Student - June 7, 2007
‘Are you laughing me out?’
Saturday 2 June, the Wageningen Student Choir and Orchestra gave a concert in the university Aula. The theme was internationalisation, with songs about spring and love in nine different languages.

After the concert, the chairman of the WSKOV, Olivier op ten Noort, talks about the orchestra and choir. ‘The number of international members has grown enormously in the last year. They contribute a lot to our choir because they have considerable musical experience. We worked really hard on our pronunciation for this concert. Swedish, Chinese, Polish and Hungarian are not so easy to learn and we laughed a lot during practices.’ The conductor was also the cause of much laughter during rehearsals. ‘He’s doing his best to improve his broken English and has a knack for translating Dutch expressions literally like ‘Are you laughing me out?’ ‘It must klink dramatic’ and ‘We will see where the ship strands’. The funny thing is that the international students now use these expressions.’
Darlene Sijing Liu has been a member of the WSKOV for two years. ‘I play the piano and I also sang in a choir for several years in China. When I came to Wageningen, I looked on the internet and found the WSKOV.’ Sijing is learning Dutch and has a Dutch boyfriend, but not all Chinese integrate so easily in Dutch clubs, she says. ‘I think that the problem with the Chinese and integration is that they have a fear of being a part of a new community. There are a lot of science students here who are generally not that good at social interaction. I see fewer problems with the students doing Communication and Leisure and Tourism.