Some weeks ago, 4 til 8 April, we, havo4 IB had an exchange program with Swedish students from Örebro. This exchange is part of the English IB course.

A group of 18 Swedish students was visiting us. We had the opportunity to decide whether we wanted a student or not.

On Monday evening, we had just parked our car, and just as we wanted to get out we saw the bus coming. Right on time. And then, seconds after arriving the doors open and you could already see the first shoes, just one more step, yes! The first Swedish people hit Dutch ground! It didn’t take so long to find their stuff, and after approximately 5 minutes of waiting we saw our guests. We put their bags in our car, drove home and went straight to bed, because they were tired.

The next morning, while we were having breakfast they liked the food, but were not used to ‘hagelslag’ and when one of them tried ‘stroop,’ he almost had to vomit and he was still saying he liked it. Of course, I asked him to just throw it away.

On the first day, on Tuesday, when we arrived at school we started doing some speeddating with all Swedish people. After some time, as everyone spoke to everyone, we divided ourselves into groups as we had already prepared a tour through school. So we did that. We showed the laboratory, the gym, outside… In the end we found the canteen, of course . That afternoon we had a math and chemistry run where we did some chemistry experiments and a math quiz. This was quiet cool, in the evening we went to the Music Gala which was pretty awesome, perfectly fitting in the programme. We all enjoyed, but were home late. Time for us to go to sleep again.

The second day, on Wednesday, we did some gymnastics at school. We first did some acrobatic exercises and then we went preparing our acrobatic performances. the Swedes were a bit scared to cooperate. Oh well, we made our ‘presentation’ and showed it to all of the people in the gym. We did pretty well for only 2 hours of practasing.

After that we had again free time to prepare for the potluck party. We had lots of choice; pancakes, muffins, apple pie. some kind of doughballs, ‘arretjescake’ and chocolate mousse.

Thursday must have been most fun. We went to Amsterdam, by bus. In Amsterdam the Swedish students discovered all the good things about the traditional Dutch culture. After a short tour along the most famous buildings, the red light district and a boat trip, we had some free time. It involved four McDonalds’, a couple of shoe shops, buying things and making stupid jokes with the Swedes.

On Friday they left for Sweden again. It was pretty nice.

After all, the exchange was a succes and we had a really good time.

Havo-4 IB