2 brothers, 2 winners

This week a young man won a singing contest and today his brother won another one.

I love to hear things like that.
It's so interesting that certain talents run through a whole family and quality shows.

My mom comes from a family with lots of singers and balletdancers.

Her uncles even had a family choir for all the uncles and nephews, fathers and sons.
The balletdancers pop-up through the generations in families.

We're one of them.
My mom was a great ballet dancer, as were 3 of the 4 brothers and my sister and I.
Two years before my mom stopped were were all together on stage and that was very special.

In this generation there's another family in the great family where mom and children are balletdancers. It's a pity they live so far away.

Music is such a marvellous thing for people.

Student protests

Today thousands of students protested against the plans of the government to make them pay a lot extra for studying.
Especially students that need more time have to pay extra and their university have to pay too. That means that students who are on the boards and such of the university or write for the university paper get into financial problems. Some might even have to stop in the middle of their studies, because the plans are not only for new students but also for those who already studying.

Mom and dad told me that never before the university professors took part in the protest but now 1/3 of them did.

That is very impressive.

Heading towards...

It's cold again.
In the afternoon it was colder than in the morning, so maybe we are heading towards more winter.

We sure are heading to the end of the testweek.
I'm doing all I can, but I'm quite tired, so I'm happy tomorrow is the last day.

My third brother is celebrating his birthday tomorrow.
He loves apple pie, so guess what he wants?

I'm not sure if I'll be able to surprise him in the morning.
He needs to go up at 6, and I have to start rather late in the morning.
I expect we arrive at about the same time at home again, so maybe I can do something special for him then.

A months after tomorrow we'll start the student exchange.
My exchange partner will come here first.
I've been mailing with her, so we know each other a little bit.
I look forward to the exchange very much.

I can do with donations, so.... :)

Info evening

Today we had an info evening at school about choices for the right educational direction...so choices for our future.

This was the second evening and it was almost the same as the evening we had before and was told to be an introduction.

So we looked at the same slides.
Even the coffee was as bad as before.

Parnets were told we had to do this and we had to do that.
A large part of all those things I've done already.
We need to do them because we get a mark for them.

It's a complete waste of time to go through stream diagrams and answer loads of questions becuse I want to become a nurse.
It's nice for those who don't know what to do with their future.

They showed a professor who told what parents need to do.
Well, I've got perfect parents as they do the same as that guy said they should do.
With one exception.

The guy said that people of my age are not able to oversee consequences and are not able to know how teachers and other grown ups think about them.

I don't know what kind of kids he researched, but I've been taught at home to think about consequences. I've talked a lot with my mom about all sorts of professions and she showed me the pros and cons of the jobs, and also ways to grow in a job and find a way up. Which extra education is needed, what the prospects are of getting a better job.
I can become a teacher at Kindergarten and become principal.
Or I can become a nurse and grow all my life and become a nurse practitioner, or whatever I want.
I would love to work at the neonathology unit. And I know it's a very intense job, dealing with terribly ill children and dealing with their parents. Dealing with death too.

So for me this evening was wasted time.

Smoking

I don't smoke and I never will.

I think it stinks.
People who smoke don't realise how much they spread bad smell.
Their coats can be found easily within a large pile of coats because their coat smells bad.

People who smoke are a danger for the health of other people, scientists have concluded from research.
Because less people smoke now, the babies of this generation have better lungs than the children of the generation before. Immediately after ww2 people didn't know smoking was bad for people.

My parents never smoked.
They have told that my grandfather liked to smoke, but he never did when he came in our house, because he didn't want to influence our health in a bad way.

So that gives me a good feeling.

So many names

My sister got the name of her exchange student and a classmate told she had seen him on facebook.

My parents are not in favor of young girls surfing internet at places that are told to be not very safe for us, but they don't want to stay in the way of the exchange either.

So we sat down to find the exchange student of my sister and with the name she had about 50 or more people with the name popped up!

It must be a name like Jan Janssen, which is a common name here in our country.

As my sister mailed her student a few days ago, she had a close look if she did something wrong while writing the address.

Maybe resending the mail helps???

Flamenco skirt

My mom went to the attic today to tidy some things and put our iceskates there. When She came down she had a black jacket, a skirt and a pair of trousers which might fit one of us.

The jacket is for me, because it fits me.
And I tried the skirt.

It's black with a red border with white flowers on it.
It's a circle skirt, a real one.

I love it.

Mom told me she used to wear it during the flamenco lessons she had.
I can imagine here throwing all ther energy and passion in it.
I've seen her using her feet to create the flamboyant rhythm of the flamenco.
She can use them so fast that she doesn't have to flop her feet, but she can just stamp the rhythm without missing a beat. Wow!

So now the skirt is going to us.

And I'm going to Spain this year.

That makes me think...