Welcome!

From August 2008 to December 2008, I studied abroad in Maastricht in the Netherlands.  Here are some of my highlights from my four months away (updating!).

 

Preparations:
Residence Permit - needed if in Europe for longer than 3 months
Housing - living in the Guesthouse (C building)
Application process

 

After arrival:
Arriving in Amsterdam - my trip from home to Amsterdam to Maastricht
ESN - Exchange Student Network
Banks - details on my bank account
Cell Phone - cell phone options in the Netherlands
Orientation - organized by the faculty
Life in Maastricht
Dutch Life

School:
Classes - Block One, End of Block One, Block Two
Library
Faculty of Business and Economics Building Tour

Travels:

Resources – Information on destinations and how to get there
Belgium - Tongeren, Brussels, Antwerp, Brussels at Night, Brugge 
Germany - Aachen, German Fairy Tale Route, Kassel, Düsseldorf
Austria - Vienna 01, Salzburg, Vienna 02, Vienna 03
Czech Republic - Prague 01, Prague 02, Prague 03
Netherlands - Den Hague, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Kinderdijk, Valkenburg
Italy - Pisa & Florence, Rome 01, Rome 02, Rome 03, Rome 04
Ireland - Dublin 01, Dublin 02, Dublin 03
France - Paris 01, Paris 02, Paris 03, Paris 04, Paris 05

Last Post from Europe

So its the morning of December 23.  I'm sitting in the reception area of the hostel I'm staying at in Paris.  It is just before 7am local time and it is dark outside.  Why am I awake?  I have to catch a train in a hour back to Amsterdam before boarding my flight home.

In many ways I'm happy to be going home.  I miss Canada (despite it being covered under feets of snow right now) and home.  Sleeping in my own bed with my own private shower.  I miss the food, the familiarity and of course my family.  But also, in many ways I'm sad to be leaving.  I feel like I've barely seen the world and Europe (despite all my travels).  There is so much to see and do.  I feel like I haven't learned enough about Dutch culture and way of life. 

This last leg of my travels in Paris, I spent alone for 2 days and I met some amazing people in my hostel (more about this later). and I understand now why people like to backpack and travel by themselves. 

An so, in a couple hours I'll be heading home.  Can't wait to see the snow!

So my bags are packed...

... and its my last night in Maastricht.  Tomorrow after checking out I'm headed to Amsterdam to drop off my bags at Schiphol airport and then will be boarding a train headed to Paris for a couple days.

I'm extremely exhausted from packing and running around doing last minute errands around the city and yet I don't want to sleep.  When I wake up tomorrow, its the end.  I have to leave.

I'm dreading tomorrow.  I have no idea how I'm going to carry all my stuff to Amsterdam.  I have three bags, one of which is ridiculously heavy.  Hopefully I'll be able to enlist the help of someone to carry my luggage on and off the train...

I guess I should probably sleep.  I have some last minute packing to do tomorrow morning.

I Fear For My English

I'm starting to notice that my English is starting to go.  I've started picking up weird combination of words and phrases that do not make sense.  I no longer speak or write grammatically correct without thinking twice.  I can't spell properly either.  I keep on making silly mistakes or forgetting how to spell certain words.  When talking, I've gotten use to speaking slowly and enunciating my words. 

I'm going to sound like an idiot when I go back to Canada >.<"

All I Want for Christmas is YOU!

So classes have more or less ended and people are studying and preparing to head home.  This past Wednesday evening, my corridor gathered together (25 of us!! so hard to coordinate) for an evening of world dining and gift exchange.  There are a lot of nationalities in my corridor ranging from German to Columbian to Italian to Australian.  So each of us was responsible for making a dish that was representative of our nationality.  I had no clue what to make - what's typical Canadian food?!  Maple syrup?  I didn't have any.  I decided to make something Chinese...  I've run out of rice and I don't want to buy another bag so close to leaving so that takes fried rice out (which is what I typically make for potlucks).  But I had a huge bag of rice noodles (米粉) left.  I've never fried them before, only had them in soup, so the experimentation began and the results were pretty good.  It tasted okay, but the others loved it.  Apparently Chinese food is a huge hit, half the table didn't get any.  I'm going to make it again tomorrow for dinner (I still have half the package of noodles left anyway).

My noodles!

Here is some of what the others made:

Making Knödel- potato dumpling stuffed with meat (German)

 

Tuna stuffed eggs appetizer (Spanish)

Elaborate salad (Italian) and some wrap appetizers (American)

Cheese fonduee~

Our dinner table!  So much foood~

And of course - dessert!  We had Panettone (Italian cake that is only available during the holidays) with Marscapone.  There was also some Portuguese desserts (I forgot their names) but I was way toooo full to eat it.  Someone was handing out homemade Brazilian chocolates and those were ridiculously good. 

And then came presents time! 

... and with it, the stupidness started...

C4.10!  Best corridor ever!

The Countdown Begins

Today I ran into a friend from York on exchange here that I hadn't seen for a couple weeks and we got to talking.  He asked me when I was leaving and then it struck me: two weeks.

Two weeks today, I'm going to be boarding my flight home from Amsterdam.  In 9 days I'm going to be leaving Maastricht for a couple days in Paris before heading home.  Today I had my final tutorial ever at UM.  Only a group paper and an exam before I'll be finished with my classes.

