Thursday, June 17, 2004

HOLLAND TRIP PART 1: Departures, Journeys and Arrivals

Day 1: Flying and Crawling The 9th of June was a rather cloudy morning in Chichester, kind of indicative of my knowledge and anticipation as to what the trip was going to be like. There were fourteen of us due to go: our tutor John, me, Lawrence, Jez, Robbie, Steve, Jason, Tim, Celia, Camilla, Kamilla, Holly, Tamar and Lucinda. John, Jez and Jason were all going to be picked up form Worthing, and Camilla was due to meet us at Gatwick. We got off to a fantastic start, heh. The coach that had been hired was about 15 minutes late, leaving an anxious group of suitcase-laden students sitting at the front of Chichester College eating sweets. But when it did eventually turn up, we were so impressed that we instantly lost all feelings of discomfort. The vehicle that took us up to Gatwick was really strange- like some super-hybrid of minibus and coach. It had three rows of seats near the front, all covered in patterned blue carpet-stuff, and tinted windows. At the back was eight seats all facing each other like those on trains, with two small tables sitting inbetween them ^_^ Very luxurious, hehe. I’ve only ever been to Gatwick Airport once, and never to take a flight from there. I’m pretty sure it’s the biggest airport in the UK; if not it’s certainly the busiest and most famous. Large yellow signs show directions to everywhere- gate numbers, departures, arrivals, transfers, toilets, shops… it’s incredibly overwhelming, especially if you’ve no idea where you’re supposed to check in. Hundreds of TV screens attached to the ceiling give you information about all flights due to leave, but since there are at least several hundred in a day you can be waiting for about five minutes just to catch glimpse of which smiley receptionist to talk to about actually getting on the plane. The baggage system is confusing- metal objects have to be in your hand luggage, but sharp objects have to be in your suitcase. Aerosol cans have to be in hand luggage too, else they explode due to the unpressurised hold. We spent another age deliberating whether this or that would be allowed- I didn’t personally want my nice metal pen confiscated, nor my wolf pendant. It’s got a sword on the end of it- staff can get pretty fanatical about what you could use to kill people. Since you could feasibly strangle someone with a shoelace or sock, tie or shirt, you might as well ask people to go on the plane naked if you wanted no risk whatsoever. Crazy crazy. Anyway, the flight was what I was least looking forward to out of everything. Although I wanted to get it over and done with, nervous anticipation was next to killing me because I am absolutely terrified of plane flights. I’ve flown twice before- once to Newcastle from Southampton and once back along the same line. That was in a very small plane and I hated it. So, after a while of shopping (I bought a Brylcreem wax stick after discovering that my hair gel had decided to leave itself at home), eating and using the facilities, it was time to get on the plane. Everyone seemed to think I looked more scared than I actually felt; I guess my body showed more evidence of emotions I was trying to repress, heh. I felt an odd glow in the pit of my stomach, but not much more. I figured it was the onions in the panini I’d just eaten. By the time we were on the plane, I figured I’d be alright. But then we started moving. Taxiing around to the right runway seems to take forever; many jokes were exchanged about sick bags and loose wings before we were finally ready to take off. Strangely enough, I didn’t start panicking until the plane actually lifted off the ground. Moving along the runway at break-neck speed was a fantastic feeling; I don’t think I’ve ever moved so fast in a vehicle all my life. But then the front wheel lifted off and the plane soared into the air. I grabbed the two armrests either side of me for dear life and shut my eyes, as if me not looking was keeping the plane up in the air. Every single little movement the plane made, I felt another wave of fear shoot through my body. It must have been quite entertaining to watch, I suppose, especially with some of the things I was saying ^_^; The plane had to change altitude fairly early on, which involved a brief period of descent. I pushed myself back into my seat and hissed through gritted teeth: “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod are we supposed to be pointing down?” “It’s just an altitude change…” But half way through, Jason told me that I should make myself look out of the window, and started talking to me about other things so that I could distract myself from the fact that there was a 360,000-foot drop underneath me. It was only a 45-minute flight. We saw container ships that looked the size of ants, layers of cloud that sprawled over the skies to the horizon, like huge drifts of cotton wool. You just want to go and play around in them; they look so beautiful ^_^ So by the end I was looking out of the window constantly, and I watched the entire descent into the Schipol Airport at Amsterdam. It’s a beautiful