I was born on March 30th 1974 in Alkmaar, the Netherlands.

Then, on September 1994, I went to SB, Ca., USA.

I remember it as if it were yesterday when we (7 Dutch students) took the plane to LAX...or was it San Francisco...? Anyway, we took the plane and flew all the way to California.

The first night we stayed at a hotel in LA with what seemed like a thousand other "EF-people" from all over. All looked a little nervous (or was that just me?) and stayed with the people from their own country. The next day, when we arrived at EF in SB, about one million hostfamilies were waiting for us. Their long awaited French/Danish/German/Swiss/Korean/Japanese....foreign student had arrived. They were all looking at the bus and you could see them thinking: "Which one is ours?" (or was that just me?). The only thing I could think of at that moment was: "........................".

I met my hostmother (which I personally think is a pretty silly word) Cynthia, my Swedish roommate Katarina and the doggie, Lista. Very weird idea that you are going to live with these people the next couple of months. But it turned out to be very cool.

When we got "home" it didn't take long for our neighbor girl to show up. "Do you guys have cartoons where you come from?" Those were her actual words. Well of course we have cartoons on Mars!

The first class at EF was...well, all I could think was: ".....................".

The famous Linda Lola Lulu Fifi was our teacher and boy, did she talk fast!!! (Or was that just me?) I would have laughed if someone had told me that I would be able to "follow" what she said in a few weeks! But it was true. Anyone who's had the privilege to have her as a teacher knows that when she says: "We're going to the library!", the last place you'll end up is the library. (And we went there a lot!)*

All of the classes at EF were very interesting. A lot of people "back in Holland" thought that I just studied English at EF and that I spent the rest of my time at the beach. So they were surprised when I told them about the different classes like music, cultural geography, mythology, psychology and about my internship and the yearbook staff.

The rest of my succes story (hahahaha) is very much the same as Jan's...so you can just read that.

Okay okay, leave out the part about being President of the Student Government...and the trips to Mexico and Hawaii...

[*It was just Kitty...]