Texel 1

Still have to tell something about the week at Texel. I will take a picture of a map of the Netherlands, so I'm able to show where it was (for the Canadians amongst the readers). For now it's just stories and pictures in the post below.
Saturday 22nd after soccer (we won again; 4-1!), I took the first train to the north around 6 pm. Three trains, a bus, a boat, a bus, a car and 3,5 hours later I was where I was supposed to be. My mum, dad, little (not really) brother Jasper and sister Renée where there already. We visited a little church Sunday morning, after that it was time for a walk along the beach! The rest of the week was almost the same each day. Waking up at 9 am, breakfast for an hour and outside at 11 am. We rented some bikes for two/three days, my mum and dad took their bikes with them, behind the car, so that was easy. We biked all around the island, and stopped once in a while for a walk. Texel isn't too big, around 170 square kilometres, a length of 20 and around 8 kilometres wide. Other days we walked most of the time, and at night we we watched a movie (we visited the only cinema on the island), red a book or played a game. And we only had rain for one day, most of the time it was cloudy and sometimes sun, more or less. It was a very good week, it was great to be with my family for a long time and it was so nice to be outside whole days again.
Right now I'm gonna try to write an article about emigration to Canada, with the sound of guys and machines; they're cleaning the streets from all those crispy, nice smelling, colourfull leaves. How sad and weird!

I'm living!

Wow, life's back into it's full swing, and I'm enjoying it again! Still don't know why it took me so long to get myself going, in my mind, or something like that. It didn't take more then one or two weeks to get the practical things in my life going again, there was something wrong in my mind for a while...
But now; I even enjoy stuff like the stress of studying. It's so busy right now, that today's the third day I created a planning for myself. I sit down at my desk at night, with a piece of paper and I make a planning for the next day. Almost from hour to hour and even things like lunch or playing the guitar is in there... I have to admit that today's the third day I didn't totally follow my planning. I get out of my bed too late, or there's something extra popping into my day, but it still works for me. I get more done than normally. And I enjoy my breaks and the things I'm doing in them, even more. I don't know why, but I'm enjoying everything, anything, almost like it's a job in itself. Mm, I would apply if a job like that would appear!

This is what happens around here, when you're in your bed too long; your roommates enter your room, grab our matrass and turn it upside down. Lovely way to wake up :)

I went sailing, the weekend before last one, with some guys from C.S.R. (the cristian student association I'm a member of). With two boats, five girls and four guys, we enjoyed what God created for a nice, long weekend. Because of bad, very bad, public transportation, we ended up, on Friday night, in a local little pub with only people age 40 and up. We were quite the attraction! Next day was an 'early' rise, the sun was shining in a sky with beautiful clouds and the wind was blowing (a 6 on the scale of Beaufort). It was an exciting day, both boats got stuck within minutes, laying next to eachother. After that adventure, one of the boats turned upside down... (I was lucky to not be in that one) We had soacky bread, soacky people, soacky clothes, soacky everything. After emptying the water out of the boat for an hour, we decided to lunch and get the wet people into dry clothes. We spent the rest of the day sailing towards Veere, and that was pure pleasure! The wind, the sun, the excitement of sailing in such an angle that you're almost falling out of the boat, the laughs, painful hands... Mmmm.
Our tent on one of the boats, four people fit in
We arrived in Veere around dinner time. Veere is an old village, with city rights because of a history of trading Scottish woul. It's tiny and old, and contains the start of a big cathedrale, started in days that Veere was getting bigger and bigger every day. After we put our tents on the decks again, we collected all the wet clothes and got picked up by Aris' dad, who lives nearby Veere. His mother treated us like kings and queens, with warmth, lots of very good food, more food, dry clothes, new bread for tomorrow and warm drinks.

What more could we want?
We visited the church on Sunday morning, in a part of the not-finished huge cathedrale. After that, we sailed of, into the open waters again! The wind wasn't as strong as the day before anymore, but still strong enough to bring us 'home'.

I'm working and studying extra hard this week, because I want to go to the island Texel Saturday night after soccer, for a week vacation. My parents rented a little house overthere and I think everybody is coming, some for a couple of days, some for the whole week. I'll leave Friday, I have to play soccer next Saturday too. It is a beautiful island, I can try to explain it to you, if you don't know what it looks like overthere, but I better try to take some good pictures and show them to you.

See you next time,

Lotte