My Trip To America

I'm going to combine these two days because they kinda flow over into each other because the flights were overnight etc. So today I woke up at 7. I had some croissants for breakfast, which was really nice, and after Mark and I ate them, I went down to pack the last of my stuff and check everything. When we were having breakfast, Stefano walked into the kitchen because he needed to go to work, and before going he wanted to say goodbye to me. Not long after we said goodbye, Mark took me to the Airport. We arrived there on time and saw that my flight was delayed by a bit. Mark helped me carry my bags and check them in at one of the desks, what was really nice of him, because it might have taken me some time because the desks were pretty unclear. Then I had to say goodbye to Mark, because I was about to go through the airport check in. After we said goodbye, he told me to go to the second of the two check in desks. The first one is always stuffed because it is the main one. But there apparently was a second one where not much people go. Mark advised me to go to that one, and I did. Going trough the airport check in wasn't really difficult and it went pretty smooth. Once I was in, I started walking to my gate, meanwhile trying to acquire the airport's free WiFi, which worked. When I arrived at my gate, I still had to wait a little while, because there was a delay from about half an hour. I started to write something for my blog, and play a game on my PSP. I also did some whatsapping with the Netherlands. Then it was time to board the aircraft. When I sat down, the chair next to me stayed empty till the last moment, when a stewardess sat down next to me. In the aircraft its self, we had another 30 minutes delay, which was getting pretty annoying. Then we got into the air, and around 1 PM, the plane arrived at Philadelphia, where I was about to spend another 6 hours of sitting. When I got off the plane, I first started to look for my gate, which appeared to be about 15 minutes walking from the B gates, where i got off (my gate was an A25). I arrived at my gate and decided to boot up my laptop and charge my iPod for a little bit because the battery was almost depleted. Then I felt like having lunch, and I saw a pretty nice restaurant on my way to the A gates. That restaurant was near the B gates, so I had to walk a while until I got there. I had a coke and an hamburger and it all tasted pretty good! After having lunch, I walked back to my gate and sat down. I took all of my chargers out of my bag and started to charge my phone, iPod and laptop. My sister, brother and mother wanted to skype with me, so we tried that for a while. It didn't really workout well because the internet at home isn't the fastest and the airport wifi was having a hard time too providing all those people internet. We didn't skype a long time, because the lag we had was impossible to talk through. I continued writing my blog, and started a conversation with some American people who were going to Ireland. We talked a bit about their trip and about my trip and after some hours they left to their gate. Then suddenly one came back to me, asking if I went to Amsterdam, I told them yes, and she told me that she heard a gate change (at this point my flight was going to departure in one hour).  The gate apparently was changed from A25 to B11, which meant that I had to walk all the way back to the B gates from the A gates, which was about 15 minutes. On my way to the B gates, I bought myself a sandwich and a bottle of water to drink and eat on the plane. I also bought myself a piece of a pizza as some kind of dinner. When I arrived at the gate, I started to eat my pizza and prepare a bit for boarding. It didn't take long before the boarding began, and I was in zone 2 meaning I could board quickly. I sat by a window an after some time, a russian business guy sat next to me (he was in the middle). The last chair kept being empty, and the russian guy told me that as soon as the door closed, he was going to sit at the other chair so that we had the middle chair for our baggage and a little of extra space. While we were in the plane, it appeared to be that we couldn't take off yet because of bad weather and a long queue of planes. We had a 2 hours delay before we entered the airspace. It was really nice to have some extra space. Especially when we had dinner it was really useful, because we could just dump everything on the middle plate because there was no one there. For dinner we had chicken with broccoli and rice. It tasted okay, but not that delicious. After a long time of trying to watch movies and trying to sleep, We landed again in Amsterdam. I was glad I was out of that plane, the flight wasn't really bad, but the flight to America was better. It took some time for the baggage to get on the baggage belt. Then I got my bags and it was time to go out to meet my parents again, who were waiting to pick me up. It was good to be in the Netherlands again, but if I could, I would have stayed in America a little longer. We talked about my trip when we walked to the car and drove home. When I was home, the wait began. This was the day that I was going to get my results. I drove on my scooter a little bit to kill some time and to get used to it again because my dad modified it a bit. I wanted to know how it was driving now. I came back and talked to my friends a bit to kill some more time. Then suddenly the phone rang. My mom picked it up and passed it through to me, the voice on the other side (my mentor) told me I passed!! I was so happy, and that evening I went to school again to pickup my notes and congratulate and see my friends again. It was very fun, and when I came back, we had a little party. After the party, I was really tired and it was time for me to go to sleep after like 30 hours. Hereby I also end this blog about my trip to America. I thank everyone I met there and my parents for making this super awesome trip possible. In special I thank Mark, Ingrid and Stefano Wach for housing me and caring for me. I've had a really awesome time, and am certainly planning on returning someday. Thank you all for everything! This is the last post so for the last time: G'Day!

Pictures of the baseball game, the park and the view from the baseball stadium!

