VINCENT 2003/2004
So
now I am almost 12 years old, and in 6th grade of German school, which is
equal to 8th class in the Netherlands. I am almost an adolescent, and
sometimes behave like one. If I disagree with my mother, I will show my
feelings very clearly. Like here, in the mountains, I walked away and sat
down, facing the other way. Of course she was not meant to take a picture of
that.
At
home I will go to my room and lock the doors, until I have cooled down and afterwards,
I behave as if nothing has happened. The worst I find is if they tease me,
which they do often. The
ship to the left is the Batavia, the VOC ship that used to sail to the East
Indies. It was rebuilt and we visited it in Lelystad. I worked
a
long time to build this ship. Unfortunately, when we moved to Bangladesh, my
mother left it at the customs. We took it by hand since we feared that it
would not survive the trip. It survived it now, but never arrived. I was
really disappointed, but there was not much we could
do. It was stranded in Uzbekistan, a doubly landlocked country. Our
class performed a drama for the small children in the school. Sobir Jon and
me were knights, and, as you can see, riding a wild horse. The play lasted two minutes so it was
not too difficult.
The German School teachers really love drama. At the
end of the year, we usually had to perform some theatre piece of one hour or
more, for which we practiced all year. We even had to come to school on our
weekend days for extra practice! The parents of course applauded
enthusiastically, but if you listened carefully, you could hear some snores
left and right.
In January we went to Switzerland for skiing. That was
great fun! I am a real good skier now and I overtake everybody else from the
family. Even Anna
came with us, but she had to stay in the nursery all day, and only if she
wore little sunglasses she was allowed a short time in the garden. Anna is a
real happy girl now and naughty sometimes. She loves to play and make fun
with me, I am her
favorite
brother. I hope she will not be like Elodie when she grows up, with the make
up and nail polish and the girls stuff! But then, when Anna is eight years
old, I will be twenty and that will not bother me too much, I might even
start to like it at that age. And when I will be 30, Anna can introduce me
to all of her girlfriends. To the left you see the beautiful cake they gave
me for my twelfth birthday. It tasted just like it looks, but it is the
thought that counts. Now I am 12 years old, almost grown up! This also
meant that I had to start to wear braces, since my jaw is too small to fit
in all my teeth. Before that they had to pull some milk-teeth, which left
Tashkent think there was an earthquake, but it was just me screaming.
My mother also took braces at the
same time so now there are two "brace faces" in
our family.
Victor and
Elodie are laughing, but I can already see it will be their turn
soon, and
guess who will be laughing then!
To the left you see my
famous disguise for another turn of carnival (don't ask me what I
was
supposed to be but scary), my mother allowed me to
remodel a towel.
In the
beginning of September 2004, we moved from
Uzbekistan
to
Bangladesh. The
last day in Uzbekistan, we went to the Aquapark.
That was great fun, because the school season had already started so we were
all by ourselves. This slide for instance I tried
about a hundred times. I had to do it 50 times anyway,
before my mother had
caught a picture of all three of us.
In summer, we went for three weeks to the Netherlands, in between Uzbekistan
and Bangladesh. That was nice, even though the weather is always a bit
mediocre, if you are used to sunny countries. We drove around in the old
Bristol to visit friends, one of them in Limburg. We had to visit Maastricht,
which we and the younger part of our friends' family thought a little bit
boring. But it was nice to p
lay
with them.
In
Bangladesh, we went to the International School Dhaka
(ISD), a very big school
with
482
children. We had to get used to tuition in English again. Fortunately, we
learned that in the American School in Tashkent, and
at home with the nannies
and
with some friends we spoke English, so there was
no problem. We had to do a
test and succeeded. The school is totally different, in one classroom
there are as many
children
as in the whole German school all together. But the school is new and very
big, and they have a lot of sports facilities, even a big swimming pool. At
this moment, we swim and play cricket, the first one better than the last.
Some
things in school are better than others, as usual. One of the not so
agreeable things is the fact, that we have to wear a uniform. Well, the
uniform itself is OK, but the shoes are stupid and the tie is horrible. It
means another thing you can forget or loose. Luckily they are all the same,
so if you loose one,, you go to lost and found (a Mount Everest of
(sometimes not-so-clean) clothes, socks, shoes, bags, toys, lunchboxes and
so on, and just take another one. There are always some lying around.
Part of the "uniform" you can see hanging on my waist belt, is a palm top in
a special case. That is a fantastic device, a small computer, with programs,
games and so on. You could easily forget that you should also use it to note
your homework!
