The Global AdventurersHi, we are Eva, Reeve, Nick & Anne and we are called: the ‘Global Adventurers’. We have chosen this group name, because this year we are going to do some research about the world. In other words we are adventurers.
Our school is called Beatrix College. We are together in the same class, 2TTA2. That’s bilingual athenaeum. We get all the subjects in English, except for technology, French, German and Dutch of course. |
! If you want to watch our videos, click on the pictures !
Haaay, I´m going to introduce myself. My name is Anne and at this moment I´m 13 years old. I live together with my parents and sister in Tilburg (that´s in the South of the Netherlands). My sister is one and a half years younger than me.
Let´s talk about my pets. We have a dog called Sem, which we adopted two years ago. I live next to my grandparents. We have pastures which we share. On one of the pastures are our goats and we take care of them together with my grandparents. We have a tree nursery, which we also share. My father sells the ordinary trees and my grandparents the Christmas trees. My hobby is playing hockey, I do this three times a week. I played in a Dutch film called Bannebroek´s Got Talent. I´m a huge fan of Ariana Grande. I have been to her concert together with my friend. This was all I wanted to tell. I hope you know me better now. My name is Eva. I’m 12 years old and live in the Netherlands. I live together with my mother, father, my older sister and with my little sister. I have two cats, one hamster and my sister has two rats. I’m on the Beatrix College, I’m doing bilingual education. That means that I get all of my subjects in English except for Dutch, French and German.
My sport is horseback riding. I have been doing that for five years now. I love to bake pie, cake and cookies! I also like to cook dinner for my family. Sometimes I also cook for my grandparents. What I really like to do is chilling with my friends. We mostly go outside, chill together and take pictures. I have a really big family and I love to be around them. I don’t see them very often, because they live far away… |
Hello, i'm going to introduce myself. My name is Nick and I’m 13 years old. I live together with my father, mother, sister and dog in the Netherlands (in the South of the Netherlands, Tilburg). My sister is called Alyssa. At the moment she is 16 years old. My father is called Harald, he is a manger of a plumber company, and my mother called Nathalie works at a Insurance company.
I have two hobbies, but the biggest one is football. I play at the club: SC ’t Zand in the C1. That is the best level for my age group. I also like to play footbal with my neighbour. My second hobby is gaming. When it is raining or too cold to play footbal I play games. I like to game with or against my friends. The two games I prefer the most are FIFA, Black Ops, and call of duty ghost. This was some information about myself. I live with my parents, Maarten and Simone, and older sister Megen. She is fourteen years old. We also have two dogs (Diego and Pippa) and three rabbits (Jaap, Fien and Guusje) living with us.
I was born in Tilburg and still live there in the neighbourhood called 'De Reeshof'. I moved once but stayed in the same area. I also go to school in ‘De Reeshof’. The name of my school is ‘Beatrix College’. It is a large school with more than 1000 children. The school is only five minutes from my house. At the Beatrix I go to TTA, that is a bilingual athenaeum. I’m in my second year (of six) in high school. So in school I speak English all day and most of my lessons are also given in English. I go to school five days a week and spend quite a lot of time at home doing homework. My time of leisure I like to spend with my friends. We like to game together. I play a lot of games on my computer, but also have several consoles like Playstation and Wii. |
Action plan
Reading research
What we expect to find
We think we already know a lot about celebrations and festivals in the Netherlands, because we join in with the celebrations ourselves naturally. But maybe we will know more about the history of some celebrations or fun facts which we didn’t know before after summarising these articles. So that’s what you are going to read. We are looking forward to do this research, because the celebrations we celebrate are the most exciting events of the year where we are together with our family and we think that’s an important part of our life. Maybe we will find how we celebrated Sinterklaas in the past or what fasting has in common with carnaval. When it is the time of year that we celebrate Sinterklaas, we give each other presents or suprises made by ourselves. We do this, because we don't believe anymore in Sinterklaas. During Carnaval we go dressed and celebrate it with friends.
