Ballet

I set up a new committee at our school, the ‘Passive Arts’ committee. We already had dance, music, film, fine arts etc. but some people just like to watch. Our first project was to go to a show of Hans van Maanen, our countries most successful and most famous choreographer, who celebrates his 80^th birthday this year. For this occasion, the National Ballet goes through the country to perform four of his best pieces. 

I came across a discount on facebook, which meant we could attend this amazing performance for only 10 Euros. Normally, tickets are 40, so that was a big deal! I got about 25 people enthusiastic, and I was quite proud of that because ballet is unfortunately really not popular amongst people our age. Dylan came along as well, and though he didn’t understand the story (it’s modern ballet and it’s not all that obvious for anyone..) he really enjoyed it too. 

The four pieces themselves were really impressive, I had never really seen a modern ballet before, only classical ones. The movements were quite different but I still recognized the basics. It also made me miss ballet a lot, I’ve danced ever since I was six, until this summer. Maybe I can find a school here sometime. The choreography was really good, as well as the dancers who performed it. It was quite minimalist, but that made it very strong too. I especially enjoyed the second piece, which was really fast and technically demanding. It was so cool to see what those people can do with their bodies! All in all, we had a fantastic night. Here is a clip with the highlights from the show we've seen, I recommend watching it!

UPEACE

As some of you already knew, I was going to volunteer at the opening of UPEACE in the Peace Palace on the 20^th of September. I was extremely excited, and it was truly an amazing experience!
On Wednesday evening, we had a meeting with the group and someone from the Peace Palace to instruct us and explain what our tasks would be during the day. 

On Thursday we had to wake up very early, and left for the Peace Palace at 8 am. When we arrived there, we got our badges and they showed us around. The first guests arrived at 9, and I was standing at the registration desk to ask everyone for their last name and give them the right badge. This was a lot more difficult than it sounds, because there were people from all over the world and most of the last names were completely incomprehensible for me. Which resulted in us asking how to spell it before we could look for the badge. Luckily we got that all figured out, but then I got called away to the wardrobes because they needed more people. There were no plastic cards with numbers to give out, so we had to write all the last names down with the number. I got so caught up in doing that, that I accidentally asked one of the former prime ministers of The Netherlands for his name! I soon realized that he looked very familiar and everyone started laughing. (I was 1 year old when he was in function so I don’t think anyone blamed me, they were all old men in suits and thus looked very similar…) 

At 10.10, everyone was pushed inside of the conference room, because the prince was going to arrive and nobody was allowed to walk around at that time. (But I was because I was staff, so cool!)
The conference itself was really interesting. A couple of people gave speeches on the topic of global peace and the programmes of UPEACE (which stands for the University for Peace, the first center was opened 30 years ago in Costa Rica and now there’s one in The Hague as well!). One of the speakers was the main judge of the International Criminal Court, which is also in The Hague. 

After a delicious lunch, it was time to go home, because I had my first exam that afternoon and I had to look at the last things. Luckily it went really well and I got a 7.5! 

Prinsjesdag

Last Tuesday was prinsjesdag (or prince’s day) as every third Tuesday of September. That is when the queen gives her speech from the throne in The Hague, addressing the parliament on the main government policies for the next year. It’s also the day that the minister of finance presents the budget.
Since this is in The Hague, and there are so many people around, everyone usually gets the day off. It is still a big mystery why we didn’t, especially since our school building was right on the route that the queen was going to take in her golden carriage. As you can imagine, everyone wants to see the queen, so we could not reach our college building. 

Luckily, we had class at one o’clock, right at the time the carriage was going to pass. After a failed attempt to cross the road before they came by, we decided to just watch and try again afterwards. I put my bag on a bench and climbed on an electricity house next to it to get a better view and take some pictures. When the fuss was over, we tried to get through again but didn’t succeed. Suddenly, I noticed that I didn’t have my bag with me. I asked Dylan, but he didn’t have it either, so he ran back as soon as he could to look for it. When he asked, some old ladies pointed to a police officer who was about to bike away, but luckily he gave Dylan my bag and I was so relieved! That must have been one of the most stressful moments of my life. 

We were told that the roads were not going to open before the queen had come back again, so we decided to bike all the way around and try to get to class before it ended, to show that we at least tried. (We were with a group of about seven people by that time.) We found the back entrance of the college building and ran upstairs, where we arrived in class fifteen minutes before it ended. Our teacher looked rather surprised that we all rushed in. I don’t think we were marked absent so that’s really nice of her. After that, we biked to the city centre to get Dylan a new backpack, because his other one had fallen apart.
There is also a fair/carnival with rides and food on the big field near Central Station, so we’re going to go there on its last day tomorrow and watch some fireworks!

Elections!

Last Wednesday was an important day in The Netherlands, as we had our long awaited elections! On Tuesday, Dylan and I were biking in the city centre, and everyone was last-minute campaigning to convince anyone who had not decided yet. We thought it was really funny to see what they came up with. The Socialist Party (SP) was giving out SPonges, little red sponges in the shape of their logo. We thought it was hilarious, so we got one, then biked on and waited until they came again, then got more, haha! We also have a lot of flyers and I was even filmed by a camera crew. Everyone in our building had posters on their doors, which were of course soon violated with permanent markers. All well, college kids… 

 Wednesday morning I woke up, and checked my facebook. My mother had send me a message, asking me if I had my own voting card. (In The Netherlands everyone who is allowed to vote gets an invitation card that you have to bring along.) That worried me, because I thought she had kept mine with hers. I called her and she told me she had lost mine, it wasn’t where she thought she’d put it. She had spend a long time looking for it. Of course, I was very upset (I might even have cried a little…) because it was my first time voting and I’d been looking forward to it for a while. I had done a lot of research into everyone’s program, (which is a lot of work, considering we have about 10 major parties) so I was quite upset. In the evening, after my choir rehearsal, we went to Pijnacker to vote. Even though I couldn’t use my own vote, my mother told me that she would vote for whatever party I chose. After careful consideration with Dylan, I picked one and we went to the building. After coloring the right box red, we went home to watch the first results on television.