Today I woke up at 7, and instead of making a bread with ham or/and cheese, I had a baguette with hagelslag. It tasted really good, and instead of coffee I had hot chocolate. After being really tired in the car to work, I came to the conclusion that I made the wrong choice with choosing hot chocolate above coffee. When I came to the office, the first thing I did, was look for coffee, which woke me up some more. Then I started to do a little excel again. At one moment I got called to the cafetaria, Barb got the office donuts because of my last day at work. It was really nice from her, and I appreciated it. Then when we were finished eating the donuts, I got back to my desk to continue working on the excel job for as long as it was going to take. Then Barb came to me again, with a little bag. She told me she had a present for me, for all the work I had done for Sylvan. She got me a shirt of the new school that was being built in Kittaning, two chocolate bars, and a bag of M&M's. It was really nice from her and I appreciated it very much! After my presents, I just kept going on with excel until it was about 12, and Mark and I packed our stuff to go home. Not a long time after that we got home, and I started packing most of my stuff for the flight back tomorrow so I didn't have to do everything the next morning or after the baseball game. It took me about one hour to pack the main stuff. I weighted my stuff and I could still pack a couple of pounds before I was at the limit. Then I started packing my second bag, or better said organizing it, because it was quite a mess. After I took care of everything, I decided to shower before we went to the baseball game. After my shower, we departed to the game. It didn't took us a long time to find a parking spot, and because the game wasn't starting, we walked to the arts festival across the river. Stefano and Mark showed me around the park a bit and after we sat by the fountain for a bit (picture of that) we walked to an other bridge to cross and almost directly walk into the baseball stadium. After we entered the stadium, we had to wait a little longer because the tribunes weren't opened yet. Not long later the gates opened and we walked to our seats. We had very good seats that were pretty close to the actual field. Mark and Stefano told me that I had to be alert if a right batter was on at the bat, because a foul ball can fly in our direction with high speed. Stefano was getting beer for Mark and himself, and after they drank half of it, Stefano told us the beer made him hungry. I went with him to a burger place in the stadium. Like Stefano I got the "Pittsburger" which is a sandwich with a burger, french fries and sauerkraut I think. It tasted very good. Then the game began, and the atmosphere was awesome. There were a lot of things in between the game, like the "Kiss Cam", hot dog shots (where they would shoot hot dogs and shirts with air guns into the crowd), a mascot race and a couple of other things, which were pretty awesome. I've made a couple of video's of that, which I will try to post as soon as possible. A little before the game ended, we went to a store to get some souvenirs for me and to the car, because the stadium was pretty full, and if we waited till the last moment, we'd be stuck in traffic for a couple of hours. When we got back home, I talked with Mark and Ingrid for a little about my stay, and then I said goodbye to Ingrid because I wasn’t going to see her anymore. After some extra packing and checking things with Mark, I went to sleep to prepare myself for the next long day. That’s it for Day 19, with as main theme Baseball! G’Day!

I woke up at the usual time to wake up for work, which it about 6:30. For breakfast I made myself a bread with ham. Since I had to drive to work today alone, because Mark had an appointment, I went out to check if there was enough gas in the tank of the Volvo. I found out that it would probably be too less, so I called Mark and he said he was going to fill it up for me in a minute. When Mark went out to get some gas, I ate my bread and made my coffee so that I would be fully prepared to go to work when Mark was coming back. Mark came back and I stepped in the car, making myself ready to go to work. I prepared the navigation just in case something went wrong and like that I only had to switch it back on to get my navigation running. After I did all of that, I drove off to work. The trip was fairly easy because Mark had me drive this road some other times. I arrived at work, and continued working on the excel job Michelle gave me. After a couple hours of doing excel, Ron came to me, asking me if I wanted t help him. Since I'm more interested in helping with the phones than that I am excelling, I agreed with him. He asked me to check a list of phones to make sure that the settings were right and the phone was up and running. he gave me the list, and striped some phones off that didn't need to be done. After Ron explained the procedure to me, I went off to go to work and check all the phones. He also left me a map of Sylvan building 2, where I was in. He asked me to walk around the office, and map all of the internet connections that were new and old. He also gave me a list with the internet connections and in which room they were located. After 1-2 hour(s) I was finished with the phone checking and setting, so I went on my way to map all of the connections. Barb gave me a clipboard to which I could clip the papers I brought with me. After about one hour, I finished my trip through the building and made a digital map from all of the positions of the internet connections in the building. Then it was about 4 PM so I was going to Mark to ask him what he was going to do to get back home. He told me I should just leave because he needed to run some errands at the store. I drove back home and booted up my laptop. A friend asked wanted to talk to me, so I proposed to skype a little bit. That was okay, so at the end we skyped about half an hour i think. Then it was time for dinner. We had steak, mine was well done, with corn and that awesome dessert, of which I have the recipe now! After having had dinner, I helped with cleaning the table, and then I got back to my laptop a little bit to write my blog and such. Not long after that it was time to go to bed. That's all for day 18 already. G'day!

Today was gonna be a really calm day. Not much events and just chilling around the house a bit. I woke up at 11 this morning, which was really nice. When I got out of my bed and waked up into the kitchen, Mark asked me if I wanted to join Stefano and him on their trip to the mall to buy Stefano a new gray suit. I was okay with that. I made myself some coffee, and without breakfast we departed to the mall. After we found ourselves a parking spot, we walked into the store. Stefano looked at a couple of suits. Two of the suits he picked were or to heavy, or didn't fit him well. Finally he got himself a suit that fitted his size and posture, and he was going to try it on. The suit he chose fit him good, it was just the pants that were a little tight, so we got a bit bigger pair of pants, and they fitted okay. We went to the counter and paid the suit. I asked Mark if there was a candy store in the mall, because I wanted to check if there was a typical American candy that I had to try. Mark showed me around, and we found a candy store not a long time later. We entered and Mark guided me to the typical American candies. We bought some, and when we were back home, I tasted them and they were really nice! When I was home, I also skyped with a friend form home, who was babysitting so had the time to talk to me in at night (home time). After the skyping, I went for a little drive. I wanted to know if i still knew the way to the mall. Without any difficulties I found my way, and returned to get a little drive over the roller coaster road (which is my favorite road of the area). Then I went back home, and played on my laptop a little bit, for as far that I can play on it (the thing is outdated and pretty slow). Then it was dinner time, and I recalled that we had people over for dinner. It were the same people who were on the party at the begin of my stay. We had a fun dinner, and talked about  a lot of things. For dinner we had American spareribs, Asian spaghetti and some side dishes. It all tasted very well, and after some talking with the guests, they decided to leave, and I decided to take a shower. After my shower it was already getting pretty late, and since there was work to do again tomorrow, I decided that after writing my blog on my laptop, it was time to go to sleep. That's all for day 17 already, one of the most casual day's of my stay. Just chiling in the house and messing around a bit. No appointments and just having some rest. Nevertheless it was a fun day! G'day!

