The New Inbounds

Hey all. I guess I told a little lie because I said that I would update again soon on my last post, but as you can see almost a month has gone buy since my last update. Anyway, I was able to meet the other exchange students that just arrived several weeks ago. They are from Brazil, Argentina, Chile and New Zealand. From what I could tell, they are a good group and I know that we are all going to have a lot of fun together. I think most of the fun, however, will be on the Europe tour in June. My exchange has officially passed the halfway point and I still can't believe it. I don't want to leave this place, but I have to. I am falling in love with this place more and more everyday. The Netherlands is one of the most beautiful places on earth in my eyes. The people are outgoing, it is rich in history, and the country is beautiful. I am sure you have all heard this before, but I feel like I can't say it enough. I really hope I don't forget this experience in the future. All I have been doing is blogging, and as you can see I don't really blog that often. I think I either need to start blogging more or begin writing in my journal again. This experience has changed me in ways that I never even thought would be possible, but I guess I was wrong. I used to be really shy and not very outgoing and now I am still shy but not too much and I think I am a much more outgoing person. I act crazy around our basketball team. If you were there at the practices you would probably notice right away. I am always smiling and messing around, but I am serious at the same time. We all get along really well, just like the rest of my friends and I. Anyway, I will get back to the weekend where I met the other exchange students. I arrived in Twello at about 8 o clock. I thought I would be on time, but than a few of us got lost. I think at the end of it all, we didn't arrive until ten. I can say one thing about exchange students (but not all). We are not very good when it comes to directions. That may be an instinct of ours. Maybe we always get lost so we can explore what is around, or maybe we do it on purpose. The world may never know, and neither will I. The get together was at a Rotarian's house. When I say house, I mean a castle (not literally). This place was absolutely huge. It was by far the biggest house I have ever been in. I would say that the house was probably around 12,000 square feet (don't know how big that is here in Europe). But hopefully that gives you all a picture of the size of the house. Anyway, I went up to every exchange and introduced myself. I kind of spoke to them in Dutch just to see how much they learned during the DOC and they were pretty good. I think they all speak Dutch pretty well for the month that they have been here. The next day was the closing ceremony. It was already time to say goodbye to the exchange students we had just met. And with my luck, the nearest one lives in Eindhoven which is about an hour away by train. But that's okay because Limburg is the best! We received a little bit more information on the Europe tour as well as far as who was going and where. We will know most of the information at the end of March. I can't wait for that trip! I know that I probably left out a lot more, but I will update again next week since I am on vacation.