Live Healthily in a Healthy Environment  

Students Exchange Assen 5-12 November 2016

We started on Monday.

We changed the train about 4 times, all in all the trip was about 6 hours long. When we arrived at the train station, a teacher and an exchange-girl were already there.

After walking about 15 minutes, we first met our exchange-students. We arrived at school. It's a very big College, also it's very modern. After  the headteacher and the English teacher had said hello , we went to our "new" home by car. The afternoon was free for the family.

The next day, we had workshops at school. We talked about environment, had a city-bicycle- tour, built solar mills, made presentations about smoking and all this of course in English.

Wednesday we visited Amsterdam.

First we visited a very old and small city, Zaanse Schans. We stopped on the dike and looked a statue from a very famous person: Dr. Lely, who designed the Deltaworks. Finally we arrived Amsterdam, first we got the chance to see the science-museum Nemo (It looked like a ship).

Then we went to a boat to get to know Amsterdam by a boat. After this we got 40 minutes freetime. We drove back to school.

Thursday we had a bicycle-tour. Personally for me it was hard, because I had to go to school by bike as well (50 minutes!). In the afternoon we prepared healthy and international food. In the evening(18:00) we had dinner at school. It was very cool, because there you could talk to each other and become friends with them.

Friday we go to Wildlands Emmen, it's like a zoo. The people told us (in English of course) something about the animals. The tour guide was very interesting. When going in the animal-houses, it was like being in an another world. At 15:10pm we go back to the bus and drove to school. The evening we got freetime with the family: I cooked, together with Roy, Pizza. In the evening I first celebrated Sint Maarten, it was very nice.

In Germany we would say, that it is a mix between Halloween and Laternenumzug: The kids go to the house sing a special song and get sweets. The supermarket is a part of this celebration as well. They don’t get only sweets: they get little gifts as well. In the Netherlands it takes place for the little kids (~Grundschule and lower). The celebration can be compared with a black (!) Nicolaus. The little brother of my exchange-student joined it with a sheep-latern. It looked very cute.

Today is Saturday, time to say goodbye. It will definitely be hard, but it's nice to know, that they'll come to Germany in March.

By Erik Schuman