Niagara Falls photos which also include a picture of Stefano and me, the top side of the Canadian Falls and the Rainbow Bridge

Today I woke up at 9 AM, because Stefano and I decided to leave at around 9:30 AM. I made myself some coffee and a bread with only ham, because I couldn't find cheese. I packed my eastpak bag, because maybe, if it was too late to drive back to the house, we would sleep at Stefano's place, so I might need to take some stuff with me. After I finished my coffee and ate my bread, I loaded my bag in the car, and after Stefano took his stuff in the car too, we left off to Meadville, where we were going to pickup Lisa. When we arrived at Meadville, we had to wait about 15 for Lisa because she got stuck behind a truck and two tractors. Then she arrived and I met her. She stepped in the car and we drove off to Niagara Falls! I was really exited to go here because I heard a lot of great stories about it. We drove trough Buffalo and drove into the city called Niagara Falls. We parked our car at a big garage close to a big shopping mall and the Rainbow Bridge, with who we were going to cross to Canada. When we parked our car, Stefano and me needed to find a restroom before crossing the bridge to Canada. After we found the restroom, we only needed to find the entrance to the pedestrian part of the bridge, which was pretty difficult as we noticed. We walked around for about 10 minutes seeking for the entrance, and then found a sign which stated Pedestrian Entrance, which we apparently missed. It didn't take much effort to get onto the bridge, and the view from the bridge was beautiful Unfortunately, Stefano had to miss this view because of his fear of height. He walked as far as possible to the middle of the bridge looking downward all the time. I'll post some pictures of the view later. After I took a couple of pictures of the Rainbow Bridge and its view on the Niagara Falls, we walked on to wait in line for the Canadian customs. After we waited for some time, it was our turn to walk up to the customs officer. He asked us some questions like: Where are you all from? Are you meeting any friends here? When are you returning to the US? It was pretty easy to pass these compared to the ones I encountered at the airport, who were trying to make it difficult for me. When we got trough customs, we decided to walk all the way up to the Canadian falls along the side. The falls were beautiful to look at. The American falls looked so brutal with all the rocks underneath it, and the water shattering apart on the rocks. But the Canadian falls looked so huge, and the closer you came, the better you were able to see that the falls went into the river more, and that they weren't flat like the American falls, but they went in some side of curve, which gave them a beautiful depth. I took a lot of pictures on the way to it, took some panorama's and Lisa made some pictures of Stefano and me at some point. I'll try to post all of these later on. Stefano planned on finding me a shirt with the Canadian Leaf on it, which actually seemed to be pretty hard to find. We had to walk our way into the city to find the perfect souvenir store and get me a shirt. Stefano got himself a football scarf, which he didn't found anywhere else, even not on the internet. Now we only had to get me a bottle of maple syrup for me back home. On our way back, we decided to walk a little more around the city of Niagara Falls, and after a 10-20 minute walk, we found a street who contained all kind of cinematic things. There was a Madame Tussaud like museum, a lot of fun houses, a burger king with a big fancy Frankenstein statute on top of it, a big ferris wheel and all kind of that stuff. I'll post some pictures about it later. It was very impressive to see. After walking through a park for a little, we found our way back to the Rainbow bridge. When we arrived there, it wasn't difficult to get on it. However it took us two quarters toll to get back on the bridge back to America, what probably was bridge toll. We walked back to the American side, and after waiting a while we got to the customs. He asked us almost the same questions as the Canadian customs officer did, but this one asked us if we had something to declare. Stefano told him he had the maple syrup, the scarf and the shirt and I (just to be sure) told him I had an empty water bottle. After I said the officer started to smile, Stefano did his best not to laugh and Lisa started laughing a bit. Then we continued walking back to the car, and we figured that our dinner would probably be Buffalo Wings, which were chicken wings from buffalo, and apparently they were pretty typical American food. Lisa looked up a good place to eat on her iPhone and navigated us to it. We sat down and ordered drinks, Lisa and Stefano had water and I choose a coke. As a starter we had Margarita sticks, which were basically margarita egg rolls. They tasted very good and after that we had to order our main course. Stefano and Lisa helped me through the menu and helped me decide. Finally I chose for the boneless buffalo wings in hot BBQ sauce. Lisa took the same as me but then in normal sauce, and Stefano ordered 30 Buffalo wings in hot BBQ sauce as I had. He ordered 30 because he hadn't eaten all day yet, and he wanted to save some for Mark for when we came home. The place where we ate was called "Duff's Famous Wings". After we went to the restroom and paid the bill, we went back to the car to continue our trip home. Since Stefano is such a sublime and fast driver, he got us to Meadville in 40 minutes less than the navigation told us, which was pretty impressive. Then we dropped off Lisa at her car and said goodbye to her. After Stefano and Lisa talked for a while, Stefano got back to the car, and we drove back to Pittsburgh. It would normally take us about an hour, but Stefano said we probably were going to make it in about 40 minutes, and we did. On our way back to the house we last minute decided that we wanted some ice cream and we turned off at the local ice cream store to get some. I had Oreo taste and it tasted delicious. Then we kept on driving back to the house, where we almost were at. When we arrived, Mark and Ingrid didn't expect us back. They expected us to stay at Meadville for the night. They also were impressed by Stefano's driving skills. After we told them everything about our trip, we were tired enough to go to sleep. That's everything for day 16, which was a really awesome day! I loved the Niagara Falls and everything around it. Time to sleep now so: G'day!