5 articles about what is already written about the topic:
Kings day (27th of April)
This celebration is to celebrate our head of state and is set up in 1949. We celebrate this wearing orange (an important colour of our country), with various festivities and markets where people sell their own stuff. Most people of the kingdom don’t have to work this day and traditionally brings the monarch a ceremonial visit to one or more places in our country. The Kings day of 2013 was special, because that was the last time it was celebrated on the 30th of April. Princes Beatrix had resigned, so that meant that her son, King Willem-Alexander became the head of state. Nowadays we celebrated it on the 27th of April and it’s called Kings day instead of Queens day (literally translated), because the head of state has changed.
Since 2013 there is each year on the Friday before Kings day a sport day at the most primary schools in the Netherlands. In the beginning of the day most schools have a breakfast together. The king gives a start signal to begin with the sport day, which the pupils can watch live in their class. A children’s music band called “Kinderen voor Kinderen” make every year a song for this day and this song is used for the warming up.
The Flying Dutch (30th of May)
The Flying Dutch is an dance event where famous DJ’s come together on the 30th of May. It is located in three different places: Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Eindhoven. The DJ’s fly form one city to another between 12:00 o’clock in the afternoon and 11:00 o’clock in the evening. There is place for 100.000 visitors, one ticket is 44,95 euro. The Flying Dutch is a typical Dutch event, because it is only held in the Netherlands. It is a really famous festival! Every year a lot of people come and most of the time all tickets are sold out.
Carnaval
Carnaval is a catholic festival. It was originally meant to be one big party before people went fasting. They would eat and drink a lot and wear masks. Nowadays most people celebrate carnaval but don’t fast afterwards. The celebration is also much larger with wearing full costumes instead of just masks and having parades of decorated wagons called “carnavalswagens”.
Another tradition of carnaval that has been there since the first carnaval namely the “tonpraoter”. A person would go into a barrel and tells jokes and funny stories to people who pass by him or her. The biggest carnaval celebrations are held in the Dutch province of North-Brabant.
Sinterklaas
Sinterklaas is a festival that the whole country celebrates. The festival is based on the story of a saint named Nicholas. He gave candy shoes and food to poor people across the country. It started as a very religious festival but nowadays it is mostly celebrated by giving each other presents. But for kids the Netherlands sets up a play. Every year Sinterklaas will come to the Netherlands from Spain together with his lackeys the zwarte Pieten (black Petes). They will have an entire ceremony where the steamboat of Sinterklaas enters the harbour of a town. The following days Sinterklaas and zwarte Piet put candy inside shoes and at the last night of the celebration leave presents in a bag outside of the house.
4 & 5 May
The Netherlands commemorate every year on the 4th of May all the people of the Kingdom of the Netherlands who have died in the Second World War. There is a remembrance ceremony in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam and at the Dam Square in Amsterdam, which can be seen live on tv. At this ceremony, there are usually members of the cabinet, the royal family, military leaders and other important people. The main thing of the day is when the country is quiet for 2 minutes at 8 o'clock in the evening.
On the 5th of May, we celebrate the liberation from the German occupation between 1940 and 1945. It used to be celebrated every year but since 2000 we do this only once every 5 years.
Conclusion
The information we have found on the internet is similar to the things we had expected before we summarised the articles. As we already mentioned we all celebrate the celebrations we talked about, so we already knew what to expect. This made it easy to summarise. There was lots of information on the internet about Dutch celebrations and festivals we didn’t even know. After finalizing the reading research, we know that most celebrations in the Netherlands are based on religion. But there are also celebrations which are not religious, like Kings day and Labour day for instance. The fact that we have a commemoration, because of the Second World War shows that we not have forgotten the victims. Now we did this research we know that there are a lot of festivals for young people to celebrate life with music played by DJs. But also that Carnaval is meant to be a celebration before fasting.
