Sunday, March 29, 2009

Holland!

Hello all! I just got back from Holland with my CMC class and what an amazing trip it was! We left last Sunday at 8am, which meant I had to leave my house by 6:30 to catch the 6:45 train into CPH (joy), and had a wonderful 8 hour bus ride to look forward to! We went to Groningen and Amsterdam, and it was a great trip.

Sunday night around 7pm we arrived at our hotel in Groningen after a grueling day of traveling, and our hotel was beautiful. We had a group dinner at an Indonesian restaurant which was very spicy but also delicious, and then the rest of the night on our own. I was too exhausted to go out so I went back to the hotel with most of the group. We had to walk both ways, which we found out the next day was about 4 miles!!

Saturday we had a group visit at the University of Groningen's Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences. This trip to Holland was my long study tour with DIS, which meant that it combined both academic and cultural visits. We walked around Groningen and then climbed the Martini Tower (named after Saint Martin, no idea who that is). This reminded me of the tower I climbed in Spain ( I don't remember if it was Sevilla or Cordoba), but at least that was just a long winding ramp, this was a narrow spiraling staircase to the top of the tower, so I tried very hard not to feel claustrophobic. After almost passing out, we made it to the top of the tower which gave us a magnificent view of the city of Groningen. After that, we had time on our own, which we used for walking around/shopping, and we found a nice little mexican restaurant for dinner. Most of us have been deprived of cultural food in CPH because the restaurants are soo expensive and not always delicious, so we were all excited to have mexican food for dinner. We each ordered nachos, a gigantic portion, and it was fantastic!

Tuesday we left Groningen and headed for Nijeveen where we had a visit at a refugee school, actually it is called a receiving school: Eerste Opvang van de Woldstroom, the first receiving school for refugee children ages 4-14. This was by far the highlight of the trip. Our core class is Children in a Multicultural Context (CMC), so visiting a refugee school fit perfectly with our studies. We had a presentation about the school: the children at the school are from the ages of 4 to 14 and they are there to learn Dutch. After the age of 14 they are put into the public school system in the surrounding areas. The children that attend the school come from asylum centers (refugee children), but also adopted children who therefore do not speak Dutch. Of the refugee children who attend the school, they often come and go, because they are moved around a lot from one asylum to another, so the teachers don't know how long each child will be there for, which can be upsetting and difficult to deal with. Yet the teachers are much more than teachers to these kids, they are like a mother to many of them. Their work extends beyond the classroom. One teacher explained how the young girls often want to talk to her in private about topics such as sex and their periods, so she must teach them about their menstrual cycle, as well as safe sex. She is worried that two girls in her class might be prostitutes. because on Mondays they often come in wearing brand new clothes. I really enjoyed my visit with these children. They were so friendly, and eager to talk to us. Many of them spoke English because they came from African nations (one girl from Somalia said that back home you can't go to school if you don't speak English). In one class, they all introduced themselves by telling us their name, where they live in Holland (which meant nothing to us), and their home country. Many of the kids in that class were from Burundi. We had the opportunity to play with them at recess, which was just so much fun. The kids really wanted us to play with them, which is the complete opposite experience that I have with the Danish toddlers at my practicum site, but that could be because three-year olds are often quite independent and are often exploring in their own imaginary world. Some of us played football (soccer) with the older boys, they seemed like they were all having a blast; some of us played with the younger kids (4-6) on the jungle gym and helped them do flips on the monkey bars; I played some games with the older kids. One of the games was with a rope and whoever jumped out of the circle last had to do something silly. The "silly action" rotated from telling someone in the circle they were beautiful, to giving someone a kiss, to having to sing and dance in the middle. The girls all told me I was beautiful and they gave me kisses, which was soo sweet and really made me feel included in their game! When I lost and it was my turn to do something silly, I sang a Backstreet Boys song. :-) After recess the young children performed a song and dance for us, which we joined in on, and then showed them some American song and dances for young kids, such as the hokey pokey. Then the older kids came in and we were all singing and dancing together in Dutch, it was so much fun! It was then time to say goodbye to the kids (it was 3pm). The teachers make a point to wave goodbye to the buses each day (the kids are bussed in from the asylum centers and camps) because they never know who is going to come back the next day. So we got the chance to do the same. I really connected with some of the kids (the older girls said I was chill and nice to hang out with), so needless to say it was extremely difficult for me to say goodbye to them. One girl asked me if we were coming back the next day and I said, "no, we're only here for today". That's when I realized that I was never going to see these wonderful children again, which broke my heart. What made it worse was that the kids asked for our email addresses, and we weren't allowed to give them out because then the kids would try and contact us and ask us for help. This also broke my heart, and I couldn't bring myself to give them a fake email address. When it came time to say goodbye and watch them board the bus, and as I was hugging one little girl ( the one who had gave me kisses and told me I was beautiful during the circle game), I lost it and started crying. It was heart wrenching to know that I was never going to see them again, and I really felt like I had bonded with them in such a short amount of time. As I was standing there crying, the little girl came back over and gave me the biggest hug ever to cheer me up, which only made me cry more because she was being so sweet. Later, I was saying goodbye to the other girls, and I lost it again, started crying, and they wiped away my tears and were giving me hugs, which again just made me cry harder. By this point I was bawling. But the teacher told me that those girls are there everyday, which made me feel better that they would be there tomorrow. We had a wrap-up with the teachers who told us that only a small percentage of children don't return, which made me feel slightly better. We said goodbyes and thank yous to the teachers and then departed for Amsterdam. What an amazing but emotionally draining day!