I woke up at my usual 6:30 this morning again. Made the usual coffee and made the usual bread, but this time only cheese. It all tasted good and after a while I was up and ready to go to work. Now I only had to wait a little bit for Mark, who still needed to have his coffee ready. We decided I was going to drive to work again, which is a benefit for both of us. I like driving a lot in common, so I really don't mind driving to work for about 45 minutes, and Mark likes it to be driven around like I am his chauffeur. So today I drove to work again. When we arrived at work, I started with excel again. After having done some excel sheets Barb called me in for asking me if I wanted to help Mike and Brandi for a bit. It sounded interesting, so I said of course, sounds fun! I went to the lab where Brandi and Mike worked. The first thing they had me to do, was seek out a lab coat and some plastic gloves. Then they let me take compost from box 1, put in in a little kitchen blender, blend it for 60 seconds and then put it into box 2. After a while of doing that, they had another job for me. I had to prepare samples for research about density and humidity etc. I needed to grab a tin bin, weight it on scales, note that value, zero the scales with the bin on it, put the contents of the to be prepared sample bag in the bin, write that value down, place the little paper with the data in the bin and put it down on a little moving table. I had to do that for like 15 times or something, then I had to do the same thing but then on a little bigger scale, with bigger samples and bigger bins. After I finished that part, I went on to blend some more compost, and when all of the compost was done for, Brandi sent me back to my office because I was done in the lab. Not long later it was 12:00, which meant lunch! And I was pretty hungry. I went to Mark to ask him about his lunch ideas and he told me he would like to have a salad at ponderosa. I drove us to ponderosa, where we had the lunch buffet, which was basically an all you can eat lunch. I had some salad, a piece of fried chicken, a piece of pizza and a piece of fried fish. The fried fish tasted like the dutch fishsticks. I had a good and filling lunch. After a while, we went back to the office and I went back to work on my excel sheets. From this point on I was probably working on excel sheets for the rest of the day, so I might aswell just keep on working hard to meet the deadline I set for myself to finish this at the end of the day. And after a couple of houra of hard work, I finally met my deadline just in time to be done at 4 PM. I told Mark I was ready to go and he was going to wrap up his work. After a minute of 5 he showed up at my office and told me he still had to get something for me, so I got up and followed him. He walked to the end of the hallway and grabbed some stuff out of some boxes. I saw him grab a sylvan cap, a sylvan vest and some magazines and a sort of mushroom book bag. I thanked him a lot, and he told me he couldn't let me go home without something from sylvan in my pocket. After that we drove back home. When we arrived at the house, I decided I was going to take a shower before dinner, so I did that. When I was finished there was still some time left for me to fill in. A couple of laptop moments later, we had dinner. We had hamburgers with self cut and baked french fries. It tasted really good, and it was a delicious dinner! Then I decided it was time for me to work on my blog, because that seems to take longer and longer by the day. Suddenly when I was typing, the door opens a bit and ashley (the dog) stands there looking at me. I make a sound to tell her she can come in, which she did. After petting her for a couple of seconds, she left again and I closed the door. Not long after that, I finished my post and went to sleep, because tomorrow was going to be a big day. We were going to see Niagara Falls! I'm really excited to go there! That's all for day 15! G'day!

Photo of the data transferring. Everything from the small pyramid like thing had to be put in the big pyramid like thing. and that for about 70 sheets or something. Which takes pretty much time.

I wake up at the usual 6:30 to go to work. I had some coffee and made a sandwich with ham and cheese, which tasted pretty good. When Mark finished his breakfast, we walked to the car, but this time not Mark's big Chevrolet Aspen, but the little Volvo, because I was going to drive us to work. Since next monday I'll be driving all by myself to work, because Mark has an appointment, and I still need to go to work then. You could see this as some kind of practice. When we were at the office, Barb told me that Michelle had a job for me. It involved Microsoft Excel, so she asked me what my skills with Excel were, and I responded that I pretty much knew how the program worked, which apparently was enough. Michelle came up to me and explained to me what had to be done. She made some kind of pyramids, in which data was stored from the master sheet, and I had to modify the pyramid and transfer all of the data into the new pyramid (I'll post a picture of it). This was a job that only took time, because it was basically copy pasting, which on itself isn't really difficult. I was glad I was allowed to put some music on while doing this. For lunch, Brandi came and asked me what I wanted because she was going to Wendy's and Mark gave her money for Mark and me to spend there. I ordered a small cheeseburger and a medium french fries. After a while, Brandi came back with the hamburgers she ordered, she had a big bag with her. Apparently almost the whole office ordered burgers. When we ate everything, everyone went back to work. I continued on my excel sheets, who were at that time, a little bit less then halfway done. Then ron walked in, he asked if I wanted to help him punch some connections down in Building 3, which I didn't see yet. I came with him to see what building three was and to setup the connections. Building three seemed to be the most non office building of them all, It was mainly a hall which had multiple (I think) growing rooms in it, and the office part was only 2 offices and a lunchroom. All of the rest was hall. We patched down some cables there and then we went off to the tech building, who didn't have a number assigned to it. I got to see the main computer of Sylvan and Snyder (the mother company), which was a room stuffed with server racks and internet ports, it was highly air conditioned, which was needed because the servers produce a lot of heat. I was very impressed by it. Then we went on to setup the last phones which got fairly easy, and then return to building 3 to set them all up. After we got them all running correctly, Ron dropped me off at building 2, where the office was where i had been working the past days. After Mark finished his stuff, we were ready to go home, and I drove us back to the house. When I just got home, I skyped a little with my family back in the netherlands. Well only my dad and mother actually because my sister just went to bed, and my brother was already there for a while. After 30 minutes of skyping, we talked about everything, and after we hung up, I decided to laptop a little. Then Mark took me to Boston Market, which is a store that provides full dinners like fastfood but then not really like mcdonalds fastfood or something. It appeared to be pretty fine quality food which provided Mark, Stefano and me a good dinner. After dinner, I went down to laptop a little bit and write my blog for a while. After I finished that, it was time to go to sleep and prepare for the next day. This day wasn't that filled with special events instead of the last days. It was just another day at the office, but it was a rather fun day. So that's all for today! G'day!