SOURCES:
[1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koningsdag_(Nederland)
[2] http://theflyingdutch.com/
[3] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnaval
[4] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas
[5] http://www.denhaag.nl/en/residents/to/Remembrance-Day-Liberation-Day-4-and-5-May.htm
We think we already know a lot about celebrations and festivals in the Netherlands, because we join in with the celebrations ourselves naturally. But maybe we will know more about the history of some celebrations or fun facts which we didn’t know before after summarising these articles. So that’s what you are going to read. We are looking forward to do this research, because the celebrations we celebrate are the most exciting events of the year where we are together with our family and we think that’s an important part of our life. Maybe we will find how we celebrated Sinterklaas in the past or what fasting has in common with carnaval. When it is the time of year that we celebrate Sinterklaas, we give each other presents or suprises made by ourselves. We do this, because we don't believe anymore in Sinterklaas. During Carnaval we go dressed and celebrate it with friends.
5 articles about what is already written about the topic:
Kings day (27th of April)
This celebration is to celebrate our head of state and is set up in 1949. We celebrate this wearing orange (an important colour of our country), with various festivities and markets where people sell their own stuff. Most people of the kingdom don’t have to work this day and traditionally brings the monarch a ceremonial visit to one or more places in our country. The Kings day of 2013 was special, because that was the last time it was celebrated on the 30th of April. Princes Beatrix had resigned, so that meant that her son, King Willem-Alexander became the head of state. Nowadays we celebrated it on the 27th of April and it’s called Kings day instead of Queens day (literally translated), because the head of state has changed.
Since 2013 there is each year on the Friday before Kings day a sport day at the most primary schools in the Netherlands. In the beginning of the day most schools have a breakfast together. The king gives a start signal to begin with the sport day, which the pupils can watch live in their class. A children’s music band called “Kinderen voor Kinderen” make every year a song for this day and this song is used for the warming up.
The Flying Dutch (30th of May)
The Flying Dutch is an dance event where famous DJ’s come together on the 30th of May. It is located in three different places: Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Eindhoven. The DJ’s fly form one city to another between 12:00 o’clock in the afternoon and 11:00 o’clock in the evening. There is place for 100.000 visitors, one ticket is 44,95 euro. The Flying Dutch is a typical Dutch event, because it is only held in the Netherlands. It is a really famous festival! Every year a lot of people come and most of the time all tickets are sold out.
Carnaval
Carnaval is a catholic festival. It was originally meant to be one big party before people went fasting. They would eat and drink a lot and wear masks. Nowadays most people celebrate carnaval but don’t fast afterwards. The celebration is also much larger with wearing full costumes instead of just masks and having parades of decorated wagons called “carnavalswagens”.
Another tradition of carnaval that has been there since the first carnaval namely the “tonpraoter”. A person would go into a barrel and tells jokes and funny stories to people who pass by him or her. The biggest carnaval celebrations are held in the Dutch province of North-Brabant.
Sinterklaas
Sinterklaas is a festival that the whole country celebrates. The festival is based on the story of a saint named Nicholas. He gave candy shoes and food to poor people across the country. It started as a very religious festival but nowadays it is mostly celebrated by giving each other presents. But for kids the Netherlands sets up a play. Every year Sinterklaas will come to the Netherlands from Spain together with his lackeys the zwarte Pieten (black Petes). They will have an entire ceremony where the steamboat of Sinterklaas enters the harbour of a town. The following days Sinterklaas and zwarte Piet put candy inside shoes and at the last night of the celebration leave presents in a bag outside of the house.
4 & 5 May
The Netherlands commemorate every year on the 4th of May all the people of the Kingdom of the Netherlands who have died in the Second World War. There is a remembrance ceremony in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam and at the Dam Square in Amsterdam, which can be seen live on tv. At this ceremony, there are usually members of the cabinet, the royal family, military leaders and other important people. The main thing of the day is when the country is quiet for 2 minutes at 8 o'clock in the evening.
