Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare

(Cliffs of Les Petites Dalles - Monet)

Aujourd h'ui est mon dernier jour dans Les Petites Dalles.
Demain, tres tot, nous allions en Angleterre.
Oui. Mon francais n'est pas tres bien mais ce ca :)
For the last week, I've been in France. Apparently, this is where Monet and his pals used to come, to paint the seaside. The light is lovely.
We've been spending mornings driving to and looking around small French towns, afternoons on a cute pebbly beach and evenings by a fire watching films.
Nous avons visite un nuclear power station aussi. C'etait tres interessant :)
Aside from that, I've been starting to worry about packing for India.
20 kg max for baggage!
How I will do that, I don't know.
I've also started my (probably futile) attempt at learning Hindi. Very difficult. I'll keep at it though :)


En nu weer in het nederlands. Ik ben de laatste week in Frankrijk geweest, en morgen ga ik naar Engeland.
We verblijven in een schattig dorpje, Les Petites Dalles, dicht bij het strand. Monet kwam hier vroeger om te schilderen :)
Dit week heb ik niet veel uitgevoerd; slapen, strand, een nuclear power station bezocht, films gekeken.
Ik ben wel begonnen met Hindi. Tot nu toe heb ik een beetje grammatica geleerd, wat veel ingewikkelder is dan engels. Maar goed, ik blijf het leren :)

tot gauw x.

Powder milk at a dairy farm.

(The UWC-NL yeargroup 2009-2011 Swaziland, Hong Kong and India students introducing themselves at the scholarship ceremony. From left to right: Anneloes, Oceane (Swaziland), Bas, Marlies (Hong Kong), me and Lennart (India) in our charming orange polos.)

and procrastination seems to be a fully-fledged skill of mine?
hereby a very late post about things that happened over a month ago :)
I've been 'busy', had my last day of school at ISH ever, and am now on holiday in France.Off to England next week, then home, Norway, home, India!
But back to the past and the post that should have been completed ages ago:


Het is weer eens een tijdje geleden sinds mijn vorige post. Ik ben hier niet zo goed in, geloof ik, Maar goed. Sinds 2 juni ben ik bezig geweest met:

- de UWC beurzenuitreiking (!)
- Duke of Edinburgh Award Adventurous Journey
- Sportsday
- andere minder interessante, maar nodige dingen (huiswerk. nog steeds.)

Nou, de beursuitreiking eerst dan maar :)
Na een erg stressvolle morgen (neemt Sander de drumkit mee? krijg ik mijn visa wel? antwoord een: ja, antwoord twee: nee) kwam ik aan bij het Vredespaleis. Na veel geoefen kwamen allerlei belangrijke mensen, onder wie de prins en de staatsecretaresse van onderwijs, binnen om ons te zien. Nou, verder zongen we allemaal een lied, speelde ik mijn fluit en spraken we met onze sponsoren. Daarna gingen we met alle UWC-Nederland eerste en tweedejaars uit eten, wat heel gezellig was :)


Alright. Basically, the day was lovely. Not much else to say, oh, except this one anecdote:
Simon (Bosnia) and I had had enough of the orange t-shirt UWC networking thing that was going on after the ceremony, so we went outside. We were sitting on the grass, me sans my orange UWC-Nederland t-shirt (but I was wearing a dress underneath...) when this guy comes by. He started to chat to us, so we chatted back. Turned out he was the vice-president of hte International Board of UWC, ie. pretty important :o
Hahaha, and I was sitting there without my proper UWC attire, and Simon didn't realise who the guy was and we were both just lounging in the grass. Amazing. Our social networking skills are just ace :)


Vorig weekend (ja, ik ga weer in het nederlands verder) ging ik naar Aachen om een wandel/camping/ultimate test of friendship te doen. Anders bekend als de Duke of Edinburgh Adventurous Journey. Het begon al vrijdag avond, toen Dieuwke, David en Ariadna (hoi allemaal!) bij mij kwamen slapen zodat we samen konden voorbereiden (alvast sorry als ik stomme nederlandse fouten maak, my grammar/spelling is best in English (: ).
We begonnen onze grote avontuur (hahaha.) in Aachen, waar we met grote 15kg rugzakken de/het (lidwoorden...) station en het bewoonde wereld verlieten. Na een 15 km loop door Duitsland/Belgie (ja, ik weet dat er daar een trema hoort. alleen, hoe ik dat moet flikken op een keyboard, tsja)/Nederland, kwamen we aan bij een mooie boederij camping. Ja, 15km klinkt niet veel, maar met warme weer, grote rugzakken en een bos is het wel een eind :)
We kwamen bij de camping aan en vielen gewoon in slaap :) haha, ja, we stonden wel om 04:30 uur 's ochtends op, dus...
Toen we ietwat bijgekomen waren, begonnen we met het avondeten. Twee uurtjes, veel pasta en gerommel later hadden we een salade en een soort pasta mix met vega balletjes (Ari is vegatarisch) en saus gemaakt. Die pasta was zo stevig dat de lepel er gewoon rechtop erin stond. Eet smakelijk dan maar, he.
We besloten dat we de volgende ochtend vroeg op zouden staan, zodat we eerder thuis zouden komen. Helaas lukte dat niet echt. Toen we na een nachtje slapen (lees: ongemakkelijk in slaapzakken met te weinig ruimte in een warme tent liggen) bezweet wakker werden, bleek het al acht uur te zijn. Na een kwartiertje stressen verlieten we de camping.
10km later kwamen we bij een bushalte aan, en rond half twee zaten we al in de trein naar huis. Achteraf lijkt en klinkt het niet zo moeilijk, maar we waren wel erg blij toen we weer bij Centraal aankwamen.


