Samyu and her friends(Lewis, Yusef and Zerina) were middle school graduates from India, selected for a cultural trip to the Netherlands for 3 weeks. This blog narrates you about their journey together as four that the memory were much better, since...
After I came back from school I was incredibly fatigued, and went back to my room to talk to my parents in India. My parents knew that I had always wanted to go on an exchange program, and I told them over the phone about how pleased I feel when I am with my host and at school. After talking to my parents, I tried to focus on reading a book that Juliette had recommended to me. Slowly the light came down, twilight fell and I slept unbeknownst to myself.
Tuesday 7:45 AM
After 12 hours of sleep, I was awakened by the innocence of a warm gentle breeze, daisies placed in a glass vase near the window became my favorite companion, the scent of morning dew, and the freshly laundered clothes hanging outdoor were all my mind occupied. On a day like this, there were no worries of mine.
I got ready and went down to pack my lunch. As soon as my mom and dad saw me, they greeted me "Good morning", and before I could open my mouth to apologize for sleeping early, my mom asked "Were you feeling okay last night?" with her concerned voice. I knew that she had been quite worried If I started feeling homesick, and so I responded "I am happy, and I will never feel homesick", with my cheerful tone.
Juliette and I cycled to school, and I had trouble finding the room again. Juliette helped me find it and we waited for the rest to join. I thought I was the only one who lost the path in the maze, but even Zerina, Yusef, and Lewis did too. Later, We became accustomed to the route by the third day of school, and we always waited until all four of us were in the room before proceeding to our classes as planned.
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We attended a couple of classes and prepared our presentations for the field trips as scheduled. We had Dutch lessons during the first period and found the Dutch pronunciation challenging. Similarly, we were quick to write the correct translation, and Yusef became acclimated to pronunciation and, was an expert in Dutch when compared to us. I discovered that the Dutch Mathematics curriculum was simpler than the Indian curriculum! We hardly managed to sit during the Chemistry lesson as he taught us in Dutch and the Dutch mates felt the same during our English lessons. We also had physics practical lessons where we found the equipment totally different from what we have in India. It was fun to carry our phones everywhere at school because that never happened to us in our Indian school. We were given Internet access while preparing our presentations, so we tried to unwind by surreptitiously watching our favorite movies. Slowly, We became habituated to the school and were permitted to loiter anywhere as we pleased. That's how the days progressed.
Thursday
Finally, we finished working on our presentations on time and presented them to the coordinators. We received our highest marks, and we're all prepared to embark on the tour the following day. We'd been in Zwolle for about a week and loved it, although we hadn't seen anything other than our house, family, school, and neighborhood. We had a Facetime call to plan and decided that white would be our dress code. We even talked about who should bring which food. We were very looking forward to our first trip. We slept with smiles on our faces and excitement in our minds.
