Astrid’s Journal

Hi all,

Wow, it’s been a very long time since I last wrote an entry for this diary. Over the last month, mainly at school some things have happened. For instance, we went to Amsterdam as a school trip for geography and economics. We visited the Dutch central bank and IJburg, which is a new part of the city.

On October 9th and October 10th our school had its 18th lustre, so we had lots of activities. The theme was colourfulness, so we were asked to dress in bright colours. Well, I’ve worn only black for the past two years and didn’t want to wear anything else, so I said: “Black absorbs all colours, so they’re all hidden inside the black.” We also watched lots of theatre stuff about multicultural themes - also a form of colourfulness.

Tomorrow my finals week will start, but I haven’t done much for it yet. History and general sciences are my first tests - for history I’ve only learnt the thing I didn’t know at all and for general sciences I haven’t leart at all yet. Tuesday’ll be French, which ‘already have learnt for quite good, cause that’s a difficult subject.

I’m at the moment collecting info on synaesthesia. That’s yet another weird part of mine, but actually I love my syn. How boring would reading be if there were no colours attached to the letters? This is known as projected chromalexia (the word looks good, and so does “synaesthesia”).

Today daylight saving time ended or started - at least winter time started. I think that’s cool, cause everytime it seems to be an hour later than it actually is, so “we have one more hour to learn” my sister said. Or: “One more hour to relax.”

Astri

I wish there were laws stating public places
should be accessible to disabled people in the Netherlands (where I live)!
Here there are only a few policies encouraging schools, employers etc. to
take people with disabilities, and recently a law was made saying
universities should adapt the study stuff to students with disabilities, and
elementary schools may not refuse to take disabled students on the basis of
their disability anymore. Public places such as restaurants don’t need to be
acccessible and most therefore aren’t either. The ADA (Americans with
Disabilities Act) was established in 1990 and IDEA (Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act) even in 1976 (1977? 1975? I’m not sure), and
here we only have a few laws and some organisations that fight for
disability rights, but places that don’t want to or don’t think it’s
necessary to adapt to the disabled, simply aren’t.