ba-ba...this is the sound of settling

So it's been about two weeks since I last posted... meaning I've been here for nearly three weeks! Crazy. It feels like it's been longer than that, but there are still times when I feel like I just stepped off the plane. This is my third week of school, but sadly today I'm at home with a cold :( hopefully tomorrow I'll be on my feet again. Let's see... School. No matter what country you're in school is still more or less the same! Or so it seems to me... I never really liked school all that much but Twickel is pretty good so far. I have a lot of free periods so that gives me time to hang out and listen to music, go get lunch, whatever. The hardest part is not knowing what's expected of me in classes. Exchange students aren't common here so a lot of teachers don't really know why I'm here, or what to do with me :) the first question they all asked : "You don't speak any Dutch at all?" Sadly, no. I can understand the topic of conversations and follow them, but not enough to participate. My speaking skills are pretty much non-existant at this point, so there's a lot of smiling and nodding on my part. Most people here do speak English, but few of them (especially my classmates) speak it well enough to have more than a simple conversation. I can tell my English is getting worse already! haha that's a good sign I think, but until my Dutch gets better I have to find a more effective way to express myself in public. Interpretive dance? We shall see.  

I've made a few friends both in and outside of school, hooray! I was (and remain) a little worried about the whole science of friendships. One of the harder bits of exchange is the social difference. One minute you're surrounded by people you've known for years, and then poof - that entire support network is two oceans and a continent away. There are no Inflatable BFFs, unfortunately, and friends take a while to make. Going to school the first day was overwhelming because there's so many people, and all of them already have established relationships years in the making. It's hard to be dropped in the middle! Especially when there's language difficulty. I know I don't have that part as badly as others though, so at this point I can at least communicate a little bit. and even if they don't really understand why I'm here, people have been really nice - helping me translate schoolwork, partnering with me in P.E. etc. So dank je to Iris, Sharon, Francis, Ishmael, and Floris for making me feel welcomed :)

One thing I've found really interesting is how as an exchange student, I'm totally blind to cliques and social borders. Because that dividing line is gone (to me), I and all other foreign kids end up making friends from all different social groups. On one hand, this is kind of a drag when you find out that two of your friends don't like each other; but on the other it's amazing how easily lines are transcended when you ignore them.  

Some things I love about Holland (patrick, i'm stealing your theme!):

1. Bikes. There are so many bicyclists here, it's amazing. everywhere you look, there's clusters of them: old omas en opas (grandmas and grandpas) in skirts and tweed jackets, mothers with babies strapped into seats on their handlebars, business men with bluetooth headsets, and lots and lots of teenagers. Cars are very watchful of bikes, no one wears helmets, and there's always a bike path next to the road. and another great thing? the cobblestone streets. I still haven't gotten over them :)

2. Beer. The drinking age in Holland is 16, and the Dutch believe that responsible drinking begins at home. Grolsch pilsner is brewed in nearby Enschede, and so that's what most people drink in the area. That's all I've seen anyone drinking. and it's good! 

3. Proximity. The Netherlands is a small country, so all of the villages/towns/cities are really close together. I can bike to Borne's city center in three minutes, Hengelo's in fifteen, and Enschede in thirty. When it's too far to bike, there are trains that go everywhere. Thery're quite expensive, but AFS gave me a card that gets me a 40% discount. I'll break it in with Lauren (another American AFSer) this friday when we go to the orientation! 

4. Fashion. As predicted, Europeans are on average much better dressed than... anyone else. Nobody wears just jeans and a tshirt to school, and i'm pretty sure anyone wearing sweatpants would be shot. Think layering, boots, lots of bracelets, and skinny jeans. I was terrified at first, being among those who enjoy fashion as long as it's on other people. However, after a couple trips to Blend and H&M (best. store. ever.), I think my more fashion-concious friends would be proud of me! The value of dressing well has skyrocketed for me because as I can't speak Dutch yet, I need to make good first impressions and show my personality through how I dress and act, rather than my words. 

5. The fact that I haven't heard a single song by Miley Cyrus, The Jonas Brothers, or any other Disney star since I arrived. Yes, the Dutch do like Lady Gaga and Lil Wayne - but I can live with that. But the lack of shit-tastic pop by over-sexed fifteen year olds is greatly appreciated by the likes of me. 

my first outing!

