Sinterklaas

As everyone knows (Probably better than I do) Christmas is coming soon! The Dutch do not really celebrate everything the same way we do. In order to expose the castle kids to the Dutch culture, they have been throwing little celebrations to show their traditions.

On Tuesday night they had two choirs (One of little kids and one of old people) come sing Dutch carols for us. They were both pretty terrible, but it was still fun. At one point they would sing a song in Dutch and then we would sing the next verse in English.


This guy did NOT want to be there...


Old Dutch people singing


Little Dutch children singing


Dutch Jazzy wheelchair

Instead of Santa Clause coming on Christmas and giving presents, the Dutch have Sinterklaas (This is actually the genesis of the American Santa Clause) who comes on December 5th and gives presents. So to let us experience Sinterklaas Rob Duckers came into the dining hall last night dressed up as Sinterklaas and gave little presents to everyone.


Rob dressed up at Sinterklaas

Also instead of elves, Sinterklaas has little black slaves. So Johnny and Rene dressed up as his slaves...

Not only are they in full on black face, but their names were "Blake Pete" and "Pete Black"




All I could think was "This would never fly in America." Oh well. I live in a castle.

Where you going? Barcelona. Oh.

Hey everyone. I am sadly writing my last blog describing a weekend travel experience. After 11 weeks of traveling, this past weekend was the final trip. And it was the perfect way to end.

My weekend started Thursday night. We got an email from Hubert (Groundskeeper extraordinaire) that we were going to have a fire drill.

Dear Students,

Tonight at 7.30pm their will be a fire drill. This is to train the fire department ( they will be on campus) and the staff.
The exercise will be realistic with victims, smoke etc.
I would kindly ask you to follow the normal procedures and staff instructions. Their will be free coffee and music in the 10th barn. It will not take too long.

As this is a training for the staff, they are not informed, please keep it like that. If you have any questions my ext is 217

I will see you tonight

Huber

Of course Emerson would go all out when they have a fire drill and turn it into a full on production. At around 7:30 the fire department started setting up. They brought a few giant smoke machines (Like in clubs or stage fog) and dummies. They placed red Christmas lights on the floor of John’s room on the third floor of the VB (Voorburch or Forecastle) to represent where the fire is. They also asked a few people to stay in their rooms and be victims that the fire men had to save. Around 8pm, all the alarms were set off and the hallways were filled completely with smoke. You could not see 2 feet in front of you. We all had to leave and go sit in the barn.

Now lets just say that the fire department in Well, The Netherlands is horrible. It took them maybe 20 minutes for the trucks to come and over a half an hour for them to “rescue” people in their rooms. So if there actually was a fire in the castle, we would all be dead. We were not allowed into the castle for another hour or two after the alarms went off which was really frustrating because we all had work/packing to do. I tried to go to bed early, but ended up not going to sleep until about 12.

Friday morning we had to wake up and get a cab to the airport at 3am. It was really rough. The only thing that made it better was knowing that in a few hours I would be in Barcelona. Once again it is the “Disney World” complex. So all 8 of us (Me, Chris, Sam, Meredith, Jessica, Lauren, Jon, and Kathryn) got in the cab and drove to the Dusseldorf international which is about an hour away. After a slight mix up with the tickets (Nothing too bad) we got through security in about 2 minutes and had over an hour to wait. However once we boarded the plane, it was incredible.

We flew AirBerlin and it was such a treat to fly on a real airline. We were able to check bags (Even though no one did). We got a free sandwich (Instead of having to pay 6 euros for one) and a free drink (Instead of a 3 euro soda…Thank you RyanAir).



After about 2 hours, we landed in Barcelona around 8am. We got off the plane and took a bus into the city to find out hostel. We threw our bags down and started to look for somewhere to get some breakfast. As we were leaving the room, we decided to go and steal breakfast from our hostel.



After we filled up on free cereal and muffins (As well as taking some extra for the road) we went on a walk around the city.


