really great, partly due to the fact that everyone is so eager for two weeks of vacation and we haven't done anything in school this whole week. I'll catch you up on the (entire) month of November soon and I mean it this time because I have one day left of school and then two weeks of...well, nothing. No school at least- we're going to the German island, Juist, for 5 days next week then we'll be home for Christmas. Hopefully I'll do something fun in the following days and then it'll be New's Year Eve and 2010! And then back to school...

Monday: Finished Christmas shopping for America- finally!!! A really good Dutch day for me- just one of those days :)

Tuesday: My class got together and did a Christmas dinner/party thing together. Most classes went out to eat but our class decided to cook and eat at school (I don't know why we didn't want to go out but it was fun and less expensive- always a plus!). We made mini pizzas on gourmetten (these great Dutch inventions that are like mini double level stoves) and then for dessert we had cream puffs (ijs soesjes) and the candy canes that I'd brought (thanks Mom for sending them!). Everyone ate too much and we all got a little silly and I had a really stupid moment that my classmates will probably tease me about for the rest of my life (not going into details on the world wide web) but it was a really fun night and I love feeling like part of my class :)

(This is a what we cooked our food one, the top layer is where we put our pizza dough and then on the bottom where the little trays are, is where we put the toppings for our pizza and such.)


My class :)

The temperature also drastically dropped on Tuesday and everything froze over (frost not ice) and it was quite gorgeous.

Wednesday: Very very cold again (-2 degrees celsius or colder) and we even got a few snowflakes in the afternoon. After school I went with two girls to the Albert Heijn so they could get doughnuts and it was quite a adventure (including many scary bike problems as usual) and I also mailed my package to America (FINALLY!!). I'm currently finishing my Christmas cards (because printed materials mailed together send faster) and crossing my fingers that everything gets there on time.

Thursday (today): SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW !!!!!!!!

If you haven't already guessed, it snowed today. 3-4 inches. An absolutely beautiful bike ride (and it wasn't even that scary riding in the snow!). Some people at school thought that I had never seen snow before because I was so happy about the snow. What can I say- the first snow of the season is always the best. Not to mention that it makes me feel a lot happier because now it feels like Christmas can actually happen (even though it'll still be weird). It continued to snow the entire day and hopefully it'll snow tonight/tomorrow. I took many pictures of course. I only had two lessons today and didn't feel like going home right after school so I took this different road and passed many snow-covered fields and cold ponies and eventually ended up at this old-ish cemetery, where I explored and took more pictures. Pretty neat, I've always been a fan of cemeteries (I blame you, Mom). I was still on a "snow high" after dinner so I walked with the dog through the forest and said hi to all the horses in the adjacent fields. And didn't get lost :)

Friday (hasn't happened yet...): I only have two lessons tomorrow and then all of 4 VWO is gathering for a party thing hosted by our teachers. And then... WE'RE FREE!!!!

Snow pictures in the next one!!

Liefjes