Term III in Amsterdam: Keukenhof

Friday (5/13)
Ken's humanitarian class was spent setting the stage for our lesson on Monday. Ken gave them an example of religious extremism using the KKK. He showed them clips from a history channel special and would stop every so often to discuss what they saw. After the first clip which showed how the KKK first got started after the Civil War, they discussed that the group was first formed as a social fraternity- not a religious extremist or hate cult. It then showed the evolution of the group to terrorism against blacks to stop them from voting- so it turned into a political organization but still with no religious affiliation. Ken then gave a quick summary of the KKK's history for the past 90 years saying that it wasn't until the 1950s during the start of the Civil Rights Movement that they connected with Christianity to gain more support. He explained that no one would want to join if they went around saying "we hate certain people and want to do horrible, violent things." However, if they say "we love our country, race, and religion," people will want to join. I thought that was a really good way to explain it and easy for the students to understand that extremist groups like the KKK don't actually have any real religious feelings, but simply use the religion as an excuse. He then showed them a clip of a KKK protest where one person gave a speech saying "we hate n***ers," "we hate jews," "we hate Catholics," "we hate fags," etc etc. He then asked the class what word they said most. Being typical 12-13 year olds, they took this opportunity to say bad words without getting in trouble, until one student raised his hand and said "hate." He was exactly right. They used the word hate more than any other, yet they profess to be Christian, but Christianity says nothing about hating people who are different (or not white protestants). I think they really understood the message and will be ready for our lesson. For fun, they then went onto the KKK official website and read different things going on and everyone laughed at the absurdity of it all. It was a really great lesson, and it was nice to see a rough topic made for 7th graders to understand.

Saturday we went to Keukenhof, a park known for their flowers and tulips. Usually, the tulips are not cut until May 20th, however because April was so warm, they had to cut them early. Unfortunately, that means we missed most of the tulips in the park and the fields and fields of rows of colors but it was still gorgeous! We walked around and took tons of pictures of the different flowers, luckily we had a beautiful day! There was a large pond that went through the park and at one part they had these circular platforms that were just under the water that you could walk on and it looked like you were walking in the middle of the water. Later we were walking and were stopped by a mama duck and her 5 ducklings who proceeded to walk over to me and Emily and nip at our toes- it was adorable! Becky's family is here, including her young daughter so once we met up we got some bread and had the baby ducks feeding from our hands. It was great. I wish we had come before all the tulips had been cut, but it was still a really great experience!