One thing that Holland and England have in common is the traffic queues. This I found out on my way to the Trade Union Centre, where my workplace for this week takes place. My name is Daniel Wenstedt, I’m 16 years old, and I live in Holland, nearby Eindhoven.

In Holland I visit something comparable to a grammar school here in England. On our school we have to learn Latin and Greece, and when you go to the fourth year you choose between either a so called ‘M-profile’ or a ‘N-profile’. If you have an M-profile it means that you have classes like economy, history, geography and philosophy, while N-profile means you follow classes like Biography, Chemistry and Natural Sciences.

In the first three years you also have Latin classes, and in the second year you begin with Greek classes. Then when you go to the fourth year you choose between either Greek or Latin or both, and the trip you make in the fifth year depends on that, you go to either Rome or Athena, and I choose Latin so I’ve been to Rome for a week.

I’m in my fifth year now, that’s probably equal to the eleventh grade in England.

In the fifth year we’re obligated to go on an exchange, you get to choose between lands from all across Europe like Germany, France and Sweden, but I immediately knew I wanted to go to England. The concept of the exchange is that we’re over there for one week and that they’re over here for one week, so this week I’m staying at an English student’s house and sometime in April that student will come over to Holland for a week.

I’m thinking about studying something like Business Administration or Economics after I graduate from school next year, so I mentioned that in my profile, and Mr. Bunting from the Derby College arranged a workplace in the Trade Union Centre for me. I didn’t really know the role of people’s tasks in a Trade Union Centre, but now I do and it seems interesting.

Daniel Wenstedt