All things Dutch

As I announced I am done with my masters!! Well...to be technical, I just finished the thesis and report I was required to submit, still have to work until the end of my internship contract at Deltares. I am now on summer vacation and arrived in Encinitas late the other day. Still jetlagged and waking up at 6 am, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. ^_^ In any event now I have time to sit and write about what I have been up too. This will be the first of two blogposts.

First to the activities/excursions in the Netherlands...

 Kinderdijk

In April managed to visit the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Kinderdijk, which is a village in Molenwaard (Molen meaning windmill) outside of Rotterdam. In order to drain a polder (low-lying tract of land enclosed by dikes, often land reclaimed from the sea or river) a system of 19 windmills was built around 1740 and also happens to be the largest concentration of old windmills in the Netherlands.

Liberation Day Festival (Bevrijdingsdags)

Just like last year I went to Waginingen on May 5 to celebrate the day WWII ended in the Netherlands. This year was a bit sunnier, but there the headlining bands in the main city square were not as good. Instead we milled around to the various music stands, got scammed to pay extra for meat in our Döners and enjoyed one of the only nice spring days.

Pinkpop

This was the longest running music festival in the world (since 1970) usually held over Pentacost weekend (Pinksteren in Dutch). We arrived on a Friday, set up our tent in the sea of other tents and got the grounds in time to see The Script and The Killers. Saturday we had a lazy start to the day, walked the supposed "500 m" to a grocery which turned into 1.5 km, made a BBQ lunch/dinner and went off to see Elle Goulding and Phoenix. Sunday was a big in terms of bands my friends and I wanted to see, so we packed up all our stuff and went to see Kensington, Tom Odell, Bastille, Lianne La Havas, Ben Howard and Alt-J. My favourites of the weekend ended up being the Killers (duh!), Ben Howard (pretty good concert for chill music), Elle Goulding (yay girls!) and Bastille (so awesome, loved the drums!). All in all it was nice weekend for music, camping and relaxing but not for our wallets since everything was so expensive therefore I decided to spend the money on food and not on lots of beer.

Irish Dancing

As many of you know I went back to Irish Dancing and joined a small school based in the Hague. They hold both children and adult classes in Dutch or English, which is perfect. I have come to really enjoy it again and like the fact that there is not as intense or pressure to compete. We do get to take part in various performances in the Hague throughout the year, like an International Festival last December, St. Patrick's Day in March and a local neighbourhood party turned music event (Zeeheldenfestival) this past July with a live band! This past Saturday they also put together an all-day workshop headed by a Welsh girl who studied Irish Dance and Music in Limerick, Ireland. It was a really great day learning (or re-learning) jumps and trick, but really realize that my hard shoe rhythm sucks haha, need to work on the basics again :P At least my soft shoe skills hadn't regressed as much in the 10+ years that I took a break, whew!