I woke up at my normal time again, 6:30. When I woke up, I got to make my usual coffee and grab a hot dog bun, which I put cheese and ham on. It tasted good, and after I ate everything, I waited for mark to get us to the office. When he had his little breakfast and filled his mug up with coffee, we walked to the car and drove off to the office. After about 40 minutes we arrived at the office, and I was welcomed by Barb and Mark L who were talking. Today I brought my laptop to the office because I knew I had to finish the OCR'ing, which I really wanted to finish today. And I also knew that my own laptop was faster than the pc I've been using, and since the pdf files could be transferred by usb stick, which I also brought with me. If Barb would lend me the software, which she did, I could OCR these pdf files twice as fast with my laptop, and use the pc as extra device maybe if needed! I also still had to finish the Neat contacts scanning into the main pc, so I decided to transfer a bunch of pdf files onto my usb stick, and start ocr'ing the pdf files on my laptop, because it was faster, and scan the Neat contact cards on the pc, mainly because I wasn't able to transfer the library I already made, and if I was, it would have took me a lot of time. The Neat and OCR multitasking went very well, in no time I was done with Neat and only had a bunch of pdf files to OCR. Barb gave me a heap of magazines which I needed to index. It were other magazines than last time, and these magazines were very very very easy to index. I had to copy a bunch of text and replace some pictures or lines with an enter, and if I didn't have to do the OCR in between, I think i might reach the 1 magazine each 1-3 minutes, which is very quickly. It also wasn't a surprise that I was really quickly finished with all of the magazines I had to index. Then Barb came in with some other magazines which were also pretty easy to index, I was done with that job quickly. Another time Barb came in with a pile of magazines, which were basically copy pasting. This index was so good prepared that I didn't actually had to edit anything to it! That was really useful. Then Barb called me, Mark (Wach again) and Barb arranged a tour through the spawn plant (A.K.A. Building 3) of Sylvan, which I was really excited to see, because really I wanted to know what happens to the spawn, how it is created etc, before we use and process it. When I walked up to the spawn plant, I met Dough, who was going to give me the tour through the facility. We started off walking to the area where all the raw materials and ingredients came in, he showed me some ingredients and walked me through the facility until we arrived at the blender room. There were two big V-blenders located there, from who one was running. They also had a big black blender who was similar to the blender we use to produce our bags. They've only been using the new blender for a couple of months, because they didn't manage to get a good product out of it until now. It was very impressive to see such a big V-blender running. Under the V-blender was some kind of attachment, which the blender could be attached to, to drop its contents in to the bagging room underneath, where the bags of spawn would be filled. They had a couple types of spawn that they made. He showed me around the sterilized bagging rooms, which we unfortunately couldn't enter because of sterile reasons. Then he showed me the growing areas and the different stages of growing the mushrooms go through. After having that all explained, he took me to the packing room and a storage room, where all the spawn bags ready to be loaded were stored under a cool temperature. After having a little talk, I walked back to the other side of the street where Building 2, the office where I worked the past weeks, was located. When I wanted to get back to my OCR'ing and indexing, Mark asked me if I was ready to get ourselves lunch, and I was. I just started to get hungry. We decided we felt like having Subway, and went to the subway that we went to the first day I came to work here. We returned to the office with our packed Subway sandwiches and ate them in the cafeteria. Then I returned to indexing magazines and OCR'ing. After a little while I finished the magazines, and then Barb asked me if I wanted to help Brandi, a researcher of the building 2 laboratories, for a while. I said yes to that and was escorted to the lab she was in. She told me I had to weigh about 1 gram of rye pellets, then take the pellets out again and count how many there were in a gram. I had to do that for a couple of bags and three times a bag, to make sure we had trustable values. For some reason I had to multiply the amount of pellets with 10, so for example 39 pellets would make me note the number 390. After I did all the bags that I needed to do, I wanted to focus on the OCR'ing because that was a job that was very close to finishing, and I figured I might make it in time before the day ended to finish it. I used the two computers I had for myself to make the OCR'ing go at three times the normal speed. Therefore it didn't take me a whole long time to finish all the files and finally be done with the OCR'ing that took me kind of a long time to finish. I was really glad that I finished it, it felt really good! By the time I was finished, it was almost 4 PM on which time we usually leave. On the way back we visited Creekside Mushroom Farm, the caves, again because Mark needed to check on a new experiment. I mentioned the beautiful deserted atmosphere that was perfect for movies to him, and, for my surprise, he told me that the intro scene of The Avengers was shot in this cave! That was really awesome to hear! He told me about how they were having all these new cars parked in one of the cells, ready to be blown up, and he even showed me glittering parts in the wall, where the blown up glass didn't go away so it glittered when you shined on it with a flashlight or something. He gave me a little tour around the caves and told me that they had over 100 miles of cave down there. The main road its self was about 1-2 miles into the depth where an underground lake was located, which I didn't see because we didn't feel like going that deep in. It would take a long while to get down there with the golf cart we were driving. He also told me a lot about the caves and the different systems that where in the caves for for example the airflow. After cleaning up all our stuff and getting back into the car, we continued our trip home. Mark also told me on the we to the office that on the ways back we had to go to a store called Sam's Club, which as he explained, was some huge kind of Makro (dutch store chain). When we arrived there, I saw that the shop was huge! The concept was like a Makro, but then like 4 times the size of the Den Bosch Makro, which I thought was pretty big already. In this shop I also decided to buy a new keyboard for my laptop. It's a wireless Logitech keyboard with a touchpad mouse included, which would be really helpful if I wanted to hook up my laptop to a TV (I've had the problem more than once. Once Mark said that I could just put the keyboard in the cart where he put his stuff in, I was really amazed. He insisted on paying for the keyboard in exchange for all the good work I had done in Sylvan. He told me I had earned it. It was really awesome of him to just pay for the keyboard for me, because I knew I was going to use it a lot. I'm also very thankful to him because he bought it for me! After we paid for the goods we were buying, we (obviously) went back to the car, and continued our drive home. When we got home, I unpacked and paired the keyboard to my laptop, which was hooked up to the tv, and the keyboard worked like a charm and was really useful for me! Then I was called for dinner, which tasted pretty good. After that I played around a little bit with my new keyboard and eventually decided I was going to write something for my blog. Then it was time to call it a day and get to sleep. So that's all for day 13, and it sometimes seems to me that my posts keep getting longer and longer..... Well anyway. G'day!

