Nederlandse middag groot succes! The Dutch evening a big success!

Once we (the three Dutch interns at Fundación CICLO) created the idea to organize a Dutch evening at the foundation, we soon received some help from our Argentine colleagues. In the first place we thought their help was a little bit useless because what do they know about the Netherlands accept wooden shoes, tulips and cheese?

Nevertheless, we were a little bit wrong… Yet before we had any idea what we would say, do or organise, the Argentine girls made a huge working schedule with tasks for every person who cooperated. These girls know how to rock! I was responsible for the food, the shopping and the decoration. All the tasks were highly finished, from the balloons until the table clothes in the colours red, white and blue, and from the raisins till the teabags.

After some pre-shopping at Jumbo (shopping without buying), we had an idea about what the costs were going to be like. We counted on approximately thirty or forty visitors so we needed to sell a lot of entries to cover the costs, or else we Dutch girls had to pay every penny out of our own pocket… (On the other hand, this was a good motivation to sell as much entries as we could!)

Time flew by and the event came closer and closer…! During the taste beforehand my cooking skills were checked (did they doubt about my skills?!). Thank goodness! The typical Dutch delicacies were greatly appreciated by my colleagues and I got the green light to bake three apple pies and 70 pancakes for the Dutch evening!
Next to some forced labour and discussions here and there I also had a lot of fun, learned a lot from the Argentine culture and enriched myself with a new working experience! Together we worked very hard and this finally resulted in a very well attended and successfully Dutch evening (there were about sixty or seventy visitors!). Everything worked according to plan and there was no stress with the exception of the seventy-five origami tulips that we had to fold on time!

At the beginning of the event the visitors kept on attending and I was wondering where all these people came from?! Everybody brought their children, father, mother, aunt, friend or neighbour with them and against all expectations I was completely surprised by the number of visitors. With this amount of people, a perfectly decorated garden and three Dutch interns nothing could go wrong anymore and we could start the event! The presentation went well, the visitors debated actively and the typical Dutch food was swallowed up in a few moments (some colleagues still remind me of the fact that they didn’t eat an apple pie or pancake at all..!).

After saying good bye to the last visitor we could look back at a perfectly organized evening with a lot of fun, good experiences, positive reactions and an increased number of Argentines who can say that Holland is more than cheese, wooden shoes and tulips!
The Dutch evening was not only fun and informative for the visitors but also for me with relation to cooperation, communication and stimulation and I hope this event was an experience for the Argentine girls too!

Dorien Kuijntjes, Dutch intern at Fundacion CICLO, April 2010