June

Hi all,

Welcome to a new blog post about the month June.

On Saturday the 10^th I had one of my best experiences here in London. I went to the Capital Summertime ball. This concert was organised by a famous radio station in London. A few days before this I was listening to the radio and I heard people talking about the concert. I definitely wanted to go there because it was still on bucket list to go to a concert in a big venue in the centre of London. So I found a website that sold tickets from people who didn’t want to go there anymore. After hours of research the tickets were way too expensive for the seats we would get so we skipped the idea.

But on Saturday morning I was still thinking about the concert. Eventually after refreshing the website I suddenly found tickets for 61 pounds so at 2 o’clock Marielle, I and 80.000 other people were dancing, singing and screaming along. It was a 7 hour during concert and the line-up was incredible.

It was such a magical moment to be in Wembley stadium with all these people. At this moment I felt so a happy and grateful that I am able to experience all these amazing things.

On the 11^th I made a walk with Amaya. We walked from Highgate to Hampden. This is an area with many lakes, trees and everything looks green. When we arrived in Hampden we had a drink and we bought some chocolates in a shop called: Venchi. We could choose between so many chocolates. Thereafter we decided to meet another Dutch Au Pair named Joeske. So we took the tube but we were so busy with our chocolates that we didn’t have a look if we were in the right tube so after a few minutes, Amaya woke up from chocolate wonderland and concluded that we were in the wrong tube. After 30 minutes we met Joeske and went to ‘The Hems’ (a Dutch pub) and drank my favourite drink: Kopparberg cider. Next we went to an Italian restaurant. It was a lovely and varied day.

I did a pub crawl (Dutch= kroegentocht) on Friday the 16^th.We started at a pub where I don’t know the name of and after this we went to the ZOO bar. The DJ played remixes of the charts so that’s always good. After this we went with approximately 30 people to the nightclub: ‘Ministry of sound’. It was around 11.30pm when we arrived there. 3 of the 4 of us didn’t like the music at all because it was just with a beat. There were several rooms but they all played the same kind of boring music so we decided to go back to the Zoo bar. Unfortunately our Pub crawl wrist bands weren’t valid anymore so our night ended with eating a wrap at the Mac Donalds haha. I had a great night!

The next day I went to the Queen’s Birthday parade/Trooping the colours with Lara. The Queen celebrated her 91th birthday with a parade.

Google said the following about it: It is a chance for the Queen to inspect soldiers from her personal troops, the Household Division. The colourful display of pageantry features 1400 officers and men on parade, 200 horses and 400 musicians from 10 bands. The Queen always attends and takes the salute. After a while the queen appears on the balcony with members of the Royal Family a to watch a fly-past by the Royal Air Force.

After this we planned to buy some last-minute tickets for the musical: ‘Phantom of the opera’ but when we wanted to buy the tickets I saw that the Dutch actress: ‘Celinde Schoenmaker’ that night wouldn’t play so we decided to come back another time. Eventually we went to Regents park and met some other Au Pairs.

On Sunday I went with Marielle and Alexandra to Hyde park and we had a swim in the lake.

Who wants a crisp?

On Tuesday the 20^th it was time for volunteering. 1 reception class had a school trip to ‘Coldfall wood’. I joined the school trip and I helped where I could. The children did some activities to explore the nature. The boys had to do a wee at the ‘’wee tree’’ hahah. It was nice to see the children play in another environment instead of the class room.

On the 24^th it was time for West End life. This was a big event on Trafalgar square. All the West end musicals performed a few songs on that day. I was really looking forward to see Celinde Schoenmaker from the Phantom of the Opera and Willemijn Verkaik from Wicked the musical. They are both Dutch so Marieke and I were very proud Dutchies that day. Afterwards Marieke, Farina, Amelie and I went to the Pizza hut.

The next day was Marielle’s last day in London so the 3 of us decided to do some nice things. First we went to Primrose hill/Regents park and we rented some bikes. This took a lot of effort because we walked 2 times pass the bikes rental and when we eventually found a bike rental there were only 2 left so after a while we found another bike and we made a little bike trip in and around Regents park. At one point we decided to cycle on the streets so in the beginning the whole ‘cycle on the right side’ became accidently ‘let’s cycle on the left side’. Good for us that there was no other traffic on that point.

Then we wanted to eat a big ice-cream but strange enough we couldn’t find a proper ice cream shop so we wanted to take the bus to Covent Garden.

This was not what we meant…

We had a bit of bad luck that day because the bus never came and when we decided to take the tube there were delays so around 5 o’clock we were at Covent Garden and I thought let’s eat dinner first so we went to a Greek restaurant. After that M&A had a big ice-cream and I had a little one. It was so strange to say goodbye to Marielle but it’s good to have social media these days so we can stay in touch.

Some other things I wanted to tell:

Together with Isla I baked a typical Dutch Appel pie: ‘Appeltaart’.
One evening the girls asked me to made up a story, so I started telling a story about 2 sisters named: Hanna and Elsa. They went to their grandma’s house for a sleep over but when they were asleep their bed started to fly up in the sky and that was the start of a big adventure… The girls were so into the story, I’ve never seen them so quite since I came her.
One morning Isla and I walked at school. It was raining, I wasn’t wearing any make-up and I felt really ugly. When we approached the school Isla said: ‘’It looks like we’re walking on a red carpet.’’ I thought whattt? I said: uhuhh because I feel so stunning haha. We had a laugh about it.
I always iron the girls clothes on Fridays. One Friday Erin was playing in the same room where is was ironing. The radio played the song: ‘Can’t hold us’ by Ryan Lewis and Macklemore. Erin started laughing because the singers were rapping. She asked me: ‘’Why are they singing so fast?’’. A second later she said: ‘’Oh maybe they had to go to the toilet while they were recording it.’’ A 4 year olds logic.
Erin regularly askes me: ‘’Ennelain why do you want to be so fancy?’’ I always answer: ‘’Well I don’t want to be fancy, I am fancy 😉 so last week we made up a dance on the song: ‘I’m so fancy.’
When I was volunteering at the reception class I heard something very funny. A few boys were playing outside. They had built something that looked like a house or a car so I asked them if I could go inside their house. Suddenly one boy said: ‘’No it’s not a house it’s a Lamborghini.’’ I was surprised by that answer and when I said something like: ‘’Shall we go on holiday with the Lamborghini.’’ The same boy said: ‘’No we are going to rob a bank’’. I didn’t see that coming from a 5 year old boy.