This day I woke up at seven o'clock, because we agreed to have breakfast around 7:30, and I didn't want to be late for it. After we took the elevator down to the lobby, we sat down and the waitress asked us if we wanted coffee. We both said yes. Then we went to the order window, and I ordered some pancakes again and some bacon. I also took some syrup with me, because now I could find the syrup dispenser. I took one small bucket like thing with me, which was more then enough. Yesterday Mark L took two with him for me, and I had one left over and a bit from the other one, so I wasn't planning on doing that again. The pancakes filled me up good, and I was ready for another day visiting mushroom farms. We took off to the office to greet everyone there and to pickup Gary and Armando, who were our company for visiting the mushroom farms. We stepped in Gary's car (not the corvette of course) and drove off to the first portobella farm we were going to visit. It was the same farm that Armando an me visited yesterday, which was pretty funny, because I met the guy who worked there yesterday and knew a bit about who he was. We looked at the mushrooms, and Armando, Gary and Mark L brought their camera's to take pictures of the mushrooms that were growing there, because they needed them to review about how their stain was doing. After a while of looking and listening to Spanish talking, we went back to our car, and drove off to the next portobella mushroom farm. This was a farm who was new for me, and surprisingly, there was no-one around to guide us or help us. Luckily everyone knew what cell the portobella grew in, because of the paperworks that were hanging around on the cell doors. Here too was a lot of looking around and taking pictures going on. Just the Spanish talking was different form the other farm, but that was because there weren't any Spanish people around. And again a couple photos and chats further, we were heading for the Shii-Take farm we were seeing. But since Mark L and I were going to head home after we saw the shii-take farm and therefor needed a car. So we first went back to the office to pick up Mark L's car, and then proceed to go to the shii-take farm. When we arrived at the farm, we had to wait a couple of minutes before the owner arrived. Mark L explained to me what happened in the facility we were standing next to. They were making shii-take blocks, like we do. but then with a different kind of system. They used an autoclave, which is some kind of sterilizer. After a couple of minutes, the owner of the company arrived, called Joe Pepe. He took us to the shii-take growing area. There we met two growers who were working for Joe. Everyone was very interested in the way how we grow shii-take in the Netherlands, the didn't know of the way we do it, and this was the second time I saw how the Americans do it. It was a very interesting mushroom farm, and they also took us to their oyster farm, where they grew different types of oyster in black pasteurized compost bags. I told them that we also grow the oysters on sawdust, like the shii-take, in the Netherlands. After a while of chatting with Joe and the growers, we went back to our cars. It was time for lunch. The day before at the restaurant, Gary and Armando said they were going to take us to a real hamburger place called "five guys". It really looked like a burger place when we walked in. I ordered a little hamburger with fries and a regular coke, since we had free refills, it would be a waste of money to pick ourselves a big coke. I walked up to the coke machine, and they had over 50 drinks stuffed in that one machine! I was so surprised that I could just get my coca cola vanilla out of a machine, and I also saw a lot of different tastes of coke that I never have seen before! Coca Cola Orange, Coca Cola Cherry-Vanilla.. Never heard of them. I decided I would just stick to my Coca Cola Vanilla. Since we all ordered fries, we really had too much for everyone, and we had like half a big takeaway bag filled up with fries! Way too much! After we had our lunch, Mark L and me said goodbye to Armando and Gary, and walked back to the car. We went to drive to holly, to say goodbye, load our plants, and see their dogs. When we arrived, the dogs were already barking inside. It were two small dogs, who I didn't take pictures of. They looked pretty funny and cute. After saying goodbye and loading the plants in the car, we went off our 5 hour drive back to Pittsburgh. After one hour we had to stop, because Mark L had to fuel his car before going any further. Else we wouldn't make it all the way back to Pittsburgh. There didn't happen too much on the trip, I introduced Mark L to dutch house music, and he started to call himself MC Loftus, which was actually pretty funny! We made a couple of stops to use the restroom and get some coffee. We also saw a car window fly of a car that was being transported. All of the sudden we saw a dark object spinning though the air, which flew in the side of the road and shattered apart! It when we drove next to the trailer, we could see that the window of the car had broken off, which was really weird to see. I also did some whatsapping with some of my friends when I was on my way home, but couldn't do that for too long because of the time difference and because of my iPhone's battery. After 5 hours of sitting, we arrived at the house, where we were welcomed by the Wach family. We drank a beer and had dinner not long after that. Since I was getting kind of tired after the dinner, I decided to only take a shower and then go to my bed. It didn't take long for the rest to have the same idea, well at least the going to bed part. So that's already everything for day 12! Apparently time flies when you're having fun! G'day!

Some pictures of the portobello mushrooms, the one who grow on beds, the oyster mushrooms, blue and yellow, who grow out of the black bags, the Shii-Take mushrooms, the one who grow on the blocks, the mushroom beds and structure of them, and of course of Gary's Corvette, which is a really awesome car!

