Update in english (met vertaling onderaan)

Hi Everyone,

One of my teachers asked me to write an update in English. So here it is. Sorry for the persons who are not able to read and fully understand English, but maybe if I have enough time I will write the same story again in Dutch.

I'll start of with Thursday evening. On Thursday evening there was a quiz organised especially for the Erasmus students. It took place in one of the common rooms in the school. Because most of the Erasmus students are from Europe, the quiz was called the euro quiz. The quiz existed of 10 rounds and in each round we had to answer 10 questions. The questions were about geography, airports (we had to guess the abbreviations of the airports) etc. Our team was called "the donkeys"(lazy and slow) and it existed of: Elise and Rikke (Danish Girls) Tanja and Eleni (Greek girls) Anna and Justyna (Polish Girls) and of course last but not least Louise and me.
In the beginning we did quite well. We managed to remain somewhere in the middle of the list. But after approximately six rounds, the questions became more difficult and it happened more often that we didn't know the answers to most of the questions. After ten rounds we ended up as the top of the bottom (we lost). But the most important aspect of all this is that we had lots of fun answering the questions, especially the questions we didn't know.

After this quiz Louise and I went home and we had a nice chat and a lot of fun before we went to bed.

On the Friday was our day of as usual. They finally came over to fix our tap. It was leaking really badly and it was annoying because it made you go to the toilet more often than usual. Also the heating in Justyna's room was fixed. She said she was so cold that she even thought about sleeping in the living room on the couch.
In the afternoon we went to the city centre, as usual. But this time we planned to visit the city hall and to go to the bus and train station to get some information about the schedules because we wanted to go on a trip on Sunday.

Meanwhile I was really busy sending text messages to everyone, because there was a plan to go bowling that evening and to have dinner somewhere. We were sending messages to arrange a time and place and inviting everyone to come along.
In the end we arranged to meet at 7 o' clock at Rikke and Elise's place. We took a cab to the Odyssey and went to the Bowling centre. Unfortunately all the bowling lanes were booked so there was no way that she could fit us in. So then we decided to have dinner at the pizza hut and afterwards going to the cinema to see film. We saw “the heartbreak kid” It was a funny film and I enjoyed watching it. Before we could watch the film we enjoyed ourselves taking funny pictures everywhere in the cinema.

On Saturday we went to the botanic garden again. It was our second attempt to reach the garden in time. The garden closes at 4pm and the previous time we were too late because we were to busy doing other things.
This time we actually managed to arrive at the garden a quarter to 4. So we had 15 minutes left to see the botanic garden. I thought that we weren't able to see everything in 15 minutes, but the garden is really small and we saw everything in 15 minutes. It was a really nice garden, even though it was really small.

In the evening we invited everyone (Rikke, Elise, Tanja, Eleni, Anna Kasia) to come over to our place and to watch a film (again). While watching the film justyna came home from work. She works at Kentucky fried chicken and she took 4 boxes full of chicken home. She we enjoyed the film while eating really delicious chicken.