On the 5th of May, we celebrate the liberation from the German occupation between 1940 and 1945. It used to be celebrated every year but since 2000 we do this only once every 5 years.
Conclusion
The information we have found on the internet is similar to the things we had expected before we summarised the articles. As we already mentioned we all celebrate the celebrations we talked about, so we already knew what to expect. This made it easy to summarise. There was lots of information on the internet about Dutch celebrations and festivals we didn’t even know. After finalizing the reading research, we know that most celebrations in the Netherlands are based on religion. But there are also celebrations which are not religious, like Kings day and Labour day for instance. The fact that we have a commemoration, because of the Second World War shows that we not have forgotten the victims. Now we did this research we know that there are a lot of festivals for young people to celebrate life with music played by DJs. But also that Carnaval is meant to be a celebration before fasting.
SOURCES:
[1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koningsdag_(Nederland)
[2] http://theflyingdutch.com/
[3] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnaval
[4] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas
[5] http://www.denhaag.nl/en/residents/to/Remembrance-Day-Liberation-Day-4-and-5-May.htm
Survey results (main research)
We made a survey of 10 questions about our topic and published it on Facebook and sent them to all the people we could contact with. You can see the results by yourself down below with a small discription. In total we got 61 reactions.
1. Are you a man or a woman?
As you can see, most of the people who filled in our survey are woman. But you can also notice that we got 61 reactions on our survey. 2. How old are you? Most of the people who filled in our survey are younger than 15 years. So that means that a lot of friends of us have filled it in. 3. What kind of celebrations do you celebrate during the year?
Most people who took part of the survey like to celebrate everything! Maybe the others are often busy and don't have the time to have fun during celebrations. 4. With who do you celebrate things during the year?
Almost all people celebrate things together with their friends and family, which means they like to be together. So nobody celebrates only with friends, which you can see in the graph. 5. Do you do something special when you celebrate things?
Most people do everything to make it fabulous and the best days of the year! 6. What kind of food do prepare during Christmas?
Most of the people prepare three dishes to eat, so that means that they spend much time eating together. As you can see nobody orders food. 7. How do you decorate your house?
Most people decorate the house a bit and make sure it looks cozy. They don't want to be over the top, but on the other hand they also don't want to do nothing. 8. Do you want to join an Indian festival?
As you can see not many people are sure that they want to join an Indian festival. They want first to get some information about it and maybe then they will decide if they would join or not. 9. Have you ever been at an Indian festival?
About 77% of the people never have been at an Indian festival, but 2% want to go. It's quite logical that not many people have been there, because it's far away from here. 10. How do you think an Indian festival would be decorated/celebrated?
This question was an open question, so there is no real answer. Most of the time they said an Indian festival would look colourfull, with a lot of music, special clothes and delicious food. On the right, there are some examples. |
Interviews (main research)
We went to the city centre and interviewed four people of different age groups (the ones that are written). After that we interviewed Anne's sister Eva and filmed it.
