Trip to Texel

Hello to all my family and friends!
This past weekend was a great time. My study abroad group..all 10 of us and our program director traveled to Texel. For most of you that probably do not know, Texel is an island in the Netherlands. We took a ferry to get there as well. We left on Friday and got back to Leiden on Sunday night. On Friday we arrived around 6:00 pm. Steef (our program director) suggested we go to the grocery store and get groceries for the next couple of days. It might be hard to see in the picture, but the bikes lined up in a row (our main source of transportation on the island) have boxes on the back of them, this is how we carried our food home with us. On the way we had a few little accidents with falling boxes and food everywhere! However, we all eventually made it back to our cute little cottage with no bruises or damaged food. We enjoyed Friday night by eating some soup and having some drinks. We all slept in the same room, which was a interesting experience. I enjoyed the sounds of Hayle snoring and Bekah talking in her sleep :). On Saturday we had an exciting day ahead of us. We first went to a little cute museum by the ocean..The beachcomber Museum. After this we took a shrimp boat tour.
Here you can see the picture of the net that they had to tear open in order to get the shrimp. One of the cords snapped and a couple of the shrimp men had to climb over the boat and grab the net and break open the bottom over the water so they could pull the net in, which was too heavy. Well, when the shrimp boat man broke the net over the water...There was a huge backfire of shrimp icky water that covered him. It was pretty much one of the funniest things I have ever seen. While on the boat we got to see the sea creatures and eat them as well. It was the freshest shrimp I have ever tasted! We were all exhausted that night, all we wanted to do was eat dinner and chill. Mark, Allison, and I made pancakes for dinner, homemade ones for all 10 of us. Now these are not the normal pancakes you are all used to. It took us about 2 hours to make them by scratch...There is truly an art to making them just perfect...Which we didn't exactly perfect that night. Again we all sat around, played cards and drank. Sunday was a great day as well. We biked to the Seal museum (and for Bekah, it was the Sill museum). I guess it was not really a museum, it was kind of like a mini zoo. We got to see a bunch of seals, pet them, and we watched them get fed!

Here is a cute little picture of a friendly seal who wanted to say hi to me and my friends!







After a fabulous time conversing with the seals we made our way to the ocean. It was a great time! Oh yes, I forgot to tell you that Bekah and I decided it would be a good idea if we went out and bought some galoshes. It is usually pretty wet and rainy on the island. We decided to wear them to the beach that day and we wore them on the shrimp boat. All of our friends made fun of us because they were pink and had flowers on them. I am still convinced they were all just jealous that we had dry feet and they didn't. If you look below you can see a picture of Bekah and I in our nice fashionable galoshes. I look so cute this day in my pig tails! Oh yes, Hi mom! I thought you would appreciate that if I took a picture of your "name" in the sand! Before we left on Sunday, the guys decided it would be fun to make a fort in the sleeping room...while the rest of us were busy cleaning up. The fort was called "Fort Texel." It was made of blankets and such. When I opened the door the room I had to duck down and crawl through the fort. Before I could get too far, I was given the constitution of Fort Texel. Here it goes...Rule number one, If you are female (except for Joe's fiance) you must take off all of your clothes. Rule number two, obey rule one. Rule 3, no buttpluckers allowed...do not ask, please. Oh yes...we also had to go through customs in order to get fully across the fort. It was pretty hilarious if you aks me. There were also a lot of falls on the bikes this past weekend. The guys..thinking they are soo cool, decided to try the "four wheel flasher." This consists of spreading your hands and legs out away from the bike. Well lets just say that Kyle and Mark both ended up in the ditch when they tried to menouver this trick. The only person that was able to do it without falling was a girl!!! (Allison). You go girl! Anways, I must be going because I have a crap load of homework to do! Peace out friends!