I won a travel trip to South Africa!!!

10th of April 2006

Important Telephone Call
This was the first time I was commiting myself to a competition where a trip to another country could be won.
For several weeks I participated in Max Havelaars internetcompetition. Every 2 weeks a new question was launched for which the Internet was needed to be thoroughly searched and the endquestion was to write a text about the visit of one of the Max Havelaars plantages in the South of Africa. Afther those weeks of spitting the internet a rough idea of the fair-trade organisation was formed, which is indeed a nice way of Max Havelaar to let people learn more about their organisation.

A week before the important telephone call, a friend was telling me: 'You are going to win the competition!' He just felt that. I knew I had wrote a nice little story, or at least I had some words on a paper after 5 hours of sweathing. And that only for a max. of 200 words!!. But was this enough to win a contest, where at the end still over 450 people were participating?
Apparantly... 'Ring, ring (or actually di, thi, li..li..liiiiiiii); 'Congratualations, you have won the competion'. I could not believe it at first, was a friend of mine making a joke?? Only after checking on the Internet if the telephone number was indeed from the Max Havelaar organisation, I was convinced. Pfff..!! And after that: 'YOUHHHHHOOOEEEEE!!!!!' Quite a nice present for my birthday, which was only two weeks later. And then.. Who is going with me on this travel for two?

10th of May 2006

I finally decided who was going to be my travel partner during Afrika. I didn't wanted to go back to the Netherlands right away after the one week that was organised by Max Havelaar, so I needed to find somebody that was able to stay with me for about a month. A lot of people wanted to come along with me. Ofcourse!!, but not everybody could stay that long in such a short notice. So now I have a friend joining me the first two weeks and after that I will be traveling for another two and a half weeks all by myself. 'Aaaaahhhh...,quite exciting!!' I have been traveling around within Europe, but never outside of european continent. And the 'nice' stories about the safety in South Africa, didn't made me feel any more comfertable. What the heck, I am going for it!!!

Me and my travel mate

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