With deadlines quickly approaching over the next 2 weeks I decided to attempt to not get bogged down like last time. This meant taking some time this week and knuckling down. Fortunately for me my Tuesday and Wednesday freed up completely coincidentally due to how the classes were scheduled. However having more time to do work just means having more time to procrastinate and by the end of the 2 days I had a lot less done than I hoped but looking at it positively I did more than I would have done if I hadn't tried.
Lucy made her final trip back to Leeuwarden on the Wednesday after heading back to Hasselt the previous Thursday to pack up her room and do a final presentation. This means she'll be here until the 25th of June when we head off on a wee Italian adventure. However her trip back wasn't exactly smooth sailing. After me being amazing and organising all her trains and sending her numerous changeover schedules she managed to miss her bus, which meant she missed her first train, and after getting on a later train she managed to get herself left at a random station in a place called Weert. Thankfully there was one last train passing through Weert to get her where she needed to be which meant she was able to get the last train to Leeuwarden.
It was good she came when she did because there was a street festival over the weekend to celebrate liberation day.
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| Another standard day in Leeuwarden |
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| Traffic cones hung up all round town |
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| Frisian cow makes an appearance again |
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| Some live music in the middle of time |
I had my third day of placement on the Thursday. With the year 8 class out on a trip it meant we only had 2 classes to see. The task proved a bit daunting today for some of the pupils in the younger class which for one boy resulted in tears but he was easily calmed down and once Nadja helped him through a bit he got on much better. I've found that I am at the lowest of the understanding ladder as the teacher can speak both Dutch and English, Nadja is able to speak English and with her German she is able to understand Dutch, and then there is me only able to do English. There are 10 year old children in the class fluently speaking English and Dutch and switching between languages during conversation which makes me feel kind of guilty and also gives me the opinion that maybe we should start teaching a second language in primary school.
It was our penultimate "Places of Memory" trip on Friday and we finally made our way to a site our tutors had mentioned to us on more than one previous occasion. We made our way to a place called Dokkum in order to visit the place that St. Boniface was killed and to visit a chapel dedicated to his memory. Unfortunately the chapel was actually closed at the time we visited so we were not able to go inside but we were able to explore the grounds. The reason Boniface was killed was because his job for the church was to bring Christianity and the control of the church to different areas, however for the Frisian's their freedom is very important to them so they killed him in revolt. To this day they think very little of St. Boniface and the chapel isn't very respected in the community but it is a site of Catholic pilgrimage.
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| Statue on the site of St. Boniface's death, covering his head with The Bible |
We also finally got up close with an old school windmill.
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"When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills."
- Chinese Proverb
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