As if that wasn't enough, that night when we went to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. I thought I was going to cry but I didn't. It was absolutely amazing and unbelievably eerie to walk past the bookcase and up the narrow stairs to the annex where Anne Frank hid for a year and a half. I could almost feel her presence in the house, and it was so surreal to stand in her bedroom. Unbelievable.

The next day we went to an International school in which the majority of the kids who attend the school are Dutch, British, and American. This visit wasn't nearly as exciting as our visit to the refugee school; we didn't get to go inside classrooms are talk to the students directly, but there was definitely a lot of diversity present.

That evening we had the lovely opportunity to go to a Wervel Performance, which consisted of a woman spinning in a circle for an hour. No joke. Did I mention that the students who went to London on their tour got to see Wicked? Yeah, that's fair. I don't even know wtf a Wervel performance is, and of course they did not explain it to us at the beginning of the show. All I know is that there's some sort of religious aspect to it, I think the idea is that your spinning up to G-d? I don't know... I cannot even begin to explain how f---ing strange it was to sit and watch a woman spin and spin and spin and spin and spin for an hour. Though she did change it up a bit with her arms and the speed of her spinning.

On Thursday we went to Keukenhof, a tulip/flower garden an hour outside of Amsterdam. It's called The Garden of Europe, has the largest sculpture garden in the Netherlands, and claims to be the most photographed spot in the world. Although it was raining while we were there (and rained the majority of the time we were in Amsterdam) it was still absolutely beautiful to see all the flowers in bloom, and so many beautiful tulips! The theme was New York, which makes sense because the first settlers of NYC were the Dutch! So instead of I heart NY, there was a giant I Tulip (with a red tulip bulb) NY.

Friday we went to the Van Gogh museum, which was having a special exhibition of Starry Night: all of his paintings that he did at night. So of course there was the original Starry Night, which I have seen before at the MOMA, which actually owns it, because the one at the museum was from MOMA. But my new favorite Van Gogh painting is Starry Night on the Rhone. It was beautiful and looked like an actual photograph from afar with the way he created the reflection on the water. After the museum we had a nice Indian lunch and then departed for our way back to CPH on a wonderful 12 hour bus!

Of course there are some things I left out, such as the coffeeshops and the red light district. I won't get into how much of Amsterdam's vices I tried out, but in case you were wondering, no, I did not buy a prostitute. :-) I thought Amsterdam was going to be extremely seedy, with lots of pickpocketing and gypsies around, but it wasn't at all. There was no seedy feeling at all, except for maybe the red light district. In fact, with all the canals, Amsterdam was absolutely beautiful. Especially at night with all the canal bridges lit up with lights and the swans in the water, it was gorgeous.

The red light district was extremely interesting. The girls all looked liked barbie dolls, and I found it fascinating to watch the men. At one point, a group of guys were standing around one window and the lady came out to talk to them trying to convince them to come in... the policeman standing on the corner shouted to the guys, "come on now, don't be shy!" Haha, I guess that's Amsterdam for you... ;-)

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