city, even though it has its drawbacks (see Days 3, 4 and 5). But I have never felt more frightened in my entire life. And I think it’s probably more a paranoia that’s worked its way into a fear; I personally don’t think it’s good to ever grow complacent about plane travel because accidents can still happen. Far less than in any car, and British Airways has one of the best safety records in the world, but when you’re that far up there is nothing you can do if something serious goes wrong. And that’s why I think I will always have a certain fear about it. But it should be lessened now, heh. Are We There Yet? The roads in Holland are an absolute nightmare. And that is an understatement. It took us three hours to drive from the airport at the school in Rosendaal where we were due to give some workshops and a performance to six schools. Sometimes the tailbacks can be up to 120km long. The congestion caused by too many cars and poor road systems is phenomenal. And sitting in a minibus with suitcases around your legs for three hours in 25 degree heat isn’t exactly fun. But at least some of the roads are quite pretty. I counted 14 real windmills, and quite a few of the white ones that generate electricity. When we did eventually arrive in Rosendaal (two hours late), we were piled into a small room where we were given soup, bread rolls, drink and these amazing meat-croquette things. They tasted fantastic, but they’re so huge that if you eat any more than one you tend to explode. We had ten minutes to let our food go down before beginning the worskops with the 20-30 hyperactive kids, which mainly comprise of the same warm-up exercises we do in Improvisation classes- ‘My name is…’, ‘I went to the supermarket…’, ‘Bang!’ and so-on. They really seemed to enjoy themselves, including the adults. Who says you need to grow up, eh? ^_^ Our show, on the other hand, was much less successful. The long journey and hurried arrival had disorientated us quite considerably, so things didn’t go so well. I forgot my lines for “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day…” for a few seconds, then blitzed through the rest of it to try and cover it up ^_^; It worked well, apparently. The ‘Hints on pronunciation for foreigners’ poem was a bit of shambles, because people forgot their words and cues and I got up at the wrong point, blah-de-blah. They didn’t know that it went wrong though, and seemed to enjoy it. The first night we were in Holland, I was due to spend it on my own with a host family. It’s a disconcerting idea, especially when you’ve no idea what to expect. But thankfully, the guy who agreed to take me in was really nice. He and his wife fed me full of crisps, strawberries, juice and biscuits, spending ages talking about films, roads, acting, dying hair and culture before I finally went off to bed. Sleep was most welcome after such a hectic day… Day 2- This could be Rotterdam, or anywhere… I didn’t get a huge amount of sleep that night. I got to sleep alright, thanks to my slew of anime and X-Japan tapes (^____^), but I got to bed late and had to wake up very early. Thankfully I didn’t have to repack much; just shove my dirty underwear into a space and get out my washbag. The new Brylcreemstick I bought is actually much better than my original stuff, which is lovely beans. One of the things I was apprehensive about was breakfast:- I have problems with eating too much too early, but more than anything I didn’t want to seem ungrateful to the host families who have so kindly accepted me into their home for a night for almost nothing in return. So I did my best to eat what they could, and they even gave me a bottle of orange juice to take with me. I couldn’t thank them enough. Rotterdam’s quite far from Rosendaal, so it was another arduous coach journey through the Dutch roads. It was made all the more arduous by the fact that I had changed minibuses by request of everyone inside the one I wasn’t in. And this minibus was worse than the first- no air conditioning, less comfy seats, more noise (from the bus itself), and much more noise form the passengers. Songs, chants, loud jokes, shouting… I almost wanted to go back into the other one, but Steve had wanted to swap. And in the end, I really enjoyed my bus, which had been dubbed ‘The Fun Bus’. The other was ‘The A-Team’. There was a slight sense of rivalry between the two bus groups, but most of it stemmed from the Fun Bus crew anyway, so it was more of a pretend rivalry. After stopping off briefly at a school somewhere between Rosendaal and Rotterdam to do another performance which was slotted in at the last minute (thanks, Anglia…), we moved on to Rotterdam; an area which looked… less-than-safe. Apparently the school was in a high-crime area, so we moved all of our bags inside the school, which had big metal bars all the way around it. The first set of workshops gave us an indication of why the area had such a high crime rate. The people inside were fairly unco-operative and didn’t understand some of the games. Others, like ‘Apples, Pears and Oranges’ (involving a ring of chairs, people designated into one of three groups and