They announced that the counting of the votes was public, and we didn’t know that. My dad suggested we’d go back to the place we voted at, to see how they do that. There was no one else, besides the people counting, so we weren’t sure if we could actually go in or not. We decided to give it a shot, and the leader told us that he had never see that happening before, people coming over to watch, haha! They just put all the votes for one party on a heap and count them about 10 times to be sure. We went back home for the first official results, the two biggest parties both got over 40 seats, which meant we had a majority of only two parties for the first time in a lot of years! That was really interesting to see, now they have to  start the formation, so we won’t know who is going to form the cabinet yet. That will be exciting! 

Introduction Week

Monday morning, at 10 o'clock sharp, everyone sat down in the auditorium, excitedly waiting for the real start of our academic life. The dean welcomed us all, and after that a long presentation followed about the specifics of our education. Majors, minors, electives, programmes abroad, it was a lot to take in at one time! The staff members introduced themselves and when everyone started to drift off, it was time for some icebreakers. They let us 'speeddate' each other, we had to introduce ourselves to a random other person and then talk about a selected topic, such as the weather and our holidays, very academic of course. In the afternoon we had lunch with our mentors and group for the week, which was fun. Unfortunately I had to attend a funeral, so I couldn't be there. In the evening there was a party, where all the committees introduced themselves, as well as the student association 'Fortuna'.

On Tuesday we did a tour through The Hague, while we had to find the different mentors and answer questions in order to receive a letter. With those, we had to form a word. Dylan's group had figured the word out after they got the first letter, but it was still fun and they did the whole tour. In the afternoon we did some more team building games, which was not that interesting. In the evening we listened to the 1938 radio broadcast of 'War of the Worlds' by H.G. Wells, the book we were all supposed to read.

On Wednesday morning we talked about War of the Worlds, as it was the 'Dean's Choice' of this year. First he explained why it was so important and then some staff members discussed it with regards to their field of expertise. In the afternoon we had a nice beach party in Scheveningen, with sports activities, painting for Amnesty, and a barbecue.

On Thursday we had a lecture by the former secretary general of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (who is also my teacher!) followed by a mini-MUN, (Model United Nations), where all groups were assigned a country that we had to represent in the different committees. Dylan was the delegate of South-Africa on the topic of access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, I was the delegate of the United Kingdom on the topic of integrating indigenous peoples. Dylan hated it, haha! I'd participated in 'real' MUN's before so I knew how it worked. In the afternoon we had a Culture Expo, each group prepared two recipes that were typical for the country they represented, and afterwards we got to taste all of it. It was a delicious experience! After that we had an air band battle, my group was a complete failure but Dylan's got second place! (Unfortunately he didn't participate because he didn't feel well..)

On Friday we visited the International Criminal Court, which was extremely interesting! First we got a tour, then a very knowledgeable woman answered all of our questions and told us about the cases that they were processing now. Lastly they took us to the actual public galeries from where we got to see the court room. There was supposed to be a hearing that day, but unfortunately it was cancelled. We're planning on going back there, because we'd love to see how that works! In the afternoon we had another information session, about the workload that was ahead of us and the difference between 'foxes' and 'hedgehogs'. They want to train us all to become foxes, people who know a little bit of everything as opposed to being very knowledgeable in one field and seeing everything through that lens. We're basically going to be the bridges between different fields of expertise. In the evening there was -of course- another party to finish it.
And so came a fun, but very, very tiring week to an end!

Arrival and moving in

Of course, when you want it least, something annoying happens. When we finally boarded the plane that was going to bring us from Iceland to The Netherlands, there was a thirty minute delay because we had to wait for two business class passengers. Two people. Can you believe that? A funny thing was that we found out that my dad’s cousin and his family were on the same plane as we were, what a coincidence! Anyway, we hadn’t been able to sleep all night and were very done with planes in general when we finally arrived in Amsterdam. On top of it all, it took two hours before we got our luggage from the belt. When we walked out of the doors, I ran straight into the arms of my family and so did Dylan. What a day!

Originally, we were going to move to our new homes that same day, but due to the fact that we were later than planned and extremely tired, we decided to put all of our furniture in the truck and wake up early the next day to move in. After a good night of sleep, we were ready to begin our new life in The Hague.
Saturday was a very tiring day, lifting and moving all those heavy things. First we put all the furniture in Dylan’s room, then we moved my stuff. We decorated my room and installed everything that I needed, so I could sleep there. After that, we went back to do the same in Dylan’s room, putting the bed together was quite a task! Pictures of the rooms will follow soon. Sunday was a very relaxing day, we slept in late, biked around in The Hague and then went back to Pijnacker for a visit to my grandparents and dinner at my parents house.
And that was the end of a great summer holiday, with many amazing memories, because the next day introduction week would start!