Gum trauma

Because of bad-hair-days, lost bicycle keys and forgotten books, I tend to get in late at school many times. And well, this has it's consequences. Today I needed to go to school, while everyone had vacation to make up 3 hours because I came in late so often. I thought to be smart, and to take my new addiction -Pretty Little Liars- books with me, so I could read myself through the 3 hours. After 25 minutes of biking through -surprisingly- beautiful weather, I got the message that I was not supposed to sit in detention for 3 hours, no, I was supposed to do jobs in and around the school. Yay.

And of course, Laura gets cursed with the worst job to possibly think of: scraping gum off off the carpet flooring in the music rooms. I got a little scraper and a special spray to remove gum, and there I went. I located myself down on the floor and started spraying the first piece of gum I saw, which wasn't very hard, because the entire floor was covered with it. And then I started scraping. And scraping. And scraping. And it wouldn't come off. I started hitting the gum with my scraper, which didn't work, I scraped even harder and harder. But nothing let loose, so I gave up. I started to scrape other pieces of gum, when I realised some things:

- chewing gum is IMPOSSIBLE to remove
- chewing gum is never properly thrown away in a trash bin, NO, everyone decides to stick it to the    ground, so I can scrape it off again.
- chewing gum smells when it has been sitting on the ground for a couple of months.
- chewing gum sticks into your hair, and then you need to cut it off!

And because I needed to scrape all of this yucky stuff, I also realized that I did not want to see another piece of chewing gum in my entire life. Except for AQUA KISS! I die for that chewing gum, its sooo good! So: bye bubblelicious, bye mentos chewinggum, bye sportlife, bye stimorol, GOODBYE CHEWING GUM!

I am a canoeing star

Hello everyone!
Sorry that my last post was in like.. APRIL?!
But I have been very busy lately, preparing for the big trip to the States :)
But today I've had such big of an adventure that I just NEEDED to post this on my blog! I'll tell you what happened..

Ehm.. how do I use this peddle?
Some friends of mine told me that they had a surprise for me, and that the only thing I needed to bring with me were old clothes, dry clothes and a towel. I had no idea what they were up to, but when I saw 9 canoes standing at our meeting point, I knew exactly what they were up to. "Look Laura, how much fun this is going to be!", "I looveee canoeing!" and I was like: "What is canoeing?".

It was freezing cold, and I was wearing ugly, old clothing (like they told me to), and I needed to get into the canoe. My friends were like: "You know how to do this!" , "This canoe is so extremely safe, you can NEVER EVER fall out of it." I decided to go into the canoe, and luckely, I didn't fall out. But then I got this big heavy peddle in my hand. "Uhm, what do I do with this?" I asked them, as they looked at me as if I was joking. They started laughing. "Have you NEVER canoed before?!"

And that's the worst part: I've never touched a canoe in my life before.

Wet

The muscles in my arms are not so strong, so making myself move forward in the canoe was quite a job for me. I was pushing and grunting, while the others were canoeing smoothly through the canal. Everytime my peddle hit the water, I got splashed by water in some weird way. So after a 100 meters I was soaking wet and freezing cold. This couldn't be any more fun!

To make it all worse: we canoed by a canal which had houses layed by it. It was a nice day, so people were sitting outside, watching me looking so amazingly stupid in this canoe.

WHERE IS LAURA?

There was this miniscule viaduct-ish thing which we had to pass under. But of course, for me, it needed to go wrong. In stead of going underneath, my canoe bumped into the wall of the viaduct and, here it comes, my canoe flipped around. Before I knew it, my body was launched into the water, my hands released the peddle & I lost my slippers. One of my friends only saw a canoe laying upside down in the water, but no sign of me (I was still bubbling around in the most disgusting canal you can imagine yourself: - the house of coca cola cans, creatures not discovered yet & plastic bags that people don't bother to recycle -. ) She started shouting: "LAURA FELL INTO THE WATER!" soon after that I swam my way up, and could finally breathe. I started yelling and screaming.

 People came out of their houses, looking shocked and surprised! My cheeks become redder than the reddest tomatoe, and I took grip of the canoe. An old man signed me to swim over with the canoe to his back garden (which was layed at the canal). I did so, but because he didn't have any arm muscles either, it got hard to get the canoe on the shore. I was as wet as a fishy, and filthy as a pig, so his wife also came outside with clothing for me (XXL red & yellow horrific looking bodywarmer & a white shirt covered with stains that I believe were from "stroopwafels" - a dutch cookie).

 I was very thankful that this friendly couple was kind enough to help me. So, I was standing there at the canal, live entertainment for the entire neighbourhood, and to make it all worse, the old lady made me change my clothes right out there, where everyone could see it! Then, the three of us tried to get the canoe out of the water. I haven't pulled something so heavy in my life before. 300 liters of water was hidden inside of the canoe, and we could definitely feel that. The old lady gave up immediately, and went back in to knit a pair of socks for her grandson, but the man helpt me with the canoe. When it eventually worked, and I got back into the canoe again, I got laughed at so hard by my friends, and this humiliation will haunt me for many many years..

In my life, everything needs to go wrong. With writing this blog, I am going to try to deal with all those obstacles that I need to pass.