Source

Nothing much ever happens in my hometown near Rotterdam. Sure there are a few crazy people around: the paedophile from down the street, the mentally handicapped guy who likes girls a little too much and one or two violent drug addicts. But they keep quiet and if you didn't already know they where there, you'd never know.
How different it was in London, where the crazy people are impossible not to notice. I saw a man try to beat up a map of the Underground because he couldn't find out where he was. One man must've thought he was a tour guide: he kept pointing out invisible buildings to an imaginary crowd. One... one even wanted to kill my dad...

It was our last night in London and my parents and I where looking for an Indian restuarant. As we were walking down the street, a man came walking towards us. He had dark brown skin, dreadlocks, wore saggy pants, overpriced sneakes and an oversized shirt and sweater. You know the type I'm talking about, if not from real life, then from internet and movies.
This man kept walking straight at my dad. My dad simply refuses to step aside in situations like these. Usually the other person steps aside, sometimes shoulders bump and on this occasion, things went very wrong.
My dad and the man didn't just bump into each other's shoulders, it was a serious collision. If it had been me, I would've been flying towards a painful meeting with the sidewalk's concrete. My dad made an indignant noise and already started to walk away when the man started yelling at him. I'm giving you the uncensored version so yes, do expect things to get nasty from now on.
'Hey! Are you fucking blind or something? Didn't you see me or what? You fucking stupid man?'
Now here's one, no, two things you need to know about my dad: he's a black belt in karate and doesn't step down from a confrontation like this one. Never.
My dad turned around, looked the man straight in the eye and said: 'Sure, I'm stupid.'
I can remember thinking he was going to give us a karate demonstration. That nothing could go wrong for my dad. I was so naive.
'Yeah? You fucking stupid?' the man yelled. 'You want me to kill you or something?'
When I heard those words, I froze. I couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't even think anything except for 'it's over, we're done'.
'I'm gonna fucking shoot you in front of your family!' Tha man, only a feet or two away from my dad, reached for something inside his pocket. I didn't want to find out what he was reaching for. Neither did my mom.
'Come on, let it go, let's get out of here,' she practically begged my dad in Dutch. I was afraid he wouldn't listen to her. He never listens to anyone when he's enraged.
'We're going,' he said in the same language while maintaining eye contact with the lunatic that wanted to kill him. Then, suddenly, he walked away, my mom and I right at his heels. I was terrified the man would follow us, but all he did was yell more threats and throw more F-bombs at us.

We never made it to an Indian restuarant. My mom was trembling with fear and I walked around like some sort of zombie. All I wanted was to go back to our hotel room. We ordered pizza and took it back to the hotel. It'd been a long time since I'd been that scared and it'll be a long time before I'll feel completely comfortable in London again.

Stay Awesome!

PS. Sorry for all those swear words...

I don't know about you, but I don't fall in love very often. It's been over a year since I had any genuine feelings for anyone and to be honest, it was starting to worry me. How was it possible that I hadn't felt butterflies in my stomach for such a long time? I was an expert at awkward crushes in high school, where had they all gone?
I started thinking long and hard, ignoring my homework to figure out the mystery of my lost feelings. Yeah, I totally had my priorities straight these last couple of days, but at I found an answer. Maybe I haven't found anyone who makes me smile as soon as I see him, maybe my stomach doesn't do back flips for a guy, but there's something else that makes me feel that way: I'm in love with languages.

Language is a wonderful thing. Most people I know don't see that, they only see it as a tool to get their way in life. I see it differently. Language is not just that, it's so much more.

Language is a mirror. It shows others who you are, but also yourself. Your choice of words tells exactly where you're from, what you've been through, what's important to you. I learned English in California and you'll always hear that in my choice of words. It's not just the American accent that shows who I am when I speak, it's also the choice in written words. They show everything about a person: intelligence, preferences, influences from other languages. Put it all together and the language I speak shows who I am, who I've been and sometimes even who I will be.

Language is a barrier. It can keep people apart, confuse them and even offend them. The beautiful thing about this barrier is that it can be overcome. Anyone who wants to learn a language can do it. I won't say it's always easy. Mandarin taught me that language barriers might never come completely down in some cases, but the same language also taught me that determination and hard work will get you there.

Language is a shield. When I feel like I can't handle a situation anymore, I subconsciously switch to English. It creates some space between me and the problem. It's almost like taking on a new point of view, sometimes it even feels like becoming a whole new person. It protects me against things that want to hurt me, but also protects the people around me against my harsh words. Believe me, compared to my Dutch and German vocabulary, my English vocabulary is pure politeness.


Language is a weapon. Those who aren't strong and tall but quick of mind can hurt anyone just as badly as sticks and stones would have. It's the strongest weapon I have and it can be put to use in millions of awesome ways, sarcasm being my favorite.

Language is art. Ever thought of all the things a few simple words can do? Words on paper can inspire, spark creativity, strike fear into someone's heart, bring someone to the verge of tears. In all my life, I've never found anything that could show my innermost thoughts and feelings so clearly as words on paper or a screen. Words are the only things that can turn my feelings into reality, something understandable to others.

Language is a living thing. It changes, it evolves. You can invent new words whenever you want. Language is a work in progress that's never finished and that everyone can work on. I guess that's why I'm in love with it: there will always be something new for me to discover.

I can giggle about a word for hours and be mesmerized by pronunciation. Learning a new language excites me, understanding a new piece of grammar makes me feel on top of the world. But the most beautiful thing will always be communicating with people in their own language. I love how much people appreciate that (except the French, who just frown at me) and it only makes me fall in love with languages even more.

Stay Awesome!

A few months ago, when I was asked to review the first book in the Kitty Hawk series by Iain Reading, Amazon had one job: send me the first book in the series. You can imagine how surprised I was when I received the fourth book instead of the first.

