back to france. | jul 30 2004, 22:08 so i think i'm going to france on sunday or monday or something. if communication was any better around here i'd know, but it's not so meh. gotta love that bang-ya-head-on-the-wall-feeling. so i'll be in fracne for four or five weeks i guess, and then - well, who knows. the adventure continues. doubt i'll be online much over that time - so both my UK and NL mobile numbers are txtable if anyone needs to get hold of me, and i can go find internet then. though, i'm sure i'll be finding internet in the meantime... tuesdays are days off on site, so, i'd suggest wednesday morning as being a suitable journal reading slot, if i were reading it, but i'm not, cos, i'm writing it, and that'd just be weird and vortexal, if that's a word.
heading for wassanaar tonight, there for two nights at least. in france i'll be working with 4-12 year olds in the scorching summer heat that's decided to finally join us. so this is me, signing out from holland. ciao... catch ya in france...
have you seen this mosquito? or perhaps you've seen some other biting insect that raided my bedroom last night and left countless bites over my arms, legs, back, neck, chest, ankles, wrists, hands... i'm like a walking itching machine today. I've applied all sorts of creams and stuff, taken antihistamines (or however one spells that) and even tried lauras magic CLICK-It! device. It is a small yellow and black device that applies a little electric shock to your tongue. no, wait, to the bite. we tried it on our tongues after dessert. we had fresh tropical fruit with a dash of alcohol to spritz it up a bit. (actually, it was just gin with a squeeze of lime, but, meh.) evidently, gin does not take the itch away.
boredom leads to... | jul 24 2004, 19:51 a day off. a long, boring, everyone has gone out to do their own thing and left me at home day off. sitting. chatting. playing poi. drinking wine. playing hack. eating. chatting. looking for jobs. writing emails. chatting. drinking more wine. yawning. going for a bike ride. sitting on the grass by the end of the runway, watching little planes fly in a few metres above my head. nice.
no pants? | jul 19 2004, 20:11 so there we were, sitting quietly on the beach in zeeland, waiting patiently for the wind to come up so we could fly our kite. i look over and what do i see? a man with no pants on. is that man wearing no pants? wait, she's not wearing any pants EITHER! what's that all about. dude, look over there, he's not wearing any pants, and they're not wearing any pants. cue turning to face each other and simultaneously exclaming : naked beach! as we walked away back to the car we discussed whether or not naked beaches have naked lifeguards.
b+w lightning. | jul 17 2004, 21:51 said crazy dutch summer has in fact become a little more reasonable today, offering us a fine selection of sun rays in which we baked ourselves, trying to regain some degree of skin colouration. thrilled we were, to wake sometime around midday to find glorious rays of sunshine streaming in through the cracks in our blinds, bathing our unkempt abodes and straining our eyes. smile upon my face, i sat happily in the sun consuming a bowl of muesli and yoghurt. later we rode, sam and i, precariously down to the forest to make a selection of black and white photos. sam doesn't like insects, she did swat, it did sting, she did scream, we did delve away from that location. a field of clover and grassy weed thingies was the setting of our next shoot, with towering black clouds rolling in over the horizon. it was one of those storms where you suddenly think it's nighttime as the entire sky is obscured by a storm. But the sun, now low in the sky, throws it's light in under the clouds and smothers everything in sight with a soft golden hue like it's all going to burst into flames. the air is electric, everything is surreal - the photos, magic. soon, drops, moments later, rain heavier than any i've experienced before, within minutes i'm soaked through - i'm riding as fast as i can, blinded by the rain - actually struggling to breathe, like being tumbled around in a raging river, water splashing in your eyes, gushing into your mouth, spluttering, gasping for air - rather unsettling. as i arrived home, i discovered three people dismantling our gazebo, trying to protect it from the storm. they'd somehow managed to stay reasonably dry, so, i offered my already saturated self to assist in the task. following that we were so wet we decided to just jump around in the puddles for a while and splash each other silly. forever young, yes indeed.
take ya passport. | jul 16 2004, 01:33 if you plan to go to a different country, ensure that you have your passport with you. you feel a bit daft when, upon arriving at the border, you realise it's not in your bag. meh.
life currently consists of trying to decide what to do when i leave here in two weeks time. it's not very fun. ik ga slappen nu... welterusten.
