The 30th of May is the national day for Holland and Marja has been talking about it for as long as we could all remember! Just like the other strange traditions, this made us laugh...Marja explained that all the people in Holland will decorate their houses in orange (the national colour) on the night on the 29th. They then all wake up really early on the 30th and go to one of than many national car boot sales. Throughout the day people eat orange food, dress in orange and wear orange face paint. They then ALL go out clubbing until early the next day (young AND old people) and dance to cheesy Dutch songs such as "Kedang Kedang".
Today we decided to celebrate the day with Marja. However, she had dancing until late and during the day we found out that there had been an assassination attempt on the Dutch Queen and people had died. So, Marja was really upset and didn't want to celebrate.
Amelia and I decided that she couldn't miss out on something that she'd been talking about since we met her. We went to the party shop near Exeter college and bought orange streamers, plates, cups, cutlery and an orange feather duster (we figures Marja would appreciate it..). Wr the proceeded to the big Sainsbury's where we bought only orange food; Jaffa cakes, Fanta, Red Leicestershire cheese, icing mixture, orange sweets, houmous, orange crisps, oranges...
Back at college we took the key to Marja's door from the lodge and broke in to her room to decorate in orange. We covered the bed in orange sheets and HUGE orange balloons and set up all the orange food (tahini on the houmous to make it orange and decorated the cupcakes with icing and orange sweets). We then got Alice and Tom to help and hide before Marja came back from dancing. As she came into the room Tom turned on the "Kedang Kedang" song on her laptop before she turned on the light ...as soon as the lights went on we all jumped out and shouted "Happy Queen's Day!" She was SOOO surprised!
