Good week :-)

Hi there!

So I've had a much more eventful week than the last few and it's been lots of fun. It started on Sunday night when a few of us went out to the beach to watch the sunset, which was beautiful. Then on Monday (I think), despite the fall (similar to Nova Scotia fall) weather, I went swimming in the ocean. It was definately freezing, freezing cold, and it may have to be the last time I'm in this year, but it was still fun and exhilirating :-P

Tuesday was my day off and I decided it needed to be more productive than my last day off so I decided to head into Haarlam. It was a pretty cool city. The first thing I did was go to this place called the Corrie Ten's Boomhuis which I read about in my guide book. I thought it was going to be similar to the Anne Frank House because it was where there were Jewish people hidden during WWII, but I was wrong. It was an hour long tour, about 45 minutes of which I was being preached to about God's plan and how everyone is born a sinner and you should pray all the time to be accepted into God's plan and so on and so forth. The hiding spot and the alarm system was cool, and I definately like hearing about those kind of stories, but I think maybe I should have looked into what it was a bit more before going, because it definately took me by surprise (I think everyone else there were expecting that.... I had never heard of Corrie Ten Boom before). Anyways, all in all, I would have rather not gone, but it was an interesting experience. After the tour I took a few hours to wander around the city aimlessly and see what I could find. It was pretty cool. One of the oldest cities in Holland with a cute little town center. And I found a park that had fenced in deer right in the middle of the city! I was amazed by how tame and not afraid of humans they were considering seeing a deer in Wentworth is almost impossible to do. After seeing the deer, the same park also had goats and peacocks. So I definately got my fill of wildlife (although they weren't really 'wild') for the day. What else did I see? Oh I saw a windmill, but now that I've been in Holland for a couple months, that's nothing too special anymore :-P

To top off an already pretty good week, yesterday I got to go skiing!!!!!!! Me, Lio and Jasmijn (the 2 locals that work here) went to an indoor skiing place that's near Den Haag. It cost quite a bit of money, and there were only 3 trails (with a vertical height of 35m I think) but all in all I was definately impressed considering it was indoors and not even November yet. I snowboarded for the first 2 hours and then switched to skis half way through (I probably would have gotten bored skiing on 3 trails all day). It was a great day, and only made me more excited for this winter.

I guess that's all for now. Almost done my application to Dal, and that will be a big weight lifted off my shoulders. I'm still working on what I'm going to do in the winter, but there's no way I won't be in the Alps.

Talk to you soon!
Kaila