mobile again. | jul 09 2004, 20:34 i got my new fone unlocked finally today, and a new simcard afte ri lost the last one, so i am once again mobile in the netherlands on +31611496672. prima.
drie en twintig. | jul 09 2004, 20:20 Another birthday came, another birthday went. I’d hoped to keep a low profile, share a bottle of new zealand wine and some cake in the evening, and make it a relaxed experience. Things panned out slightly differently. It was discovered the day before and people went about trying to ammend my plans by telling various people and scheming secret surprises together. My twenty three trainees for the week quickly learned of my twenty third birthday. Sort of apt, I suppose. The other fifty trainees also knew, and incorporated me into their evening entertainment programme.
Around half twelve I finally finished sorting out raucous trainees, poured a tall glass of jack, wandered down the road and found a patch of grass overlooking a strawberry field. I sat for a while awed by the star scattered northern sky above me. Shortly after seven in the morning I was out in the forest running happily through the forest. Enroute back home I rescued a little toddler from the road and took him back to his mama, ran inside, enjoyed a hearty muesli breakfast, followed by a few pieces of fudge, you know, as you do. My training group sang to me and presented me with a crown made from sparkly card and crepe paper. But it didn’t sit on my head very well, for it was EXTREME crazy hair day, and I’d put the whole right side of my head into little tufts with tiny rubberbands and funny little clip things. The left side was all swept over and flat. The crown kept falling off, so I put it aside. What a pity.
Dinner consisted of a starter of brie on lettuce, bread and garlic butter. The main course was a baked chicken breast, rice and a mixed summer vegetable salad. As is tradition here at Hoeven, my apple pie for dessert came out with a firework stuck in it, throwing flames and sparks all around the table. Happy birthday was sung in english, and then in dutch, followed by armfuls of impromptu gifts. Oh, it was joyful indeed. At eight, the evening shows began with a rendition of grease, followed by an audience participation event. I was rapidly taken up on stage with three other guys. Four girls were added to each of us to make our teams. We then had to take a spoon, tied with two metres of string to another spoon, and feed it up the right leg of our jeans, down the left, and so on and so on for the whole team. We lost. Next, in line with the trainees weekly fixation of dressing boys as girls, the girls in our teams had to gather their collective wardrobes and dress each of us as best they could. Good sport that I am, I played along, got clad in rediculously small garments, smothered with red facepaint and paraded around before being presented with the title of miss hoeven 2004. Oh, the joy of it all. I later drank a lot of wine, called home, drank more wine, and fell into bed sometime the next morning. Not surprisingly, I didn’t go running on july 8.
spreken engels met nederlanders. | jul 04 2004, 21:16
when in rome do in the romans do. so, thusly, i would imagine, when in the netherlands, do as the nederlanders do; spreken nederlands, niet engels. Well, at least try.
My current annoyance is people that don't believe in such sentiments. Most english speaking people assume that the dutch all speak english (actually, i've met few dutch people that don't speak english, but that's not the point) and start any conversation, to anyone, with an english question. A loud, slow, patronising english question. (some of the dutch speak better english than many of the english people i've met... despite them having invented the language. tut tut.) Even living in the country for some months doesn't seem incentive enough to bother learning the language (well, why bother when you can speak a language already eh wot old chap? tish tosh. jolly good show.)
end of rant.
oh yeah, and some american guy put ten rattlesnakes in his mouth at once. fool.
a seventeen year old girl won the tennis. holland isn't in the football final. it's raining again today. my pizza was burnt on the outside and still cold in the middle. oh and there are only three days to go...
we've been watching the dates go by for some months now, waiting excitedly, filled with copious amounts of anticipation, almost bursting with utter excitement over the imminent release of the second installment of that gloriously green animated ogre, the wonderful shrek.
we were not dissapointed. the first shrek was filled with references to other stories, films, legends and fables, it had plenty of innuendo, and a load of roll-on-the-floor-laughing bits. the second shrek, despite several bad pre-release reviews, had all that and more. while children, i am sure, will enjoy it lovingly, as they did the last, they are missing out on so so much. poor wee things.
i daren't say more, in fear of ruining it for anyone, go see it... oh yes, do indeed.
+ about