I had been doubting about my writing skills for quite a while when I thought about quitting it alltogether. I hadn't put pen to paper in weeks and as summer left, so did my creativity. My mind, once full of wonderful stories, was blank and boring, the thoughts coming out of it dull and  My blog was affected by it too: my posts were uninspired, writing them was like a chore.
I was about to do something I'd sworn I'd never do: give up on writing.


I was not exactly in a good place when I started to think about giving up on writing. I came really close to doing it, but then I found motivation to keep doing what I love in a most unexpected place. I found motivation in a college class about German grammar.

I didn't like today's assignment. My teacher had told us about it as if it was a lot of fun. I suppose it was a lot of fun for people who've loved and been loved before. They were all busy, describing their perfect husbands and wives in German. I, however, was still staring at a blank piece of paper.
'Why arfen't you writing?' the girl next to me asked.
I swallowed the lump in my throath and whispered: 'I feel very comfortable writing about this topic. I don't like it...' I looked back at the paper. How did my teacher expect me to write about my dream husband in flawless German, while I'd clearly been labelled 'Forever Alone' and still wasn't sure if it's actually possible for any guy to like someone like me? Beggars can't be choosers, right?
Staring at the snow white paper didn't help much. If anything, it made me feel worse.
'Come on, Envy. Only five minutes left, then you'll all have to read your pieces out loud,' my teacher said.
I didn't want to read anything out loud, least of all my preferences when it comes to guys, but I finally picked my pen up and just wrote whatever came to mind.

One by one my classmates read their pieces. Some had written dating profiles, others a list of things they look for in a partner, one had even written a diary entry.
Much too soon it was my turn. My head turned red with shame long before I'd spoken the first word out loud. My classmates' stares made me nervous. I focused on the small, ridiculously straight letters of my handwriting and read out loud:

"Until today I've never thought about my dream perfect husband, because I think I'll be alone forever. But if I do meet him, I hope he's athletic, so I finally have someone with whom I can talk about sports. If he's not intelligent, there's going to be a problem: I can't stand people who only make stupid remarks. He shouldn't be lazy or egoistic, because I want to know he's there when I need him. Apart from that I hope he's creative and patient, because one needs a lot of patience to get to know me. If I ever meet a man like that, I would barely care about the way he looks.

The silence when I finished reading was deafening. The giggles that erupted when I mentioned intelligence had died down long ago. I didn't look up, but felt everyone's eyes on me. I didn't dare look up, not until I heard a few whispered wows.
Reluctantly I tore my gaze away from the paper as the silence continued. My teacher was looking at me, just like everyone else. As usual her face didn't reveal anything, but her eyes told me everything I needed to know. Half a second later, her voice told me what I'd already seen in her eyes: 'Perfect. Flawless German. And Envy, if that's the way you write, you've got nothing to be ashamed of when you have to read something out loud. Absolutely nothing.'
My head couldn't possibly turn a brighter shade of red. 'Okay thanks' I whispered. I was on the verge of tears on the outside, but glowing with happiness on the inside. Maybe my teacher didn't understand that I was ashamed of what I'd written, not how I'd written it, okay. But that didn't matter to me at that moment. Not at all. She was the first person in a long time to tell me face to face that my writing was good. That, those few small words, made me decide not to put my pen down and keep blogging a little longer.

Stay Awesome!

I promised myself not to freak out and fangirl. I promised to behave like a responsible adult. I promised to look at everything with amused interest. I should've known better...

Yay for bad quality pictures!

Months ago, when my parents decided to go to London, I practically begged them to let me do the Harry Potter Studio Tour. My dad, stubborn as he is, decided that it was absolutely unnecessary to buy tickets in advance. By the time we arrived in London, I was convinced that we wouldn't be able to book a tour anymore. You can imagine how happy I was when I heard we could get a place on the tour just two days later. What I didn't know: I was also just in time for the Dark Arts feature!
Not that I knew about the Dark Arts feature... After arriving and freaking out over the Ford Anglia and the cupboard under the stairs I still thought I was going to have a normal day of awesomeness. It wasn't until after the introduction film that I heard about this extra piece of awesomeness.
"You can actually have your picture taken with a Death Eater,"someone from the staff told the group.
"Now who would want that? Death Eaters are evil" is what I first thought. Turns out, it was exactly what I wanted.

Once the doors to the Great Hall opened, I broke my promise for the second time: I started fangirling and didn't stop. Not even when I was threatened by a Death Eater.

"Yay a Death Eater that's... OH CRAP"

I think she wasn't amused, cause she followed me and tried to scare me. It only resulted in a huge giggling fit from my side. After that, everything became one big blur of amazing props and Butterbeer.

Butterbeer was like nothing I'd ever tasted before. I don't know what was in there, but I went from normal hyperactive to the extreme kind of hyperactivity that's susually caused by Mountain Dew. I'm not sure if it was caused by the Butterbeer though - it could also have been a result of Diagon Alley's creepiness and the Death Eaters stalking the street.

At the end of the day I'd seen so much, done so much and fangirled so much that I was completely exhausted. I tried putting pen to paper and describe the experience. I like to think I'm pretty good at that, but this time I didn't stand a chance. You see, when I was 15 and constantly going to hospitals, trying to figure out why I was shaking like and epileptic while remaining consciousness, Hogwarts was the place I went to so I could forget all my worries. After hearing I had extreme symptoms of hyperventilation, it was my safe place. Being a Potterhead became a huge part of who I am and seeing all the things and places I came to love so much left me speechless. I still can't find the right words to describe my day at the studios. I'll give it my best shot once more: it was simply amazing.

Stay Awesome!