I woke up in the hotel room. My bed was very comfortable, so I almost thought it was a waste to stand up. Still I of course did, because there were mushroom farms to be visited that day. It was time for me to brush my teeth, gel my hair and do all that kind of stuff. I watched some TV until Mark L was all ready and we were ready to go and find our breakfast. We went to the lobby and saw a table standing full of food and some kind of open window to which we could order some food. It was an all you can eat lunch thingy for 10$ each person. I chose to go for the scrambled eggs with some bacon and three pancakes. Mark L got us some orange juice, and the second time he went for orange juice, he brought me some syrup, which I couldn't find. I also had some toast to eat the scrambled eggs on. My breakfast was a little much, but it tasted very well. Then we decided to get ourselves ready to go to the office. I took my laptop and put it in the car, because I felt safer like that instead of having it all day in my hotel room. I also took some valuables which I put in my laptop bag (PSP, iPod etc). My clothes were fine in the hotel room though. Then we stepped in the car and went to drive to the Sylvan Kennett square office. Mark L talked to me about who was going to tour me around the mushroom farms, because he was pretty busy himself. He spoke about a sales representative called Armando. When I was at the Sylvan office, everyone seemed pretty busy. I was told to wait at the conference room. When I sat down at the conference room, I thought it might be a nice idea to already make a little start of my blog post. Since I someone told me the sylvan wifi password, I could also save my post to draft and type it on my Nexus, which has a way bigger and nicer keyboard than the iPhone. Then Mark L walked into the conference room, apparently he didn't leave yet for what he was going to do. He asked me for my last name and we connected on facebook. He also gave me the email of Amelia, which she sent to mark to send to me so if I had any questions, I could email her. That's what Mark L said to me, and after a little while of talking, he went on his way to do his jobs for the day. After a while of typing and waiting, Armando walked in. He was a bit smaller then me and had a little Hispanic accent in his English, which was pretty funny. I could understand him fine though his accent. He took me in his car and we drove off to the first mushroom farm, which was an oyster farm. The oysters they grew were blue and yellow, but they grew them in big black bags, with holes punched in them. the mushrooms grew out of the holes in big bunches (I'll post a picture). After explaining the difference and having a chat with Armando and the grower, we went on to drive to our next mushroom farm, which was a portobello farm. Portobello is a new Sylvan strain, which they were checking on at their growers. Armando checked them, and they all looked pretty good for the new strain. The new strain was a strain of brown mushrooms, which actually did pretty well! After taking some pictures of the growing area and the mushrooms, we went back to our car to go to the next portobello grower. I also mentioned that a lot of the growers were Hispanic, and thereby only spoke Spanish and a little English. At the next portobello farm we did the same thing as at the first portobello farm. We checked on the quality of the mushrooms and I took some pictures. Then we went to an exotic mushroom farm, to which I was pretty curious. I know how we grow exotic mushrooms in the Netherlands, but I didn't yet know how they did it in the USA. When we arrived, the owner wasn't there. Armando told me that the owner, who was called Martin, we would met later to have lunch with. We walked into the growing room, and it was kinda similar to the way we grow them. They put them on wooden shelves, which were very high stacked. That was actually the first difference between the growing. In the Netherlands, you could never build a structure like that because it would be declared unsafe and dangerous. But here, it apparently was possible to do, and it is to be honest very efficient, but pretty dangerous too. Then the second difference is that the blocks arrived without a bag, which I thought was weird. They arrive in plastic boxed, then the personnel takes the blocks out of the boxes, puts them in big drums, and soak the blocks in water to keep them wet. Then they keep them moisture with a sort of sprinkler system. The blocks were very hard and grew, in my opinion, a little smaller mushrooms than I'm used to. After talking to the growers a little, we went back to our car and Armando called Martin to have lunch. Martin told us that he wasn't gonna ride with us to the Mexican place where we were going to have lunch, so we went back to the office for a little while and then continued our drive to the Mexican restaurant. Armando had been telling me about the popular "Fish Taco" which were apparently everywhere! He told me that I had to try it when we were there. When we arrived, Martin wasn't to be seen in miles, so we just went into the restaurant and ordered ourselves a drink. I was very thirsty so my drink was empty soon. By the time it was almost empty, Martin walked in. He was also a Hispanic grower which spoke a little english, but understandable english.And he was not only a grower, he was also the owner of the mushroom farm, so I was pretty exited to meet him. When the waiter came, Armando and I both chose the Fish Taco, I was curious about what it would be. I don't recall correctly what Martin got. When the Fish Taco got served, it looked pretty delicious, and I followed Armando's lead in decorating it and filling it up with lettuce, sour cream, cheese etc. When I took my first bite, I was very surprised about how well it tasted! I surely didn't expect it to taste just like meat, and maybe even better! I enjoyed eating my taco and talking with Martin and Armando. We covered a lot of subjects in our conversations, about mushrooms, and a lot of subjects that weren't about mushrooms. It was very fun to have lunch with them! At the end we talked a little and then decided to ask the bill and go outside again (where it was beautiful weather by the way). Armando and I walked Martin to his pickup, and after he went in is car for a little, he brought out his business card, which he gave to me. I really felt like a little businessman because I don't think I've ever got a business card before from an owner of a mushroom farm which I just had lunch with. Martin told me to call him whenever I wanted and to visit his farm whenever I wanted. He really was a nice guy to go around with! Not long after, Armando gave me his business card. I really felt like I was building a network of contacts when I was in Kennett Square. This lunch was our last stop for the day, and after the lunch we got back to the office, where I was going to wait for Mark L to get back from his meeting. I texted Mark L to ask him where he was, and he told me he would be back at the office in about 30 minutes. In this free time I found the opportunity to write my blog post a little further, so I had to do less to it when I was back at the hotel. After 20 minutes of blog writing and whatsapping, Mark L entered the conference room. He looked somewhat tired and asked me where he could find something to drink. I pointed him to the mini fridge, but since he didn't trust it, he went to double check if he could take something from there, which he could. After he drank his Coca Cola Zero, we went to a local store to buy some gifts (which I'm not gonna tell because I know my family reads this ;)). Then we went back to the hotel, I remembered that Mark (Wach) told me that there was a Walmart nearby, so I asked Mark L to drive me there. Since Walmart is a typically American thing, I decided I at least had to see one. When I entered Walmart, I was surprised by the size of the store. They had everything there, and it was all so cheap! I've never seen such a big all-in-one store with such prices. After looking around a little bit, I decided that I didn't really need anything, so we walked back to the car. Another thing to cross off my list. Mark L told me that we had about one hour of refreshing time between that moment and dinner time. We agreed to meet each other by sms and wait outside our room when we were ready. I decided to take a bath, which took me about 45 minutes, which was perfectly in time. I was ready in time, and not long after that we drove off to a restaurant called Six Paupers. After we waited for the others to arrive at the restaurant, who were Gary and Armando who I met earlier, and Holly, Mark L's Girlfriend. Talking with everyone at the restaurant was really fun, I've heard a lot of stories about everyone and it was very nice to be around them. As dinner I felt like having an hamburger, which tasted pretty good. It was a medium burger topped with all kinds of things. It was a delicious hamburger. Then we had to choose dessert, and when I saw the menu, I was surprised again! They had something called "Peanut butter Chocolate Pie" which I didn't really trust at first sight. Then we decided to order an Italian lemon pie piece and a peanut butter chocolate pie piece with 5 spoons. I tasted both of them of course, and surprisingly, the peanut butter chocolate pie tasted pretty good! After a little while of talking and having fun, we took the bill and all decided to go home. When we walked out together, there was a beautiful Corvette parked outside. I was very astonished when Gary told me it was his! He let me sit in it and of course take some pictures of me in it, who I will definitely post later! It was a very beautiful and big sport car, which I liked a lot. After looking at the Corvette a while, we all decided to go home. At the way back we found a sign saying: "iPod, iPad, iPhone? Try iPray!" which was actually pretty funny and original. Then we arrived at the hotel, got my bags out of the car and separated into our hotel rooms. We agreed on the time we had to be up for breakfast the next morning and went into our hotel rooms. Not long after that I went to sleep because we still had a lot to do the next morning and I was pretty tired from this day already. So that's the first day of the excursion to Kennett Square, The Mushroom Capital of the World (Aka Day 11). G'day!