Lauren and Kathryn looking like rock stars


Gorgeous Gaudi architecture


Meredith being silly


Sam playing in the sandbox


“Freshman…”


Senior portraits




Marina on the Mediterranean Sea


The girls


Kathryn’s album cover


Never hide


The beach!!

When we got to the beach, we ate lunch and ended up just sitting around for a few hours/most of the day.




It was too cold to swim but I had to say I at least put my feet in the Mediterranean Sea.



I started to do a dance to warm up


Kathryn and Chris with Kathryn’s granola


Lauren and I went for a walk…


…While Mer took pictures of herself


High School Musical Three: Barcelona







Me, Lauren, Kathryn and Chris

I wanted to see if I could still do a handstand…


And I could

After we were at the beach for a while, we went back to the hostel to take a nap. We went to sleep at around 5 and woke up by 10 and went to find dinner.


Weird Spanish guy who came into our restaurant selling light up bracelets and rings

After we ate, we decided to try and find a club. Sam, Kathryn and Jon went back to the hostel while the rest of us went to the club. By the time we got there it was about 1:15. We got inside and there was NO ONE there. Literally. No one. The only peole there were the DJ, bartender, coat check girl and bouncer.


Mer all alone in the club

We had heard that people don’t go out in Barcelona until 2 or 3, but we didn’t realized that it would be EMPTY. We got a drink and sat down and had a nice conversation for a little bit. Around 2 people started coming, but it didn’t get crowded until 3 just as we were leaving


Me, Mer, Jess, and Lauren


The girls


We were bored


…So we tried to do Shakey face

At 3 we were all getting really tired so we decided to leave to go back and get some sleep.





The next morning, a few people woke up at 9 to get free breakfast before 10. Of course I woke up (Yay for 5 hours of sleep) and could not fall asleep. I got some food and then went back to the room and tried to go back to sleep. Everyone woke up at 11 and we ended up splitting up. The girls all wanted to go shopping and the guys did not. We planned to meet back at the hostel at 7


It was World AIDS Day so there was a giant condom balloon in a square



The Spanish really like to buy animals on the street…


This creepy guy dressed up as Santa, built a chimney for him to sit in on the street, and grabbed children walking by…


One of those dogs is real…Can you figure out which one?






We wandered over to wear the Olympics took place in 1992




Olympic Stadium



Sam is a VIP

There was a really pretty view from up there





Hello Kitty Smart Car


Spanish Negro show


Slutty Christmas costumes


Novartis

We finally made our way over to Gaudi's Sagrada Familica. It is this amazing church that was designed by Gaudi before he died in the 20s. It has been picked up since then by a number of different architects and started to be built in 1982. It is still under construction today.






The windows are not all in yet.


The Last Supper built into the side of the church





This was hands down the most unique church I have seen over here and probably my second favorite (After Notre Dame). It was cool to be able to say that I saw it before it was finished. I feel like we witnessed a piece of history

After we walked around the church, we started to head back to the hostel to meet back up with the girls. On the way there we saw this random market that we walked through


CHRISTMAS TREES!!

We met up with the girls and after catching up on what everyone did during the day, we went to find somewhere to eat.


Uriarte


Cool door knocker

We had dinner and were all really exhausted so we pretty much just went back to the hostel to go to bed. The next morning we had to wake up at 5:45 in order to get to the airport on time. We got there fine and got our flight with no problems


The view from the plane

The plane ride back was probably one of the worst flights I have ever been on. I swear the pilot must have been drunk because we were rocking back and forth so much we might as well have been doing barrel rolls. But we made it to the ground safely.

When we landed we were supposed to meet our cab driver at the check point and he would have a sign that said "Emerson College" on it. We went to the check point but could not find him. We spent a good half hour looking for him before Chris and Kathryn found him at McDonalds next to the meeting point with the sign held up against his side. He was a GREAT cab driver.

We are now in our last week and finals are in full swing. It is really stressful because we have so much to do in only a few days. Oh well. I live in a castle.