Hey, I’m Alexander. Son of a Venezuelan mother and a Dutch father, whilst I myself am from Aruba and consider myself Aruban. At home we mostly spoke Spanish, until shortly after I was born when we gradually switched to Dutch. I have 2 siblings, the eldest my sister, we are separated by no less than 10 years. Then came my brother, between us there is a gap of more than 7 years.

Back to me, I’m madly in love with the ocean. My passions are therefore mainly water based; the top 3 contestants being surfing, sailing and freediving. It won’t come as a surprise then that for the past 3 to 4 years I’ve had a part time job as a sail instructor, at the same school I started my training when I was 8. Although most of my passions are water based I have another – physics – which I now long to follow through to university.

Besides that, I find myself in the VCS office writing this introduction of myself. I plan to volunteer at VCS for 2 months. This project will mark the start of my gap year, this is the year off of studies I am taking between high school and my plans to study physics at a university. At the time I was taking my final exams there was a presentation at my high school about possibilities to volunteer abroad, I was immediately sold! I started looking into it and very soon found out about VCS. Macedonia sounded very interesting, so I looked further into it and found the work a good opportunity to learn and develop new skills. The rest is history!

Alexander van der Velden