So, a summary of the above in English now:
I spent a weekend backpacking/walking from Aachen (Germany) to Maastricht (the Netherlands) with Dieuwke, Ariadna and David. We did this for the Duke of Edinburgh Award at Bronze level, spent a slightly uncomfortable night together in a cramped, humid tent at a dairy farm and ate pasta with a sauce made out of powdered packet sauce and powdered milk. Hm.
But we survived this, as well as surviving school.
David has now moved back to Denmark, and I'm currently in France in a cute white house very close to a pebble beach. I spent the first night of my holiday in hospital after falling off the back of Ned's bike ('watch out for the poles!' ... 'ouch'). As it soon transpired, it was merely a sprained wrist, but it meant no Tropicana swimming in Rotterdam (shameeee :) haha.) the following day.
After that eventful night, I passed the time out around bonfires (burning schoolbooks :) haha.) and in parks or in town with friends, CD shopping in Delft with Ned and Ned's friend Greg, visiting my Dutch grandparents and other such things. Right now, I'm just reading, tanning, beaching, eating, sleeping, film-watching, and planning on shopping :)
Oh, and today is also the birthday of one of my UWC buddies :) So gefeliciteerd on that :)
In just over a month I will be flying off into the unknown, but for now I've gotten my vaccinations, visa and flight booked, and will be meeting some of my Norwegian co-years in a couple of weeks :)

And then we walked and walked and left the crowd behind.

(Pinkpop, maandag 1 juni 2009,'borrowed' off Flickr :) so thanks to the photographer etc)

It's been a while since I posted?

I went to Pinkpop (a music festival) yesterday. It was really really really good :)

Basically, I stood on my tip toes for ages and ages to peer over the shoulders of the tall Dutch people, but it was worth it :)

When I arrived with Dieuwke (hi!), Ari and Chris, we went off to see the Gaslight Anthem. Lovely. I got to 'meet-and-greet' them later on, and ended up with 'the gaslight anthem' written down the whole of my right arm :) whoot.

After that, we moved on to All-American Rejects, who, I must admit, I'm not overly fond of. We did hear Dirty Little Secret so it was alright :)

Then on to Amy Macdonald, who was amazing, and now blond! She covered the Killers- Mr Brightside and Bruce Springsteen-Dancing in the Dark (both acts had performed on Saturday), which was really good :) Only some idiots behind me did NOT know that Mr Brightside was by the Killers. Argh.

Some suntan/burn later, I'd managed to get a front row spot for Franz Ferdinand. They were definitely the best act. They were, quite simply, amazing.

I really wanted a t-shirt, but they were sold out :( However, after a long ponder I bought a yellow Kooks one, which is pretty lovely, and went off to see them :) I attempted to swap shirts with people wearing Franz Ferdinand ones, but to no avail.

The Kooks. I stood on my tip toes the WHOLE WAY THROUGH, it was great :) Hahaha, and we (Gael, Philipp, Alex and me- we'd found the friends who'd camped there by now) counted the number of All-Stars clad feet in the vicinity, we got like 15 in about one minute and 3m of radius. Seriously.

The last act we saw was Snow Patrol. People had lit fires and we danced like aeroplanes and native americans (political correctness here?) around them :) It was really really good. Veerle (hi!) also managed to be obnoxious to the pizza guy (who deserved it- the service was SO slow) and get tan lines (whoot!). For the rest, I collected cups to get coupons, danced like my limbs were falling off and refused to go watch Katy Perry. Yes indeed.

So now I'm sitting here in my Kooks t-shirt, having slept a grand total of max. 2.5 hours, as I watched The Holiday instead of sleeping on the bus, and pissed everyone off when we got off at Centraal and I skipped around and was generally way too happy for 3 in the morning.

And then school. I had a free, it turned out, so we lay out in the grass and wished we were hippies :)

Tomorrow I'm off to Utrecht for a UWC meeting thingie. I'm apparently playing my flute at some point, which will be interesting.