Interview with Eva (video)
➳ Click here to watch it! (We put a black block in front of her head, because she didn't want to show her face). Interview with Marc
Q1) How old are you? Answer: I'm 43 years old. Q2) What kind of celebrations do you celebrate during the year? Answer: I celebrate everything! I love to do that. Q3) With who do you celebrate these celebrations? Answer: With my family and some of my friends. Q4) Do you do something special when you celebrate these celebrations? Answer: I decorate the house, go out for dinner and give presents. Q5) What kind of food do you prepare during Christmas? Answer: Mostly I go out for dinner. Except for Christmas. Then my sister cooks dinner for my family. Q6) How do you decorate your house? Answer: I decorate the whole house in every style. I also put on music every day. Q7) Do you want to join an Indian festival? Answer: Yes, I think so. Q8) Have you ever been at an Indian festival? Answer: No, I haven't. It would be nice though. Q9) How do you think an Indian festival would look like? Answer: I think it would look colourful, lots of food, traditional clothes. Maybe some people who are dancing. Q10) How do schools take part in festivals in your town? Answer: I actually have no idea. I have no children, so I don't know. I did heard that they have a Christmas dinner, but that's all. Interview with Dion
Q1) How old are you? Answer: I'm 49 years old. Q2) What kind of celebrations do you celebrate during the year? Answer: I celebrate almost everything like birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Sinterklaas, New Year's Eve & day. Q3) With who do you celebrate these celebrations? Answer: With my family and friends. Q4) Do you do something special when you celebrate these celebrations? Answer: Between Sinterklaas and Christmas I sell Christmas trees. Q5) What kind of food do you prepare during Christmas? Answer: I don't cook, I enjoy the wonderful food prepared by my wife. Q6) How do you decorate your house? Answer: With a Christmas tree from my own nursery. Q7) Do you want to join an Indian festival? Answer: No, I don't think so. Q8) Have you ever been at an Indian festival? Answer: No, I haven't. Q9) How do you think an Indian festival would look like? Answer: With beautiful clothes. Q10) How do schools take part in festivals in your town? Answer: I know that at the primary school the pupils celebrate Sinterklaas with making crafts for each other. |
Interview with Sophie
Q1) How old are you? Answer: I'm 23 years old. Q2) What kind of celebrations do you celebrate during the year? Answer: I celebrate Christmas, Sinterklaas, New Year's Eve and birthdays. Q3) With who do you celebrate these celebrations? Answer: With my family and friends of course. Q4) Do you do something special when you celebrate these celebrations? Answer: I give presents, decorate the house, that kind of things. Q5) What kind of food do you prepare during Christmas? Answer: I mostly prepare some dishes and have dinner with my family. Q6) How do you decorate your house? Answer: I don't decorate my house a lot. Just some basic things to it look nice and cozy. Q7) Do you want to join an Indian festival? Answer: Yes, that would be really beautiful I think. Q8) Have you ever been at an Indian festival? Answer: No, I haven't. Q9) How do you think an Indian festival would look like? Answer: It would look really colourful and traditional. Q10) How do schools take part in festivals in your town? Answer: They have a Christmas dinner and tell each other stories etc. Interview with Patricia
Q1) How old are you? Answer: I'm 48 years old. Q2) What kind of celebrations do you celebrate during the year? Answer: I celebrate Easter, King's day, birthdays, Vhristmas, Sinterklaas, New Year's Eve & day and sometimes Carnaval. Q3) With who do you celebrate these celebrations? Answer: With my family and friends. Q4) Do you do something special when you celebrate these celebrations? Answer: I cook special dishes for family and friends. Q5) What kind of food do you prepare during Christmas? Answer: Most of the time I prepare a 4/5 dishes menu. Q6) How do you decorate your house? Answer: A couple of weeks before Christmas, I decorate my living room with a Christmas tree, beautiful flowers and some accessories. Q7) Do you want to join an Indian festival? Answer: No, I don't think so. It doesn't attract me. Q8) Have you ever been at an Indian festival? Answer: No, I haven't. Q9) How do you think an Indian festival would look like? Answer: Very colourful. Q10) How do schools take part in festivals in your town? Answer: I know that at the primary school the pupils celebrate Chistmas with a Christmas dinner prepared by their parents and during Easter they have breakfast together. |
Conclusion
The project EUMIND was enjoyable, informative and a lot of work as well. We learned not only about our topic “celebrations and festival”, but also about making a webpage, making and editing videos, doing an interview etc. This was a huge project, but now we reached the end of the project we are quite proud of the work we have done. First of all, we had to introduce ourselves by making a video. It’s funny to see them back, because everyone changed a lot in these five months. After that we made an action plan to make clear who was going to do what. And then the “reading research”, everyone was involved in this part, because each of us summarized one article and then we added it all together. In our opinion the survey was the most excited part of the project. First we had to inform our friends and family about the survey and then we had to wait for the reactions. Luckily, we had a total number of 61 reactions, so we could make graphs to show the results clearly. We spent plenty of time in the interviews, but we helped each other so that made it a bit easier. We wrote this conclusion and a comparison to summarise everything we have done as well as answering the questions and comparing our results with the results of the Indian people. And not to forget…skyping with India was also a special part of the project. While we were talking with them we could really look in their eyes and learned some general thing about our topic and that of others. Sometimes we had problems with the roles, but we got everything finished in time.