lots of running about) and ‘This is not a Chair’ (where people have to pretend that the chair in the centre of the room is not a chair and perform an action to show what it is) led to some rather rough behaviour. We were glad to get the performance out of the way so that we could have our break before the next group arrived. After lunch, we had a much younger group who were much less receptive to some of the games, mostly because they had only been studying English for a very short period of time. And shyness plays a large part in that, too. Inbetween whiles we had a very large break, in which time we ate some sub-par pizzas and played an infuriating drama game called ‘My train stops at…’. I won’t give away the game’s secret, but it becomes very obvious when you play it. The evening workshops were by far the best of the bunch. The kids absolutely loved them, and we had the loudest applause ever from them for our performance. It’s great to work in an atmosphere where you know people love and appreciate what you do. Not only do they enjoy it, but you also gain a greater enjoyment of it too. And you feel much better as a result. Our host family (I was with Lawrence this time, rather thankfully) lived in such a fantastic house- it was built in the 1920’s, and HUGE. As soon as you walk in you’re greeted by seven-foot high ceilings and a massive oak spiral staircase. A lot of the furniture was fairly modern, but it never looked out of place. And the bathroom and bedrooms were very luxurious, heh. Although the mother of the host family told me about the blinds that acted as curtains for my bedroom, I actually forgot they were there and didn’t notice them again until the next morning, by which time putting them up was redundant. I hope not too many people saw me getting changed o_o; That night we spent ages talking about Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Holland is actually only a region of The Netherlands, like the Northern Territories of Australia), families, food and performances, and got to eat some lovely Dutch cheese and sausages. The meat had such a thick skin, though- it was like trying to chew through hard leather. Seeing Lawrence trying to tear one apart with his teeth was very entertaining, heh. Day Three, Part 1: Breakfast with De Ruijters The school in Rotterdam had organised a special breakfast for us in one of the classrooms with all the students. It was fantastic ^_^ The food was great and we had a really nice time talking and playing around with the kids. The Dutch love their cheese and ham sandwiches. Whenever we were at a school, it was pretty much all we had. That and a soup of some description. As well as those though, we had some plain Dutch bread with jam and butter, alongside these little boxes of chocolate sprinkles to put on your toast, called De Ruijters (pronounced De Roight-er). I found out later that there were loads of variations of these boxes, with different shapes and flavours of sprinkles. I never tried any, though- chocolate for breakfast doesn’t sit well with me. We also had the choice of eggs and bacon and these biscuit-bread things (I think they’re called biscottes in France), but they were lovely with a dollop of marmalade on them. Yes, we ate very well then. And I took some nice pictures of the class. They all wanted our e-mail addresses, so our journey towards Amsterdam was held up by about fifteen minutes of long goodbyes and writing of e-mail addresses on any surface that was available. But eventually we had to leave our adoring fans behind (heh) and travel to another school- the Regenboorg (rainbow) school on the outskirts of the capital city of the Netherlands. Getting lost was a common occurrence in Holland. Every journey we took had a wrong turning in it somewhere along the lines, resulting in delayed journeys and frantic phonecalls to the schools to find out where we’d ended up. We figured it was because of unclear directions, because a number of different navigators to different places always resulted in a loss at some point, at least until Gijs arrived and took control of the A-Team’s bus. The Dutch have the best coffee in the world. Well, it’s Douwe Egberts, but it’s still the best coffee I’ve ever tasted. And their pancakes are rather nice, too. Very sweet, but nice. I was working with Jez in these workshops. We make a good team ^_^ he’s a really cool guy, 26 and knows a heck of a lot about life, culture and its effects; more than I do. The first group was very small, only eight pupils and one teacher. The second group was harder to control, and there was this one kid who insisted on cheating in the games he played. I actually had to hold his chair down so that he didn’t take it with him during one of the games. Rrr. Anyway, the show came and went very quickly, as they always do once you’re performing them, and we had to walk to the nearest metro (equivalent to the Underground) to take us towards Amsterdam. It was here that I discovered how noisily my wheely-suitcase squeaked. Next Time: Holland Trip Part 2: Red Lights, Green Lights and Lightning Bolts!

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