I WILL upload photos. Soon. After all those other things. Oh dear. :)

Thank goodness for autosave.

Today I and some fellow-MUWCI-students-to-be decided that our 'mascot' would be a green gummy dog. Yes. We have created an in-joke before we have even properly met. Whoot :)

On Thursday I met up with all the Dutch UWCers of 2009-2011, to plan all sorts of stuff. It was all good fun, what with the murder attempt (on me by Jens) , crashing into the neighbour's garden for pictures (this does make sense, truly), the decision to all be 'sick' in order to practice our performance (shh.) and the evening out waiting for dinner for simply ages.

Ah well. Yesterday I went to the Efteling and tried (hopelessly) to get a tan. The rides were great fun :) And we got some amazing pictures of us 'flying' and cute little castles etc.

En nu in het nederlands! Vandaag hebben ik en een paar andere toekomstige MUWCI studenten besloten om een groene gummy hond als mascotte te hebben. Inderdaad. Geen gummy beer (hoewel die natuurlijk ook gewoon ontzettend cool zijn) maar een gummy hond. :)

Op donderdag gingen alle nederlandse UWCers van 2009-2011 naar Den Haag. Allemaal heel erg leuk :)

Alleen heb ik nu niet zo veel zin om alles te 'translate'n, dus je zou dit gewoon in Google Translate (bless it. SO useful. (: ) kunnen gooien als je dat wilt. Maar goed.

Gister ging ik met vriendinnen naar de Efteling. Het was erg leuk, alleen lukte het me niet om bruin te worden, maar ach ja :)

Oh and btw! Anthony has started his own blog, bless :) His awesome blogname was very much my idea as well :)

x

A Translation for Anthony

Alright :)

So, I thought writing in Dutch was a good idea. Only, my very first follower doesn't understand, and has issued a complaint...Here's the Dutch bit in English then :)

I had a really really long day today. It's strange, as I know I only have 33 days of school left here, ever. Nice strange :) But still strange.

Okay, so it's not worth directly translating the text word for word. Shove it into Google Translate if you like :) 

It's Ascension Day on Thursday, and I am looking forward to the extra sleep that will bring :) 

Anyhows, I'll try and update with more useful stuff soon...Hopefully Thursday, after I've met up with all my new UWCers again :)

x

Let's Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow

I'm still trying to get a nice voice-over of my presentation I did last Saturday at the Information/Introduction Dutch UWC day, so until then my wonderous video (thank you Veerle for the post it photography (: ) won't be up here. Sorry about that :)

So, last Saturday. I went over to Utrecht and met all my fellow Dutch UWCers, which was nice. We all had presentations, some of which were amazing. Now, we're busy organizing our act for the sponsorday thingie, and trying to come up with fundraising ideas.

En nu in het nederlands. Ik ga op deze blog al mijn UWC ervaringen proberen bij te houden, maar omdat ik nog niet in India zit, praat ik nu gewoon een beetje over wat er hier allemaal gebeurt. Vorige week zaterdag ontmoette ik al de andere geselecteerden, en we hielden allemaal korte presentaties over onszelf. Het was mijn bedoeling om die van mij te uploaden, maar daarvoor moet ik nog het een en ander doen, dus dat komt wel strakjes :)

Vandaag was een lange dag. Het is vreemd, want ik weet dat ik nog maar 33 dagen van school in nederland heb. Raar, aangezien ik hier nu al zeven jaar woon of zo. Maar wel leuk raar :)

Ik heb mijn huiswerk niet af maar dat geeft niet :) Momenteel ben ik gewoon even met andere dingen (lees: fashionsites en winkelen) bezig :)

Morgen is nog een dag, dus.

x

From a Dutch Interior

Hey,

My very first posting on my very first blog (: Here goes...

I'm Sophie, and I'm Dutch/English/Chinese.

This year I was one of 23 lucky Dutch people selected by the Dutch National Comittee to go to a United World College for the next 2 years.

For those of you who haven't heard of United World Colleges, or UWCs, they are basically international schools who focus on service and international awareness as well as providing the IB (International Baccalaureate) education. 

There are 12 UWCs in the world, and places at these schools are offered only to those selected by their national comittees or by the International Committee. Places are offered on merit only, and to students who the committees feel comply with the UWC aims and ideals.

For more information, you could check out the international website: http://www.uwc.org/

Alright, so now we've had the basics, I'll talk about myself a bit more (:

At the end of the summer I will be off to India, to the Mahindra College (or MUWCI) for 2 years of potentially life-changing adventure and experience. 

I'll be going with another Dutch guy, Lennart, whom I met yesterday (:

So, I'll be using this blog to inform people of the goings-ons, and to show you all how I've been spending my time out on what is now for me the other side of the world.

So excited!

Soph x