Midnight post

I'm so glad I was being pessimistic about our homeroom's volleyball skills, because we were even worse than I had expected us to be. When I arrived at the big gym, where the tournament was being held, I was a bit late so my homeroom teacher Stan had already made the team. I was one of the substitutes, waiting for our team to get the serve and rotate, but we lost even before I got to play. Too bad, no playing volleyball for me. It was a nice evening though. I can't remember which class won eventually, but after that the returnees played against the teachers. They were probably even more fanatic than the Netherlands was at the world cup final. It helped, because they DID win, but it was funny to see. After the tournament I hung out with some people, but we didn't have much time before it was curfew time again. Talking about curfew. In case you don't know what curfew is - here it's basically the time from which you have to be in your rooms. However - we're still teens - we don't go to our rooms automatically, so every evening around a quarter to eleven, the returnees and teachers walk around campus, yelling 'curfew time!' to everybody who is not in their room yet. When the New-Zealand kids arrived, some guys found this really funny and started imitating the returnees. Whenever one passed them, they started yelling 'alright you guys, it's curfew time! Go to your beds now!'. I must say, it was really funny. It was funny, until everybody found out it was funny and started doing the same thing. Now you know the thing about jokes, after repeating them a few times they're not that funny anymore. People however still don't really seem to realize and won't stop yelling CURFEW around any time a day. It drives the returnees crazy. I feel bad for them, I honestly do.

Today, we started off with class again. I decided that I would skip breakfast so I could sleep longer. It wasn't a wise thing to do, because I ended up being over 10 minutes late for homeroom. I was just on time for our test though, so I got to take it. I did better than 2 weeks ago. I guess that's what it was supposed to be, but still, I'm proud. After class I did some stuff, had dinner and then had my first Skype conversation with my host family! Even though I will meet them in less than two days now, it was really nice to talk to them. I was really nervous, but it was a nice conversation. After that I went to the talent show. People were performing their talents (oh wait, isn't that what a talent show is all about?) ; playing a musical instrument, singing, diaboloing (this is no word, I hope you know what I mean), it was a lot of fun. At the very end, the returnees performed. It was so funny, everybody had so much fun! The boys were dressed like girls and the other way around, and they danced to a mixture of different songs.. These people are crazy. I hope I can be a returnee one day. But let's first focus on my year here!

This will probably be the last post I post from camp. Tomorrow will be my last day here. I don't know my exact flight information yet, but I know that I will arrive in Las Vegas at 10.15 in the morning, so I will have to leave campus somewhere around 2 in the morning or something. Everybody will leave around the same time is what I heard, so there will be no curfew. Tomorrow there will be a yearbook presentation (read; 2-weeks-book presentation) and I believe there will be something like a dance. Looking forward to it, but not looking forward to saying goodbye. It might sound strange, but I've made some pretty good friends here and I know that I will never see many of them ever again, because they're not all from the Netherlands or going to the same state.. But, what my Brazilian friend Luiz taught me yesterday; you have to look at things from the right angle. I shouldn't think about how I have to keep saying goodbye to people, but how I have to be glad to know them now, and how I will meet new people. And I can't wait to meet new people!

To everybody here at Bryant camp, thank you so much! I had the best 2 weeks ever and I will never forget about these weeks. I hope we will keep in touch. Have the best year ever!

I'm going to sleep now, I'm tired and it's late. I have to get up early tomorrow because Camilla and I are doing our laundry before breakfast. We actually wanted to do it a few days ago already but we were too lazy all the time. I knew this was going to happen. Wish me luck. I really don't know how those things work.. haha.

Nevada, prepare. Here I come!

United Skates & Newport

When I was about 8 years old, I used to have my own pair of inline-skates and I would go out on the street and just skate. I used to be pretty good at it (which in my case means that I could go for 2 meters without falling), so when we arrived at the 'United Skates of America', a place where people can go and have fun when they really can't come up with anything better. You could rollerskate, do wallclimbing or lasertag. I wanted to go wallclimbing and rollerskating, but when I came in I found out that the wall that you could climb was really not much higher than 3 meters, so I decided to just go rollerskating. When Camilla and I were standing in line to get our skates, we were laughing at people trying to rollerskate.. it looked so easy. However, when we got our skates on and tried to get to the floor, all we could do is have respect for the people who were actually able to stay on their feet without falling. I've never had so much fun, I totally sucked at it.
I ended up spending most of my time in the middle of the floor, where you could buy drinks and just watching people. The skates hurt my feet but it was a really nice experience! At the end of the evening we danced with the whole group, which was a lot of fun. When we came back it was almost curfew time, so I stayed outside for some minutes, took a shower and went straight to bed.

The day after, Tuesday the 27th, we went to Newport. We left in the morning. I fell asleep in the bus, and suddenly woke up to an overdose of light. I opened my eyes and looked left and right, and all I saw was the sea. We were crossing a bridge and the view was amazing. When the bus stopped, I immediately left for the beach with some friends of mine. We actually wanted to go kayaking, but we decided to rest at the beach first, and ended up not leaving the beach until we really had to. I didn't swim because I hadn't brought my bikini, but the beach smelled so bad that I didn't really care. It was beautiful though. The Brazilians hated it, because they compared it to their own beach, but so did I, and compared to the beach in the Netherlands, pretty much everything looks good!
After spending too much time in the sun, we had dinner in some Panini place. It was good. I was having a good time until I went to the restroom and saw my face in the mirror. It was totally red. It's not as red as it was yesterday now so I will be ok. It was an amazing day after all. My first (and hopefully not my last day) at the American coast!