Wencke hiding from the sun :)

a team Nederland fan decked out in orange, the national color. the flag is red white and blue, but the royal family's name is van Oranje, or 'of orange'. 

a street leading to the square in Borne

On Sunday, my family and i drove to Essen, Germany to see the European Kanopolo Championships. it was a beautiful morning, sunny and warm but breezy enough. we drove for about two hours, maybe a little less, over the border - i was surprised that we could just drive through, but apparently most of Europe has open borders now so it's just like driving from one state to another. 

i've never seen anything quite like kanopolo  - 'the best way to describe it', said Wencke (my host sister), 'is like rugby in kayaks'. and it is. there are nine players on each side, and they basically beat each other up to try and get the ball into a square goalpost on either side of a large pool. the games took place on a large lake just outside of Essen, with courts (pools?) set up one next to another, roped off and sided by floating docks. there were probably eight or so, plus some areas for practice. the nations competing (as far as i know) were Germany, Italy, Russia, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Poland, Russia, and France. it was very fun to see all of the different nationalities roaming around, chatting in the sun in about fifteen different languages. i also had my first taste of pommes frites with mayo, or french fries. i liked the mayo well enough, but they had a bottle of ketchup there and i stuck with that :) we had a discussion later on about how all exchange students gain weight during the year, so i'm going to try to keep that to a minimum! plus... ketchup is amazing. we'll leave it at that. 

Today Paula, Wencke and I went to my school to meet with the dean and figure out my schedule. it turns out that the level i was going to be in, havo 4, is too full, so i'm going to be in VWO 5 instead. vwo is the level for more ambitious kids who want to go to university for careers. i'll still be with people my age but the classes will be a little harder, and more oriented towards college-prep. possibly. this is all from what i've been able to make out of my english briefings. it's funny having conversations here, because paula and this or that person will have a long exchange and then paula will turn to me and say, he thinks you should take biology. haha well i can follow conversations here a bit, as in i can tell what they're talking about. tomorrow i'll bike there again and pick up my schedule, and be shown around school a bit, perhaps meet some classmates. then i'll start school officially maybe wednsday? we're not quite sure yet, as this school week is a bit all over the place. hopefully all will go well there, i'm excited to start school and talk to people my age again! i haven't met anyone since i arrived here so making friends will be nice.

here at last

writing this, i'm sitting in the living room of my family's home in Borne. i arrived yesterday in the early afternoon, after flying from New York through Zurich, Switzerland. Paula, Gjalt, and Henri met me at Schipol airport in Amsterdam with a bouquet of wooden tulips and a balloon :) we drove about two hours from there to Borne - all the way across the country! luckily there were no major traffic jams. today Paula took me on a little tour of the town, we went shopping and ran errands: to the grocery store, the butcher, the library, the bicycle shop (to get the brakes fixed on my bike). Borne itself is smaller in size than Homer but has more people and far more shops and the like. everything is very close together, the streets are narrow and paved with cobblestone. there's a church built in 1480, it's huge to me but they tell me it's quite small for a chapel. 

i'm definitely suffering a little jet lag, paula teased me for nearly falling alseep in the market! it's about a ten hour difference i think, so it's taking a bit to adjust. i'm learining new dutch words everytime i do something. one wonderful discovery is that they still have cosmogirl (the magazine) here! although it's in dutch, so i can barely read it, it's nice to look at the pictures :) i got a prepaid cell phone today for 25 euros, and we're spray painting my bike shiny blue to prevent it from being stolen. tomorrow i hope to see Borne a bit more, or maybe even Hengelo, where i'll be going to school. i'll post some pictures of Borne tomorrow but right now i'm unbelievably tired.. even though i've already taken a two hour nap today! haha well i'm going to go to sleep now.

zes dagen

...and so the countdown begins! i officially have less than a week, making everything that i still have to do all that more daunting. i have a world history course that i still have to finish (i'm on the very last lesson but i just can't seem to sit down and do it), books to read, Dutch to study, bags to pack, a room to clean... the list goes on. and on. i'll find the time somewhere, though. 

i've been doing shifts at the bakery for the past couple days because one of the baristas left, it's nice to make a little last minute money :) well i hope that everyone reading this is doing well, and thank you!

