A brief update about Thursday (all day) and Friday (morning):
Thursday we had a field trip to Utrecht. If you remember anything about our first field trip adventure, we all said a lot of prayers before getting on the train. The last thing we wanted was to spend 8 hours of our day in a train again, especially knowing that we had to be back in Zwolle at 7:30 for a gathering with the other foreign exchange students studying at colleges in Zwolle. Luckily we had no trouble with the trains and arrived at Utrecht Centraal, the largest train station in the Netherlands (complete with shopping mall and starbucks) right on time. We began by looking at what used to be an old Roman Catholic church but is now a bar. We took a look inside and it was incredible, quite shocking, but incredible. I'm not sure how I feel about the whole using what used to be a place of worship as a place of drunken festivities, but to each their own. The strangest part is that the priest had to come and de-holy the place before it could be used for another purpose. That's not something us Reformed folk do...right? We then ventured to the Dom, the highest church tower in the Netherlands-- 430 or so steps to the top, 95 meters high! It took us about an hour to climb to look out over the entire city. It was really neat, but like one of the other SPICE students said, that cathedral in Cologne kind of ruined other churches for us. Yeah, it's cool to climb the highest tower in the Netherlands. And yeah, it's got a unique history with half of the church being destroyed in a rare tsunami, but the beauty and history of that one cathedral is incomparable. After that, we had a cup of coffee and then ventured to a few different museums. One was a house built by a famous carpenter who made thousands of chairs but only one house with 2 goals in mind: space-saving and "the future." We then went to the Miffy museum: the old-school, original Hello Kitty. After that, it was time to go home. Unfortunately on the walk back to the train station the group was separated by a red light (not the kind in Amsterdam). Our professor told us to head down to the train (that would be departing in 3 minutes), but when the conductor blew his whistle and Kees wasn't back, we didn't get on the train. About 30 seconds too late, Kees came back and said to get on the train because the rest of the group got on a different train. However, we were too late and had to go get Starbucks instead... all on our professor. Missing trains is really a bummer... not!
After Utrecht we had a social with the other exchange students and played a little Dutch culture game. Katrina was one of the final 3 standing and received a gift certificate to somewhere. Afterwards some girl dressed in "Dutch" clothes was wandering around with a tray full of Dutch delicacies offering for students to try them: cheese, stroopwaffles, haring, and a Heineken. Well, there was only one thing on the tray I hadn't tried yet, and so I went for it: the haring. Mmm lekker! Alright, it wasn't delicious but for the sake of pictures and bragging rights, it was worth it for sure.
Friday morning at 9:15am I reported for my first day at Van Der Capellen, the public school Katrina and I are observing in Zwolle. The first class we went to was a literature class for 17-18 year old students in the bilingual track. The teacher had decent English but it was a bit broken. That wasn't the worst part: the students hardly had the chance to participate or process MacBeth by themselves. She told them exactly what was happening, why, and even gave them spoilers. When a student asked an in-depth question, she pretty much shut him down and kept up with the rapid pace she was teaching at. I understand being on a time crunch, but for goodness sake, these kids aren't in the bilingual track to get spoon-fed their education. They're looking for an extra challenge.
We then looked at a 7th grade classroom. These students were very, very vocal...mostly in the unproductive way. I whispered to Katrina, "I can't wait to work with these students and demand some respect," but then Katrina reminded me: I can't just do that here. They're not used to it and I'll lose all chance of respect. Crap. That's going to take some extreme getting used to. I'm used to silence in the classroom. Tap your pencil and I'm giving you a detention. You have something to say? I dare you to speak out of turn. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but you get my point. Students here are so vocal all the time. Students in the states are not. How do you channel all that chatting and movement and noise into something productive? That's going to be a challenge for us.
I then biked home and prepared for a weekend with family accompanied by LaRae, but that's a different story. In other words: see my next blog.
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