maandag 23 februari 2009
Yes, well. Let me explain. Remember when I talked about a friend who went to South Africa? The girl who brought liqourice with her to poison the local people? When she got back to Holland she brought something back with her. Her Sock Monkey, Tommie! She got him from another volunteer in South Africa. After seeing him, and hearing the stories about Tommie I got totally infected by the Sock Monkey virus.
(For the uninformed persons reading this blog, Sock Monkeys are self made monkeys from socks) All Sock Monkeys are custom made. They receive a name from their new owner. The Names can vary from Tommie, Jimmy, Jackie, Donnatello, Sjonnie to Abu. It depends on their owner what kind of name their going to get. And also if it's a girl or a boy.
Tommie visiting Lissabon in Portugal.
As a group of friends most of us got infected by the Sock Monkey virus after seeing Tommie. We were all very enthusiastic. As a surprise she made for most of us a Sock Monkey as a birthday present. You're probably thinking right now what's so interesting about them? There are some unofficial rules. One of the rules is that you always have to bring him with you when you're on a holiday. So when a friend has finally returned from a holiday and you finally see the pictures, you can see the monkeys visiting places all over the world. It's a great way to see where everyone has been and what they did during their visit.
At the moment the monkeys have been in South Africa, Greece, Austria, France, Portugal and of course Holland!
During my TRM course my Sock Monkey will definitely get to see a lot more of the world during my TRM course at InHolland. And with the photo's I will try to keep every one updated about the journeys(his name is Kibum by the way). I will certainly try to bring Kibum with me during the Berlin trip of TRM and I hope I made you all guys a little bit enthusiastic about these little globetrotters!
Some more pictures of the World Travelers:
donderdag 19 februari 2009
The film is about a boy, Jamal. He is a contestant in “Who wants to be a Millionaire?”. Although he’s from the slums he goes remarkably far, until he reaches the 10 million rupee. After the 10 million rupee question the alarm sounds, the episode ends. Jamal is taken away and interrogated. No one believes that someone from the slums knows all those answers. When he doesn’t say anything useful during the torturing the officers start talking to him. He tells the story of his life and the reason why he knew all the questions that came up. His story is kind of sad and I won’t spoil the details.
There were however some interesting cameos from tourists. Jamal is a boy from the slums, and uses every opportunity to make some money. So if you come across some tourists, of course you have to use them! In the movie witness the huge gap between the tourists and the boys from the street. For the tourists it’s annoying that their car is plundered, that their shoes are stolen etc. but still…they’re insured for cases like that. For the boys it represents a lot of money. Two different worlds, and there is a huge gap between them. This movie once again inspired me to think about sustainable tourism. To help cultures, instead of accidentally destroying them by mass tourism.
At the moment there are already organizations offering holidays in a 'fair way'. One of these companies is Baobab. With this post I wanted to give some attention to this issue in the Tourism Industry and inspire people to book through a 'fair' tour operator.
zondag 15 februari 2009
It’s always interesting to see the differences between cultures. Like for example eating habits. Here in Holland people eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, of which only the dinner is a hot meal. I wasn’t really conscious of this fact until I ate lunch with a classmate of mine who comes from Brazil. He happily uses every chance he gets to eat a warm lunch. So I asked him what he normally eats for lunch when he's in Brazil. His normal lunch would consist of rice with black beans, almost everyday. I reacted in a way that said something like “everyday?!”. Then he said: “Well no, it can differ per city in Brazil, in Sao Paolo they eat brown beans instead of black beans.” It's funny to see when something is for you a 'normal' eating habit, while others keep being surprised about your 'normal' eating habit.
Lately I was also chatting with a Dutch friend of mine who’s studying in Spain at the moment. It was around 20:15 when he said he had to go because he had to cook dinner. I replied that I already ate two hours ago. I thought that the Spaniards only ate late in the evening in the summer because of the heat. Well that was clearly not the case, and I think that my friend adapted himself quite well. The funny thing is that the Dutch eating habits are also changing. People used to eat hot meals as a second meal, and bread in the evening. This is currently changed but especially elderly Dutch are still eating a hot meal as lunch.
(<-- My cousin with scorpion)When I was in China I did eat some different stuff which I don't consider normal! Like Slush puppie ice with beans.. brown beans! Shock! I'm still surprised how they came up with that combo. Brown beans weren't the only things put in, they put in everything with the word bean in it. I had to admit that when I didn't thought about the beans in the ice cream that it was actually quite tasteful.
(<-- The famous icecream, it did have a nice strawberry topping)