Some pictures of the Amish People, who are the people who like to ride around in carriages because they don't believe in present machines. There is also a picture of a big steam locomotive we saw and a frog, which was located in the flower shop in Delaware (the frog, not the train).

When I woke up, I didn’t get coffee this time. The best idea was to let everyone know I was awake, and then start to pack my stuff already a little. When I finished that, I went up to see what was happening. I saw that mark and ingrid were working on breakfast, which looked and sounded promising! The breakfast were a lot of different kinds of meat together cooked in a pan with some onions etc. Then an egg was put on top, to give it a finishing touch. We also had a drink which was called Virgin Mimosa. It was 7-up mixed with orange juice. The normal Mimosa is made with champain instead of 7-up, but since we still had to drive, Mark and Ingrid made the Virgin one, without alcohol. The breakfast that Mark and Ingrid had made tasted good, and the drink was also delicious! It’s something to take home with me. When we were about to pack our stuff, I said goodbye to the Wach family, and after Ingrid gave us some of her delicious croissants, we drove off to Kennett Square. The trip was about to be a 5 hour drive, and Mark L told me that he needed some more gas, so after the first hour, we went to stop at some kind of roadside gas station with a little shop and everything. After we fuelled the car, I looked at the pump, and there were some kind of flyer like things in a case who you could take with you. Mark saw me looking at them and told me that it were stickers, and I decided it might be fun to take one or two with me. Then we got back in the car, and continued our trip to Kennett Square. After an hour or two, we wanted to get out of the car for a minute and decided to stop at a small mall. There was a starbucks, some hamburger shop and a general store inside. I decided to get some starbucks, and started to stand in the line. I was going for their regulair coffee, because it was cheap and I didn’t feel like trying such a fancy expensive starbucks coffee. Meanwhile, Mark L went to buy us some water and an high nutrition energy bar. At the first bite they seemed pretty good, but when I took another, my thoughts about it changed. Because I needed to eat something I decided to keep on eating for as far as possible, but I felt that the last three bites, weren’t gonna be good, so I offered it to Mark L, who pointed at the trash can. Then we got back in the car to continue our long roadtrip to Kennett Square. On our trip we went through a couple of tunnels (of which I will post some pictures) but the most remarkable thing we encountered on our trip were the Amish people. The Amish people are religious people who don’t believe in the power of machines and electricity etc. Which also means they don’t use cars, the literally use carriages with horses in front of it! I’ve never in my life seen such people! It’s so weird to see people driving their cars slowly on a main road, just because they are stuck behind a carriage. I’ll definitely post some pictures of that later! It was just so weird to see, it’s just like you got back in time for a couple of centuries, while you are still in the present! I known carriages are still being used for recreation, but I didn’t know that they were still in use for real stuff like shopping or something! Then after I took some pictures of these people from the car, we continued on driving quickly to Kenneth Square. An half hour after that, we arrived at Holly’s Art Summer School. Holly is Mark L’s wife, and we brought some art supplies with us in the car, which ofcourse we needed to drop off there. When we arrived there, I also met Amelia, who is Mark L’s stepdaughter and Holly’s daughter. Holly and Amelia are very kind and nice people, like I think everyone I’ve met so far! After meeting them, Holly told us to go look at Amelia’s old working place, which was a garden and flower store. This to check on the flowers Holly had ordered and that Mark L and I had to bring home. Amelia came with us. It was a pretty fancy store, and they had all kinds of flowers there. After looking around a bit and meeting some new people, we decided it was time to go back to the car and drive to the other side of the street where the restaurant was. We were going to eat Mexican, which (I think) will be the first time for me to eat in a restaurant. We sat down, and the appetizers were ordered for us all. We had chips and dip, of course. As main course I had Chicken Taco's which were recommended to my by Amelia. The taco's tasted really good with everything in it. As a dessert I saw fried ice on the menu, which was pretty odd. Because as far as I know chemistry, if you put ice in oil, it will melt. The family decided that I had to try it, so they ordered it for me. I was very curious. When it arrived, there was a cup made of some kind of cookie, which held the fried ice cream, covered by a layer of whipped cream. I ate the whipped cream of first, so I could see how the fried ice cream looked like. The waitress explained to me that the ice cream is rolled into rice crisps, and then put into the oil. The thin layer of rice crisps keep the ice from melting, and it is only put in for about 30 seconds. This explained a whole lot in my head. It was a very delicious dessert though! When we were ready, we asked for the bill and we left the restaurant not long after paying the bill. Mark L and I didn't directly went to the hotel, because we had to drop Amelia off at her house that was if, I remember well, at the side of a big park/garden called Longwood Gardens. It looked like a pretty fancy park. The place we ate our dinner, called Delaware, really seemed like a garden, flower and park town. There were gardens and flower shops everywhere. The reason this town was full of gardens, was apparently because the people who lived here were rich enough to buy and maintain those big and beautiful gardens. After we brought Amelia home, we went to the hotel. I was surprised by the hotel, it looked pretty fancy, which it was. The room I got, was a big room with a king sized bed, which I really liked (I'll post some pictures later)! After checking in and get everything done, we went to our own rooms and after I had a shower, I decided it was time to go to sleep. The next day would be a busy day full of visiting mushroom farms and shii-take farms. That's it for day 10 everyone! G'day!

My new caps!