While I've had my ups and downs, battling homesickness and language barriers, Maastricht and the way of life here has become natural.  It has really become my home for the past four months and I'm sad that I have to leave soon.  As I go about my daily life, it strikes me, this may be the last time I'll be here or the last time I'll be doing this.  Definitely it will be hard to say goodbye to all the people I've met here from around the world. 

I'm scared to go home too.  What use to be normal will probably feel weird to me.  People will be different - I'll be different.  I'll have to adjust all over again.  I've been putting off purchasing a box to send my things home (through mail).  By going and buying that box its like saying to myself, that yes its true I have to leave.  I don't want to think about packing up everything here, putting it into boxes, and heading home.  Its exhausting and makes me feel bittersweet. 

I feel like there is so much I haven't done, so much I haven't seen - even within the city of Maastricht.  And there's barely any time to do all those things.  For awhile I took for granted what I had here and I forgot about experiencing things, instead withdrawing into myself.  Now that time is so short, I'm starting to realize all the things that I could have done. 

Bah - enough of this self pity.  I have a paper to write!

What's in a name?

I've started to notice a trend.  No one can spell my name properly here.  Everyone substitutes the last "a" in my name with an "e".  At first I thought it was just the one person (from the UM Visa office), but then the International Relations Office started doing it and then now my group mates do it too.  I don't understand.  I'll be spelling out my name and somehow they don't hear the last "a" and instead the "e" shows up.  Or even when copying my name from an email (in a reply for example), the last "a" is changed again. 

Maybe its not common to have a name ending in an "a"?  I don't know.  I think I will investigate, but its really starting to get annoying.  I'm use to people mispronouncing my name but seriously, copying it or with me spelling it out and they still can't get it right?  Bah annoying!

**UPDATE**  So I asked one of my Dutch group mates, and apparently the letter "e" in Dutch is pronounced like the letter "a" in English.  So that explains why they can't spell it when I spell it out for them.  What about during the copying?

Dutch Innovativeness

I'm currently writing a paper on the national competitive advantage of the Dutch flower industry.  So far, its been interesting and also a bit boring.  Because I'm in the Netherlands during the fall, there are no flowers.  It has been interesting to read about how the Dutch have innovated so that they can produce flowers year round despite the many difficulties the weather bring. 

While randomly surfing the internet (procrastination >.<" but on topic - sorta), I came across this article, detailing how a restaurant in the town of Zeist is harnessing the energy from a revolving door.  They have figured out how to convert the energy produced from someone passing through the door into electricity.  Each time someone passes through the door, enough energy is produced to make a cup of coffee!

Its a pretty interesting read.  Check it out: Holland Puts a New Spin on Old Technology to Combat Climate Change [via EcoWorldly]

Why Europe is awesome

I took this recording ages ago, but I finally put it up.  I love how cultured everywhere is.  One day I was walking home, and I stumbled upon this.  LOVE!  It was taken in the centrum area of Maastricht, right outside the tourist information building. 

When I first heard them, they were playing Czardas by Monti which really caught my attention cause that was one of my favourite violin pieces.  This is their interpretation of Pachabel's Canon in D:

Sinterklaas!

Today is Sinterklaas in the Netherlands.  There have been decorations around for ages, since the beginning of November more or less.  Sinterklaas is pretty much like Christmas, but takes place on December 5th.  They exchange gifts and have family gatherings.  I asked a Dutch student that is in one of my classes, and he says that his family celebrates both Sinterklaas and Christmas.  He had a family dinner yesterday night and exchanged gifts then too (but I think traditionally people celebrate it on the 5th).  In terms of holidays, everything is still open today, but on Christmas things are closed. 

There are two main figures for Sinterklaas: Sinterklaas (who looks a bit like Santa Claus) and Zwarte Piet (or Black Pete and kind of like the elves that we know).

Block Two Classes

For my second block, I am taking Crisis Management and Global Transportation Management. 

Crisis Management

This class really reminds me of the organizational behaviour class I took last year, but from a more strategic point of view.  There is no textbook – all readings come from articles.  The articles are pretty interesting, but sometimes can get really confusing.  For each class, there are group assignments related to the readings.  Its been pretty annoying trying to complete the assignments together as a group.  The majority of students in this class are exchange students so there are definitely some difficulties in working with English.  My tutor is originally from Columbia and its a bit frustrating working with her.  I feel like she doesn’t really understand what is happening most of the time.  She keeps asking for more in depth discussions of the topic at hand, but often there really isn’t too much detail we can discuss.  So many of the topics are really superficial and doesn’t really have too much substance to it. 

Each student is required to make a presentation on one of the class readings.  We need to come up with a creative way to discuss the literature and present it to the class.  I was pretty worried about this presentation, but after watching a couple people do their presentation, it doesn’t seem too bad.  The final exam is an open book exam and follows the group assignments that we had during the block.

 

Global Transportation Management

While crisis management was primarily made up of exchange students, Global Transportation Management was not.  I think I was the only exchange student in the whole class – definitely the only one in my tutorial group.  At first, I felt a bit awkward about this, but in the end I think it worked towards my advantage.  I was able to see how their classes truly operate and I learned SO much about transportation in Europe.  The tutorial group was split into three smaller groups and each group had to present three topics – two that have assigned readings and a third where we a freedom to conduct our own research.  We were asked to present the materials in the reading and go above and beyond to bring interesting related facts about the topic.  My group discussed ocean shipping, ports and canals and intermodal transportation.  This class didn’t have a final exam, instead having a final paper where we were asked to create a transportation plan for moving printers from Shanghai to Germany using the course materials.