Things I Have Noticed

• The proper name for the country is Netherlands. Holland refers to 2 provinces in the Netherlands in the north west. According to a lecturer I had on my orientation, people in the rest of the country get offended when you call their country Holland. Maastricht is in the province of Limburg (and I think its the capital of it too).

Transportation

• Everyone gets around on bikes and mopeds. I can't wait to get my own bike and getting around will be so much easier! (Buying one seems to be a pain the butt though. Everywhere its super expensive to buy a USED bike. Upwards of 50 euros! I had previously heard it was only 20-30 euros...)
  
• Bikers seem to have the right of way. Cars yield to them and pedestrians yield to them (to avoid getting run over). They just go zooming around wherever they want. Pretty crazy.
• The traffic lights are vertical (just like at home), but instead of being on the opposite side of the intersection, it is right in front of the car. The traffic light system is kind of confusing with lights for cars, bikes and pedestrians. I have yet to figure out the pattern (or maybe there is no pattern?!)

Shopping

• Everything shuts down on Sunday. There is nothing open except for the odd touristy place and restaurants. If it is open on Sunday, they have reduced hours. Sometimes on Koopzondag there will be stores open. This usually is the first Sunday of the month. This past weekend, everything was closed, but next weekend, some times should be open.
• Stores do not open until 12PM or sometimes 1PM on Mondays. I made the mistake of heading down to get a SIM card on a Monday around 10:30 to find nothing was open.
• Department stores seem to be a big deal here. Walking around, there are a lot of department stores with everything under the sun available.

Language

• Everyone speaks English (and probably French and German as we're so close to the border), but everything is written in Dutch. Really disorienting. Google translate has become my friend.
  
• The Dutch greet each other casually by saying "Hoi hoi" which sounds to me like "Oie oie." I've heard people use it to say goodbye and as a sound of warning too.
  

Random

• There are no front lawns or back lawns for houses. There is the sidewalk and right there is the front door to the house. As you walk down the street you can see into people's houses. Somepeople use window distortors (kinda like the boxes TV uses to obsure a person's identity) to avoid that, but a lot don't.