The information we have found on the internet about celebrations and the results of the survey and interviews are similar to the things we had expected to find before we started. Celebrations in the Netherlands are not that special like in India. Of course we enjoy every celebration and they are the best days of the year, but in India the celebrations are much more extensive. This is what we expected before we started with the main research. Now we are finished we found out that there are some differences between the way eldery people and people of our age celebrate things. Eldery people prefer to celebrate things with their family and to keep it little. In contrast to younger people of our age, they like to celebrate it really big together with their family and friends.
Our group, the Global Adventurers interviewed 5 people of differtent age groups for this project. In the beginning of this project we got the main question; “Do the celebrations in our families/community shows respect and tolerance for various cultures and religions?” which is related to our topic. Now we did the interviews we proved that the answer is "yes". Almost all the celebrations we celebrate in the Netherlands are based on religion except for Kings day and Labour day. During these celebrations people have to forget the differences between other people. These days just exist to have fun together and not to think about race, gender and religion.
The information we have found on the internet about celebrations and the results of the survey and interviews are similar to the things we had expected to find before we started. Celebrations in the Netherlands are not that special like in India. Of course we enjoy every celebration and they are the best days of the year, but in India the celebrations are much more extensive. This is what we expected before we started with the main research. Now we are finished we found out that there are some differences between the way eldery people and people of our age celebrate things. Eldery people prefer to celebrate things with their family and to keep it little. In contrast to younger people of our age, they like to celebrate it really big together with their family and friends.
Our group, the Global Adventurers interviewed 5 people of differtent age groups for this project. In the beginning of this project we got the main question; “Do the celebrations in our families/community shows respect and tolerance for various cultures and religions?” which is related to our topic. Now we did the interviews we proved that the answer is "yes". Almost all the celebrations we celebrate in the Netherlands are based on religion except for Kings day and Labour day. During these celebrations people have to forget the differences between other people. These days just exist to have fun together and not to think about race, gender and religion.
Comparison
We compared our research with the Indian school; Pawar Public school, because in our opinion their webpage is the most attractive. We mentioned things that are different as well as some similarities. When we were looking at their webpage you could really see that they spent a lot of time in this project. When we compare our investigations with the Indian ones, you will notice that they used a colourfull lay-out like how they celebrate their festivals. However, everything what we have written, the Indians have shown in a film.
In India and in our country celebrating festivals provides the unity and brotherhood among people of all religions. But in India they celebrate all festivals with a lot of enthusiasm, in the Netherlands not everyone celebrates each festival extensively. The reason might be that because we have a lot of foreign inhabitants with different religions, who does not celebrate the same festivals as we do. And because a lot of Dutch people are not so religious as the people in India.
Our conclusion is that in both countries the celebrations and festivals are very important, but in India it’s all much bigger and much more related with the beautiful Indian culture.
In India and in our country celebrating festivals provides the unity and brotherhood among people of all religions. But in India they celebrate all festivals with a lot of enthusiasm, in the Netherlands not everyone celebrates each festival extensively. The reason might be that because we have a lot of foreign inhabitants with different religions, who does not celebrate the same festivals as we do. And because a lot of Dutch people are not so religious as the people in India.
Our conclusion is that in both countries the celebrations and festivals are very important, but in India it’s all much bigger and much more related with the beautiful Indian culture.