At last, I want to wish Keeley a happy birthday! Sweet seventeen! :)

I'm going to have to get back to my last class now, this evening we will have a volleyball tournament with all classes! Hope we will win. Don't think so haha.

Love, Cille

EF Language & Culture camp 2010 week 1

And here it is. The very first message from the States. It's been a week since I got here, but it feels like I've known the people I've met the last couple of days for months. This place is amazing!

Here at Language & Culture camp, I am together with hundreds of other High school students. All with a different destination, but the same goal; having the most amazing year ever and starting that year here at Bryant University in Smithfield, RI. In order for us to leave for our host family with enough confidence, we get a chance to learn more about our host country. That's why we have classes every day. We start off with homeroom, then we have Life in America, then we have U.S. History, after that we have lunch and after lunch we have Current Issues and homeroom again. In total, there are 4 ''schools'', each of them containing 4 classes. I am in class Kennedy West and our homeroom teacher is Stan. He is from Utah. The people in my homeroom are going to Nevada, Utah, Wyoming or Montana. There are actually three other people who will be going to the same school as me! Most of the classes are really interesting. It's crazy that I even have to go to school on Sunday, but I'm sure it will be really useful when I go to my host family. I've gone through all of the rules for so many times it will be hardly possible to make any mistakes.

When we're not having classes, we can choose to do activities. So far, I've been playing American football, volleyball and basketball, but we can also choose to do arts&crafts (I want to try that somewhere this week, but people say it's really boring), drama, swimming, card making, and so on. Besides the activities we can choose to do, there are also many activities that you have to participate in. So far, we have had a karaoke night on Monday, which was a lot of fun. We went to the mall to go shopping, which was nice, we went to a big baseball game (the Pawsox), which was funny, but it took like five hours and we ended up leaving before the game ended, because we had to get back on time, but we did get to see 2 homeruns! On Friday, we went to Boston. It was a-ma-zing! The high buildings, the big cars, the MacDonalds or Starbucks around pretty much every corner, it was clear to see we were in America. We did the skywalk, which was 50 floors high, and after that we just did some shopping and followed the freedom trail. In the last hours it started raining very hard, everybody was soaked and with the air conditioning in the bus it was like a miracle that I didn't get extremely sick, but I had an amazing day. Today I will only have classes, but tomorrow we will go to the 'United Skates of America'. That's going to be fun! haha.

Besides the classes, activities and trips, everything I do is hanging out with friends and sleeping. Of all girls, I have the biggest room. I share my room with 3 other girls, one from Sweden, one from Germany and one from New-Zealand. They are all very nice, I have a lot of fun with them and I'm glad I'm meeting people from so many different countries!

I'm sorry I had to describe one entire week in just a small story, from now on I will try to update this thing a bit more often. I have to leave now, I have to go to my classes.

See you!
Love,
Cille

P.s. I wanted to post some pictures, but I will have to wait hours for them to upload here so you can watch them on facebook and I'll post some on my blog later!

So long, goodbye

It was just this morning when I started packing and I suddenly realized I was actually leaving for a year. Yes, I knew this moment would be coming when I signed up for a High School Year many, many months ago, but when I looked at my suitcase and I realized that all my stuff would never, ever fit in that thing, it was kind of like a shock to me to realize that I am leaving everything behind now. I don’t want to sound dramatic or something, but it’s the truth. I am writing this in my bedroom – but it’s not like my bedroom anymore. Everything is cleared for my little brother to move in. The only things left are the computer, the drum set, my class picture on the wall and some other stuff I have no idea about of where to leave it.

The last few weeks have been amazing. I can’t remember the last time I was bored – I have done so many things in only a few weeks, I can hardly remember what I did. My school trip to Dublin, the trip to Paris with my family and most importantly the surprise party Tamar, Sabina and Anne gave me and so much more.. If I could I’d write so much about it, but it’s almost 1 a.m. now, which means I have to get up in six hours in order to arrive in Amsterdam on time, and there’s no way I’m going to miss this flight!

That is also the reason that this message is very short. It’s just a goodbye message to all of my amazing friends and family here in this small country – thank you all so much for the amazing time here, and when I come back we’ll have it just like now again! I will miss you more than I ever expected to, I will never forget you and we’ll keep in contact! I’ll be back in not more than eleven months and I promise; it will go by so much faster than you think.

And to all of the people spread out all over the world doing a High school year next year, and of course to ALL of the people in the States – HERE I COME! Prepare.. hahaha.

Tomorrow (actually today, but I still have to sleep so I’ll just say tomorrow), I will be leaving Amsterdam and fly to Munich at 1:20 P.M. After that (I don’t know what time, oh how stupid could you be), I’ll fly from Munich to Boston, from where we will be picked up and brought to Bryant University to have the most amazing Language & Culture camp EF has ever known! And after that I’ll be flying to Nevada, but I’ll post a message about that somewhere in the coming two weeks.
Everybody doing a High School Year, I hope you all will have an amazing time, get the best out of it just like I will, and may all your dreams come true! People staying home.. have an amazing year as well! Enjoy all the friends, family, music festivals and concerts and other events I will miss, and in a year I’ll be back and I can come along again haha. Oh and before I forget to mention; in four years we WILL be world champion. But we’ll see in four years, let’s focus on coming year for now.

I will miss all of you!

Take care,
Cille