Dronten, the Netherlands. Home of a totally awesome host family, Up With People Land, and (of course) the Sprinkles of Awesomeness. Chocolate sprinkles, for those of you in the states, are eaten for breakfast on buttered bread. And lunch too, when we had it at the XL, our facility for most of the week. :XD Did I mention how much I love Dronten (and sprinkles?).
I did have a totally wicked host family though. My room mate for the week was Elke, and we stayed with the Vermeulen family. My host dad, Roel, owned a really famous apple juice company in the Netherlands, so I got to drink some really good apple juice. XD My host mom, Vera, was also really nice and I got to hang out with my host sister, Carmen, a lot that week, since she and several other high school students joined us uppies for the week to learn about immigration policies. My little host brother, Olaf, was sweet too, even though we couldn’t really speak the same language. And to top it all off, they had sprinkles on the table every day at breakfast. Like I said, totally awesome host family, right? :XD
Because the team picked an 80's theme that week, we all got “DJ” names. Gina named me Lady T (Lady Trekie). :sweat: It was fun though, since we had a 80's song of the day all that week and an 80's themed Halloween party. Oh, this was also my first week as the city runner, meaning that I run morning meetings and wrap up every day, carry around Laquesha (our info wall), and have everyone answer annoying questions every day. Some examples are: “What mythical beast/race would you be? (Dragon) Where can the meaning of life be found? (In a truck load of feathers falling on two monkeys) What is your favourite form of chocolate? (Milk) Do your best impression of a cartoon character. (In the name of the moon, I’ll punish you!) If you could add a word to the dictionary, what would it be? (Fwa) Superman or Batman. (Batman, all the way) What was the name of your first crush? What could the initials GKW stand for? (God Knows What) Sing the first song that came into your head this morning...” And so forth. Yeah, people get annoyed with my questions. But they’re probably the most creative this cast has seen, lol. They know they love them. They just don’t know it yet...
We arrived in Dronten to hear the Major speak. But the bus was there so late that I don’t think many of us paid much attention, because we were all so tired. I tried though. :sweat: We met up with our host families. Obviously, mine was awesome. But we were both really tired, so after dinner we just turned in for bed.
Breakfast the next morning is when I first learned the beauty of sprinkles. Though I hadn’t yet tested their full beauty, it was my first step into enlightenment. Chocolate for breakfast is really just a brilliant idea to begin with.
We had three guests speakers that day, all from immigration. Oh, I forgot to mention the fact that we started our “role play” for that week of UWP Land! Fun times. We were all given passports along with our schedule for the week, telling us what we were. Some people were land owners, some people were workers, some people were citizens or migrant workers... We also had illegal immigrants and refugees, along with asylum seekers. They were all treated accordingly, with the citizens getting first place in line and so forth. I was a business owning citizen... But since they didn’t say what kind of business, I made my own. It started out as just being a bi-monthly journal about politics. But with the help of my employees, Lysan, Mallory, and my coffee getter/copy maker Nikki, it actually turned into a some what sleazy daily news letter that we printed out every day with all the happenings of UWP Land. I and my team were committed to exposing the truth of the corrupt border patrol. Not only did the Uppie Times cover head lines news, but we also reported on any news Major Ljuan passed, any marriages that took place (because we could get married in UWP Land, lol) and ran helped wanted/personal adds. And we got to pester everyone else for interviews. :XD
Continuing on with the guest speakers, however, we learned some interesting view points of people from IOM, the Dutch Immigration policies, and the Anti Discrimination Office. They were all interesting to listen to, especially since most of us had to prepare our own policies on immigration later that week. After that, we had a Team work session led by Jeremiah, which was lots of fun, since we were all blind folded and had to make a perfect square. :sweat: We did though, so that was really cool.
