So hi :) My name is Shannon. Im a normal 15 year old Canadian Girl, West Coast born and raised. And as of this moment, in exactly 11 days 18 hours 27 minutes and 45 seconds I am going to be taking off in a plane bound for the Amsterdam Airport! In September I applied for a Rotary exchange which i have been wanting to go on my whole life. Rotary offered me the chance to go on a short term exchange. So I went through all of the steps and wound up getting my number one country and am now going the The Netherlands to live with my exchange girl Nienke, in Roermond (which is in the south) from June 22nd to July 21st.
Honestly, i Have no idea what is going to happen once i get there!! I guess its just kind of a wait and see kind of thing, and I am so ready for that! To just go with the flow, I just want to see what its like to live life as a European. I find a lot of the time Im planning out every second of my day and it'll be interesting to see my self try and let go a bit of my OCD tendencies.
I know some things that I definitely want to see are: go to Amsterdam, see the St.Jans
Kathedraal- in 's-Hertogenbosch, go to Thorn, see Anne Frank Huis, go to The Red Light District (that would be suuuch a different experience!), I want to eat dutch cheese and chocolate, I want to go out on 16th birthday (which is on the 19th so before I leave!) and have my first legal drink!, I want to have fries with mayo,but most of all just become totally immersed in the Dutch culture and learn the language (or at least do as much of that as I can in 30 days).
Ill be staying with Nienke and her family which consists of her mum Hanneke, her dad Herman and her sister Maartje, as well as her boyfriend Nicolaas! After I arrive in the netherlands on the 23rd of june I will be spending 30 days there until the 21st of july when me and Nienke will both get on a plane to come to Canada and and she will get to see the Canadian culture and sights, and meet my family being my brother Jordan my sister Emily my mum Angie and my dad david, as well as my boyfriend alex! And she will be here until mid-august :)
I guess Im most nervous about the plane ride there.. I've never flown by my self before and have only ever been one trip where plane ride were necessary, and even then i was a lot younger and don't really remember it that well. Im half dreading half so excited for that moment when i go past the security gates and leave my family behind me in YVR airport and realize that I'm on my own and its just me representing my country and the Rotary club, making my own first impressions on everyone around me, in a country I've never been to before and where I do not speak the native language pretty much at all! (though I'm told almost every dutch person speaks some degree of english, thank you so much Dutch schooling!)
So for the next week and a half until my flight and most likely until my next entirely you can count on it that I shall be packing and unpacking, having extreme mood swings, somehow studying for my final exams (more stress!) saying goodbye before i go, and being more excited for this than anything else in the world :)
spreek je later, Shannon
ps. if anyone knows where you can buy plugin adapters (is that what they are called??) for northamerican plugs to european outlets please let me know!! I'm in the market for one
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