I have two weeks left in Homer! The summer has almost slipped away, but I think I've accomplished what I wanted. I got my driver's license (I can't drive on exchange, but this way I'm off my provisional when I come back), went fishing, danced and got tan at Concert on The Lawn, and had many amazing adventures with my friends before we all go off into our great blue yonders. I'm obviously not the only one wanting to get out of Homer for a year, and great minds think alike - the other exchange students leaving for the year all happen to be my besties! Kayla is off to Spain here soon, also with AFS; as well as Kelsey, who is going to South Africa. Then there is Ruby, who will grace Pune, India with her presence in the very near future. 

Of all of the people who could change the world with what they're going to discover on their respective journeys, Ruby and Kayla are the people who will do it while laughing and leading everyone with them. They are the flames that everyone will follow, and I'm so lucky to have them along with me. We'll each find things in this world that are different and new, but most of all we will find parts of ourselves we didn't know existed. So goodbye for now to my gypsy girls, and hello to the Great Unknown...

fishing

I got back from fishing in Bristol Bay yesterday, being home has never felt so good. my dad, brett (the other deckhand) and i drove down from Anchorage on Friday night, actually getting home at 2 am. collapsing into my bed was glorious! it was a good season, even though we didn't catch quite as much as we wanted to... the weather was beautiful and with only three people on the boat we had plenty of room. neither brett nor i had ever fished before, and my dad had never been the captain of his own boat - so we were all beginners. we had a few mishaps... running over the net and getting it caught in the propellers... getting too close to the line and having to roundhaul the entire net (with 1,500 lbs of fish in it) onto the deck by hand... no big deal. we got through it, built a little muscle, got funny tan lines, ate a lot of oreos. we started out the season in the Nushagak district, before moving on to Naknek-Kvichak and then Ugashik. the one district we didn't fish was Egegik, which ended up having the best season after all. that's how it goes, i guess - they'll do better next year, although i'll still be finishing up my exchange during the peak. still, we had fun, made some money, got a ton of sleep (not). it made me appreciate a lot - like showers, and non-frozen food, and milk, and not smelling like fish all the time. 

i'm going to go sniff my clean laundry now. 

School

So a few days ago I got a lovely little letter in the mail! It was a note from the dean of the high school I'll be going to in Holland, plus a packet of brochures and things. It was wonderful to ge to see what the school is about, even if all of the information is in Dutch and I can only understand a few words... anyway. The school is called Twickel (hee). It's quite large, with campuses in a few of the surrounding towns, but I'll be going to the one in the city of Hengelo, which is a 20 minute bike ride from my home in Borne. The Hengelo campus is known for its sports programs and its art classes, which I am very excited for. I'll be enrolled in normal courses like math, writing, science, P.E. etc. and hopefully a photography or ceramics class or something. Those credits will carry over to my Alaskan high school as pass-or-fails, which basically means if I pass the class (even if it's a D-) then it doesn't affect my GPA back home. nifty! This is excellent because I'm going to be spending most of my time figuring out what I'm supposed to be doing, let alone how to actually accomplish the work. 

The grade level system in the Netherlands is a bit different than it is in America. Instead of everyone going to school kindergarten though twelfth grade, once a student reaches high school they get to choose what to study. Vocational-type schools are for people preparing to enter the workforce (as I understand). The other choice, HAVO schools, are for those who want to persue higher education - university, grad school etc. Twickel is a HAVO school, so there will be more diverse classes to choose from. 

Overall I'm really, really excited. It's kind of odd getting to know all of this so soon because generally with AFS a student might not even have a family until days before they leave, much less know what school they're going to.  It does leave even more to worry about, though. At Homer High, we've always had really nice exchange students. Vicki, Oscar, and Panda last year and Nick, Mob, and Siina this year have been great to have around. However, there always seems to be a boundary between exchange students and permanent ones. I can totally understand that, because they tend to stick together. But I really want to be engaged at my new school, and not feel like an outsider to the best of my ability... maybe it's asking for too much, but we'll see! I think that improving my Dutch skills will end up making all the difference. 

If you want to check out my school site, here's the link. It's all in Dutch but if you go to the link on the left-hand bar that says 'Fotoreportages' there are some links to online photo albums showing students on field trips and stuff...  

http://www.sgtwickel.nl/website/index.php?ModuleSet=2