Lisanne de Langen
Study: MSc Health and Society (Specialisation).
Destination: Saint-Martin.
Internship.
Hi everyone,
My name is Lisanne. I am a 22 year old student of the MSc Health and Society. For my internship I will go to Saint-Martin for two months. At this page I'll keep you updated about my experiences. You can also follow me (@lisannewurldexplorers) and other WURldexplorers on Instagram: search for #WURldexplorers!
Here we go!
My name is Lisanne de Langen and together with Wietske Bouwman I will be on adventure to Sint Maarten for two months. The up-coming months we will work on building the foundation of a long term complication study of the mosquito born disease chikungunya at the Collective Preventative Services in Philipsburg. Contacting general practitioners and patients will be our main focus, thereby networking and strengthening the contact with the RIVM in The Netherlands.
The month of breast cancer
October, the month of breast cancer here in Sint Maarten and we, as staff of the public health department, are of course present. What an amazing day!
Gospel event
Hallelujaaaaa! Amen! Praise the Lord! Thank you Lord! Halleluja! And I can continue for a while with this kind of exclamations... I am talking about yesterday evening. After we read an advertisement in the newspaper, we were convinced: we had to go to this Gospel event. Although it wasn’t that cheap, we realized we had to experience such an evening to get the feeling of gospel in Sint Maarten.
Tropical storm!
Just a normal afternoon we thought. We were hanging out at the swimming pool, and suddenly the lady of the house came to us, she had something important to tell she said. A tropical storm was on his way to Sint Maarten, and the next day we would meet him. There was no need to worry, just that we knew that going to work might not be possible the next day. We were not worried and we prepared that evening by putting everything inside.
Football Tournament
An internship of two months, eight weeks unable to play together with my football team in Rotterdam. And even more important, eight weeks without football, that’s what I thought until Wietske found an advertisement in the newspaper: Ladies team looking for new players...
Tourist stuff
Searching for Sint-Maarten online via google.com shows you immediately the famous characteristic pictures of the airplanes. It is already our fifth week and we did not visit that famous spot, how bad?! Today we decided to act like the ultimate tourists and we visited MAHO bay beach.
Sint Maartensday
Although some places in The Netherlands celebrate Sint-Maartensday, it is not a real big event. But here on the island of Sint-Maarten it is!
Do not touch the turtle
Today we went on a snorkelling trip. Together with around twelve other people we visited three beautiful small islands around Sint Maarten by boat. After half an hour across the deep rough see, we first visited a small island.
Promoting Wageningen
Today we did our best to promote Wageningen University. Together we went to Milton Peters College, one of the secondary school in Sint-Maarten.
Saba
This weekend we went off-island. Very weird to say that, but it is a fact: we went to Saba. And of course we went in style, we went by plane. Saba has the shortest landing strip of the world! Only specific pilots are allowed to land on the island. Only 18 people fit in the very small plane, you are sitting right behind the pilots. You can see doing them everything, totally different than you are used to. Landing was absolutely spectacular. Saba is actually just one big mountain and the landing strip is the only flat part of the island, with a length of 400 meters.
The end
Every adventure comes to an end, and so does mine. After eight weeks I was excited to go back home. I have counted the days and the moment was finally there.