On Sunday we planned a trip. Our first plan was going to Carrick Fergus, because we wanted to see the Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge and Carrick Fergus castle. We already asked which train we had to catch and how much we had to pay. Altogether it was £3,30. But when we arrived at the train station Louise was really smart and she told me that if we wanted to go to the rope bridge that we must not go to Carrick Fergus because the rope bridge was somewhere else. So we asked the woman behind the desk how we could get to the rope bridge. And it appeared that we had to go to Lane harbour and the ticket to Lane harbour was £5 en from there you had to take a bus. We could buy a ticket for £14 and that would also include the bus. We were with a group of 12 people and 8 of them decided to go to Carrick Fergus to see the castle. But Louise, Rikke, Elise and I really wanted to go to the rope bridge because the bridge will close at the beginning of November and that day the weather was really nice so we were absolutely sure that the bridge will be open. (When the weather is bad, the bridge is closed) But we thought that £14 was a bit expensive to only go to the rope bridge. Then we came up with the solution to rent a car. We went outside the train station and asked a taxi driver if he knew where we would be able to rent a car. As it was Sunday it wasn’t really easy to rent a car because most places where you could rent a car were closed. So he suggested that he could take us to the tourist information shop to get more information about renting a car and about tours which were organised to the rope bridge. As we arrived at the tourist information, we saw a sign of a day trip to the Giant’s Causeway (the rope bridge is on the causeway) which also costs £14, but then we were able to see the whole causeway and not only the rope bridge. We decided to get more information about that trip before we went to the tourist information shop. Unfortunately they told us that that trip had already left. The next thing we did was going to the tourist information shop. The guy who was working there was making a phone call, but in the meantime he asked us if we wanted to go to the causeway and whether we wanted to go there buy car or by a fully organised tour. The reason why he was asking us, was that he was making a phone call with the driver of the tour bus who had his office on the opposite side of the street. While we were standing at that office the guy already contacted the bus driver in order to ask him if it was possible to come back and pick us up. And so he did!! The bus was coming back to the office especially for us!!

After five minutes the bus arrived and we could get in. Before we left Belfast to head towards the causeway, we had to pick up some other people at a hotel in Belfast. We stopped at the hotel, the driver got out of the bus to welcome everyone and then he came back in and he asked all the men to get out and push the bus because the bus wouldn’t start. Everyone was laughing and thought it was a joke, but the driver was really serious about it the bus really didn’t start. All the men had to push the bus about three times on our trip. It was really funny.

After driving about an hour along the causeway coast we finally reached the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge. The bridge is a connection between the mainland and an island. The bridge was actually built by fishermen to enable them to catch more salmon. Every winter they take the bridge down and in the summer they’ll build a new bridge. Nowadays the bridge is still used by fishermen to catch salmon. But there isn’t much salmon left. Nowadays it is also used as a tourist attraction. The bridge is actually very small, but the views are amazing. It is really worthwhile going there. Many tourists have visited the bridge. At first I was a bit afraid of crossing the bridge but the bus driver told us that no one has ever fallen of the bridge. However, some tourists crossed the bridge but were too scared to go back, so they have had to be taken of the island by boat.
The funny thing is that when we got back to the bus, there were about 10 people missing. We waited for 15 minutes and the driver had a look around but he couldn’t find the people. So we went without them. We had lunch at a pub in a small town near the rope bridge, so the driver took us there and then went back by bus to see if the other people were waiting. He found two people.
After lunch we headed off towards the Giant’s Causeway. When we reached Giant’s Causeway the driver got a phone call from that the rest of the people who were missing were back at the rope bridge. Their explanation was that they were lost. That is quite funny because it’ll take you a lot of effort to get lost at the rope bridge, because there are two routes who will lead you there and you can’t get lost on those routes. But those people managed to get lost. Very impressive I think.

We had a great walk at the Giant’s Causeway. I was also there last Wednesday but the weather changed a bit. Now it was windier and there were huge waves. Elise and I took a picture very close to the sea. First I took a picture of Elise and then she took a picture of me. But 10 seconds after I left the place there was a huge wave who was crashing against the rock Elise and I sat on. We were very very lucky because if we were there 10 seconds longer we would be all wet.

At the end of the tour we had a short picture stop at Dunluce castle. It is actually the remains of the castle. No one has lived there for centuries because at one point, the kitchen which was located on the edge of the cliff fell into the sea. Only one boy, who was a servant, survived. Afterwards everyone was too afraid to live in the castle.

This was the last bit of our trip. Because we walked quite a long distance, the four of us were really tired and almost immediately after we left the castle we fell asleep.

So this was a short update of what I was doing this weekend. I had a great time! Of course I made a lot of pictures of everything but I’ll put them on the site this evening (if I have internet at my place) I want to thank everyone who is reading my weblog and leaving messages. I really really like that!