Speed skating is fun!!

Speed skating is a very Dutch sport, because Dutch people have been doing it for more than 2000 years! It all started with the first people in the Netherlands. When it was winter, they wanted to catch fish on a lake. But how could they get to the middle of the lake? In the summer they had boats, but you can’t use boats if everything is frozen. So they started to walk on the ice, but that didn’t work (they fell down every time). So they putted a few bones of stags under their shoes and they tried to skate. That is how the people of Holland started skating! Now, people don’t skate anymore for fish, because we’ve got the supermarkets for that.

Every year, there are tournaments of speed skating, for men and women. Usually you skate on a circuit which is 400 meters long. It’s always going like this: 100 meter straight, 100 meter bend, 100 meter straight, 100 meter bend. After that you skated 1 lap (400m). There are different distances for men and women.

But not only the Netherlands take part in the championships. Also many other countries like Norway, Japan, China, Germany, France, Italy, the United States, Canada etc. Just watch TV and you will see it.

I have been doing it for 5 years now, and I like it very much. At school there’s also an ice-skating team, and I am in it. We’re skating games against other schools! A few weeks ago we had a regional tournament in Haarlem. We skated as fast as we could and my team (4 people) became second and now we are nominated for the Dutch Championship! There were also 4 other teams from my school which go to the DC!! We are we good in ice-skating, aren’t we?
Koen Kleiberg, T1A

Captain Arie Evegroen, a Dutch hero!

In the night of 31 January and 1 February 1953 an important event took place in Nieuwerkerk a/d IJssel. The radio warned for a storm wit hurricane strength.
The water stood exactly under the vertex of the Groenedijk. The waves were attacking the dike. Nobody realised at that moment that a terrible disaster was going on in the polders of Zuid Holland and Zeeland. On that night of 31 January the people of Nieuwerkerk were partying and went to a dance event. On that dance event some people faced the mayor with the storm and the high water in the river Ijssel, that was directly connected to the sea. They kept everybody in the dancing room. This proved be later to be good thing, as soon after turned out that the official dike army was not able to reinforce the dike. Out of the guests the mayor recruited his own dike army and people for the catering. Fortunately among the guests there was also a captain with his wife and daughter. All of a sudden a message came that the dike started to break. The mayor ordered the captain (Arie Evegroen) to navigate his ship into the widening hole. And so he did. Although his ship was damaged heavily, he came out himself well. With the help of the dike armies the dike could be repaired and millions of Dutchmen living in the polders of Zuid Holland were safe. So this meeting appeared later on to become the rescue for many many South-Dutchmen. I think these people did a great job and that Arie Evegroen was a real hero! I also want to say that I like to write for this blog! Jamie van der Steen, T2A

A multicultural neighbourhood: Schilderswijk

There are a lot of cultures in Holland, especially in The Hague. The Hague has got a really multicultural society. In our city there are many different neighbourhoods. On of those neighbourhoods is called the Schilderswijk. This neighbourhood is one of the poorest in the Netherlands. It was built in the 19th century; it hasn’t developed that well since then, because of its poverty. Schilderswijk has got 32.000 inhabitants. Most of the inhabitants in Schilderswijk (87%) aren’t from Dutch origin. They are mostly are from Turkey, Surinam and Morocco. The neighbourhood Schilderswijk has an area of 149 hectometres [squared]. It may be a poor neighbourhood, but that doesn’t mean that there doesn’t happen anything special there. There are festivals held there like Ha-Schi-Ba (Haagse-Schilderwijk-Bazar). This festival is meant for everyone, so you can experience the feeling of belonging together: everyone is equal.
Our opinion about the Schilderswijk:
The Schilderswijk has got a very bad name, because it is a very poor neighbourhood. It looks bad, which makes the inhabitants look like very aggressive people. There also aren’t that many Dutch people, which causes discrimination. The government has to solve these kinds of problems quickly!
Sahir Kassem and Joshua Susanto, T2A.http://www.hofvanwouw.nl/Geloveninschilderswijk.jpg (picture)

Hofstad Lyceum Open House 2007

The open day at our school is a yearly routine and also this year we had many 8th graders from the primary schools coming over to our school to get a taste and to see if they like it. We had many stands with an exhibition of the objects of that particular subject. It included geography, maths, French, Dutch and other subject such as art and biology were demonstrated in the classrooms. We (Jacqueline and Stephanie) were assisting in the biology classroom and the art room. We are also students at Hofstad Lyceum and we enjoyed the Open Day very much.. As first year students we want to make sure that next year students will feel al at home at our school Hofstad lyceum. Many schools now have an open day in Holland and we guess that is the same in other countries. Please tell us if you assisted too in your school. What did you have to do? We are very curious! We enjoy helping the first year students very much we think it is fun and exiting to meet the new kids that hopefully will like this school as much as we do. We have done about half a year at this school now and we had many new experiences (but also much more homework!!).
Stephanie and Jacqueline from the Hofstad Lyceum in The Hague, the Netherlands

The flood of 1953 in Zeeland

The disaster was from 31 of January to the 1 of February. There was already for 24 hours a heavy storm from the North West, the most dangerous direction for our country. The seawater was very high that night and it was blown into the estuaries of Zeeland. It was a bit heavy, but they were thinking it was normal because the sea level was always higher in that time of the year. But when everybody was sleeping the dikes broke. The water came into the polders and dike after dike broke. The islands Duivenland, Goeree Overvlakkee, Tholen, Biesbosch en St. Philipsland were completely inundated. The islands Voorne Putten and the Hoekse Waarde were almost completely flooded. South Beveland and Walcheren were only partly flooded. More than 1800 people drowned in the ice cold water. In total 49.000 houses and farms were destroyed. Between the 100.000 and the 110.000 people had to be evacuated. That people had to stay somewhere else e.g. in schools and churches. Some babies were born that night, but because people had to sleep in schools babies were born there. For the farmers it was bad too as it lasted two years before anything could grow again on the salty fields. Now we told about the humans, but 201.000 animals died too. We hope it will never happen again, it sounds so terrible…..
Iris and Richelle T1B

Amphibious vehicles

I will tell about AAV (Amphibious Assault Vehicle). There are several names for AAV’s but I think this is the right one. The AAV is a vehicle that in a lot of NATO countries is used by the Navy. These vehicles can both sail and ride .I have chosen the AAV because the older types (the DUKW, nickname “Duck”) were used in 1953 during the flood in Holland. They were left in Holland in 1945 by the American and Canadian forces, that liberated our country from the Nazis. These amphibious vehicles, by that time in the hands of private owners, were very useful, as they were the first to arrive in the inundated areas. They were able to reach isolated villages and farms that were not accessible by boats nor cars or trucks. That’s why they saved so many people. The AAV was designed and built in the late 1960s and early 1970s.The length is 7.94m, the width is 3.27m, the height are 3.26m and weight are 22.8 tonnes.. Their speed is 64 km/h on land and in water 13 km/h. There are 3 types of the AAV: 1. AAVP-7A1 (Personnel) 2. AAVC-7A1 (Command) 3. AAVR-7A1 (Recovery). If you are also interested in amphibious vehicles, please let me know! I think they are wonderful machines!!
By Guilian.

Note from the editor: the upper photo was sent in by Fina Verbeek's dad. It is a German AAV and the Nazis wanted to use these machines to invade our country in case the Dutch goverment had inundated the country to prevent the ennemy from coming in (The so called Waterlinie)Thanks, Mr Verbeek!