I'm back!

Hi guys!

I'm back from vacation! Thank you for all your sweet comments, it brought a huge smile to my face when I read them last morning. My journey back to the Netherlands was exhausting, so I thought it'd be a better idea to reply after catching up on sleep. And here we are!

I think I'll talk about the things I did on vacation first. There were so many – canoe trip, tubing, archery, highrope, climbing & abseiling, via ferrata (or klettersteigen if that rings any bells) and canyoning. It rained all 24 hours of the first and second day, so 2 activities had to be rescheduled for a later day. After the rain the temperature rose quickly and became a bit too high for my tastes. Hanging from a rock wall 40 meters above ground while the sun is cooking the iron bars you're holding on to makes a person nervous.

But seriously, via ferrata was awesome. I took the red route, the 'harder' one, and it was doable. A bit more strength in my upper arms would've been nice, though! There was a part that scared me, which was when I had to let go with both of my hands to grab a different handle. Imagine hanging on to a slanted wall (slanted towards me) trying to grab hold of the next handle... sure, I was secured to the safety cable, but I still could've fallen! The red route took us 2,5 hours of climbing to the middle point. There, they asked us if we'd like to continue this route or switch to the blue one (easier and shorter). By then I wasn't really tired yet, but it was so freaking hot that I just wanted to get back on the ground as soon as possible, so I chose the blue route. My mom was freaking out the whole time, yelling "I don't want to see you!" (she was afraid of watching us fall) and "Stop telling me about what you're doing!"

The next day I got up with a pretty bad soreness in my legs (they're also covered in bruises, although I prefer the term 'activity scars') ready for the next thing on our schedule – canyoning. If you don't know what that is, you basically travel through a canyon; walking, diving and swimming. The water was freezing and my wetsuit didn't help as much as I would've hoped. The girl that went before me was terrified of jumping so I had to wait a few minutes before each jump, which in turn made me nervous! I looked down from the first rock (about 3-4m) and started to shake. Then I thought, to hell with it. I can swim and they're just a second away from me should anything go wrong! So I jumped, and it wasn't scary at all afterwards. My mom freaked out some more. The jumps kept increasing in height. Highest I went was 7 meters which wasn't all that bad. But the final jump was 9 meters into a waterfall. I did go to the edge to look down, but it looked a bit too extreme for me, so I didn't jump. But it was a great experience nonetheless, and the canyon was beautiful.

All in all we stayed for a week. Our group leaders were very nice and nearly all of them were my age, which was pretty cool. One of them was hilarious. I could explain here, but you should've seen him. Oh man. Another one was very kind, he stayed and helped everyone who was afraid to calm down. I did feel a bit silly, because I'd never dare to take a job like this for a month or two, and these people are my age and do it like it's nothing... but to each his own, I guess.

Now I'm back in my own little country; time to recuperate! I have two weeks of summer break left which I will prooobably not put to good use but enjoy anyway. I hope you're all having a blast and that things are going well for you. Hopefully now I will finally be able to truly catch up to my inbox.

Until next journal!