Hello everyone! My name is Nathan Oostland. I’m a freshman and currently in the musical Honk! I am also on SGA and our guys tennis team. I enjoy playing ultimate frisbee and making short movies, which is why I’m in Sightline. My brother, Ryan, graduated from Bethany in 2016 and my sister, Jenna, is a seventh grader here. My dad, Jan Oostland, was born in the Netherlands and lived there until college. My mom is from Goshen and graduated from Bethany in 1986.
When I was in third and fourth grade, my family and I lived in Haiti, a country on an island south of the Bahamas. We would go snorkeling in the ocean and one time my dad and I went a little ways from the group. While away from the group one of my flippers fell off and down to where neither my dad or I could get it so we had to abandon it. I had to swim a fairly long distance with only one flipper back to the boat.
This past year, my family took a trip to Paris after visiting my dad’s family
in the Netherlands. In Paris, we went to the Eiffel Tower for maybe two hours. While we were there I had to go to the bathroom but there was a female custodian in there. I apologized then realized she probably didn’t know English, but she responded, “ No, it’s ok” in some patchy English. So I, slightly confused, motioned to the stall and she just nodded, so I go. When I walked out, I passed a line of men waiting to go to the bathroom and realized that it was probably should’ve just waited. But hey, when in Paris!
When I was nine, my brother and I thought it was funny to throw around my sister’s doll while she screamed and chased us. My mom around on tile isn’t the smartest idea we learned. This was at our house in Haiti where all the floors were tile. It had rained all night and the windows weren’t quite water proof, so when I ran next to those windows, I slipped and smashed my face onto the nice, tile floor. I chipped my two front teeth, leaving a big triangle in my mouth.
For one of my birthdays when I was around six or seven we had a piñata that we were hitting with a metal bat. On one of my friends turns, my sister was a little too close and he didn’t know it. When he swung the bat back to get momentum, it hit my sister right in the head. My party ended with Jenna screaming and a lot of confused little boys.
When I was six I wanted a new room really badly, so I moved to our tree house and decided that’s where I would live. I took my sleeping bag with all my stuffed animals rolled up ins ide it and placed them all nicely into the tree house. Although I was very serious about my new room, my mom laughed and just played along while taking a bunch of pictures. Before maybe a half hour past we heard thunder. I quickly decided that the trees weren’t the place for me and moved back into my room.
~Nathan