Wednesday we split into groups, going to the mosque or a refugee camp. I went to a Turkish mosque to learn about how immigration policies affected them. Afterwards, we returned for lunch at the XL (Yay for sprinkles!) and totally weirded our dutch high school students by putting together the peanut butter and sprinkles. :twisted: They thought we were strange, but they would see... We would convert them eventually... :twisted:
After lunch, I missed the immigration policy making because I went out for promotion. T_T But it was fun, wandering around where our show would be and handing out flyers. Especially when I handed one to the lady at the chocolate shop when I bought some chocolate... :XD Once we returned, we had some Belgium prep on the Cosmo Golem and how big next week would be.
We went home to have dinner and change into our spookiest outfits... Which for me ended up being a gypsy who told fortunes... (for girls, You’ll be eaten by a zombie or bitten by a vampire by the end of the night. For guys... “You will buy me a drink.” :XD ) for my host sister, her friend, and Sophie, it ended up being totally rad 80's costumes. It was a fun time, with Thriller dances and all sorts of random things/people. Lol... The drinks weren’t as good as the last party... That we had in Prenzlou that I seem to have completely forgotten about in that post. :oops: :sweat: Fun night that one. Good music and dancing. But back to the other party, lol. It was a good time all around. :XD
Thursday we had to finish the immigration policies... but I was signed out to work on the religion workshop. :sweat: So Laurel and I worked on that while everyone else did their projects. It was fun though, trying to decide what we would say next week and what we should leave out, lol. During lunch we converted the unsuspecting high school students to our strange American ways of peanut butter with sprinkles. Now they love it. Maybe we crazy Americans aren’t so bad after all? :XD
After lunch, we got to hear the immigration policies that everyone had been working on. I think a lot of them were really good, even though I didn’t get to work on any of them, lol. Then we had a news workshop with Jorn, Peppe, and Nikki about the Philippines and how we should all be more concerned with news. Then we continued with a Belgium culture presentations by our beloved Belgians in the cast. :XD
Show day! Friday was an exciting and rather angsty day, all in one. I have to say, it was probably one of my best performances, considering how upset I was that day. Someone had gone through my things to get at my UWP Land passport, and that really upset me... especially since it was through my notebook with a lot of personal things in it. But, they apologized eventually, so it’s all good now. I was just really upset during the show... But despite that, I think it was a really good show. At least for me, it was one of my best performances. And I got to sing Hanamizuki again, which was cool. It was also our last dinner with the high schoolers. :( But it was fun, since we were still teasing them about the sprinkles and peanut butter. :XD
Saturday was our regional learning day in Amsterdam! I got to go through the Anne Frank house, which was just amazing. I was sad that there was no real furniture or anything, but we got to see the type writer and the actual diary right up close... It was really amazing standing in front of the diary that was on display. After the tour through the house, I went out with Christine, Johan, and Louis Felipe to a nice little (real) coffee shop for a snack and hot chocolate.
We had a fun time discussing random things (like Christine’s boyfriend and making her blush. :XD ) and talking about life in general. Then we walked through more of the city (which is actually a very beautiful city if you ignore the “coffee shops” and sex that’s everywhere... Christine was upset because she didn’t buy anything “dirty,” but hey... It’s not all that bad, lol.
Our host family day on Sunday was really cool too. We got to visit Maurodam, which is the whole Netherlands in miniture. It was really awesome seeing all the mini buildings that were all 20% of the actual size... some of which we had actually seen the day before! I know I took pictures of a church that was the same from Amsterdam... Actually, I took like, 225 pictures that day before my camera died. I was a very sad panda when it did too, cause we went to a really pretty beach afterwards that would have been great for taking pictures.
This was the day of sweets too. I had sprinkles for breakfast, chocolate cake for lunch, some french fries as a snack (my one non-sweet thing that day), then when we got back we all went to a pancake place with Chantal’s family. And pancakes over there are much different from pancakes in the US... They’re completely flat. And I had one with brown sugar that I smeared all over the top of... Then we got ice cream afterwards. :swear: It was fun though, cause we got to tease Carmen, my host sister, about her crush... :twisted:
I was sad to leave on the travel day, but leave I did. I miss you guys in Dronten! Hopefully, Leuven won’t take me quite as long to type up... L8r.
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