How International Students Can Make Money in the Netherlands

So I've been looking for a job lately, especially since I've seen my bank account plummet after converting it to Euros. One Euro equals about $1.50 Canadian....yikes. Since international students can't legally work here without a work permit (which costs about 400 Euro, no thanks) I've come up with a list of other ways to make money:

1) Paint a friend's apartment. Recently my friend Jeroen in Haarlem introduced me to some other friends he has, who live in Amsterdam. For two days I painted this other guy's apartment, and ended up earning €130. Niiice.

2) Hand out advertising pamphlets for clubs in Amsterdam. I haven't done this, but an American student at InHolland says she does this every weekend. You don't have to say anything, just wander around the city and pass them out. I'm not sure how much she's getting paid for this, but hey, it's something.

3) Register at an uitzendburo (pronounced: OUT-sent bureau). These businesses help anyone find a job, whether you have a work permit or not. The only trouble is, once they find you a job, they ask for a large percentage of your pay.

4) Help foreign students correct their English homework. Hehehe I feel kind of guilty about this one, but I think it's genius. The thing is, I realized that I am one of very few students here who has English as a first language. There are only two other Americans that I've met at InHolland, and just a few students from the UK. The idea is, I charge €2 per page for grammar corrections. Friends get the first assignment for free.

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About the language, I think it's interesting to see how students clump together in social settings (like at the pubs, or apartment parties), based on a shared language. Since there's not many native-English speakers, I've been 'adopted' by the students from France, since my French is passable. It turns out that the Dutch are not so friendly with the French, and we've gotten more than a few dirty looks while speaking French in the supermarkets. I've also been adopted to a lesser degree by the Spanish students :)

But what about Dutch? I've found that if I pay really close attention when my Dutch friends are speaking, I can understand maybe 15-20% of what they're saying. Even more, if I can see it written. We've come to the conclusion that Dutch is a jumbled mess of French, English, and German. So at least the majority of us international students can at least understand SOMETHING.

Once you understand how to pronounce the Dutch words, it surprisingly sounds a lot like English. My biggest learning curve in Dutch has come from buying food. I have 3 examples:

1) So I get home from Albert Heijn (the Dutch equivalent of IGA, or Safeway) with what I thought were two cartons of fruit juice. I mean they had pictures of oranges and lemons on them, so clearly it's juice, right? I open the cartons, and pour a glass...but this is no juice. What?? Looking closer, I read 'Ijs Thee'....pronounced: EYES tay.....could this be...iced tea?

2) I was thinking tea would be nice to bring to class in the mornings. Looking at the supermarket, I find some tea with pictures of apple and cinnamon. That looks nice, I think to myself, so I buy it. The next day in class, I have my tea in-hand but, for some reason I can't keep my eyes open. Why am I so tired?? The answer came as I was staring at the teabag in my thermos. Avondmelange....pronounced: A-font mel-AN-hhhay....hmm, well 'melange' means 'mix' in French....and oh 'avond' means 'evening', I remember this from our survival dutch course (goedenavond = good evening).....could this be like sleepy-time evening tea? The Dutch students in class said yes, that's exactly what it was. So this week I was sedated in class.

3) Latest example. I'm getting ready for a dinner party at the apartments, and once again Albert Heijn to the rescue. I'm grabbing munchies and other food, and hey some beer would be nice to bring as well! I found the cheapest one on the shelves, maybe €3.50 or something like that for a 6-pack. What a deal. So later at the dinner party as I'm enjoying the meal, I decide to drink my beer I brought along. Strange...two and half bottles later and I'm not feeling any effects. Looking closer on the label of the bottle, I read : 0.1%, alcoholvrij....pronounced: alcohol fry....DID I JUST BUY A 6-PACK OF ALCOHOL-FREE BEER??? My friends shared their wine with me.

Market Day in Haarlem

Today was market day in Haarlem, so I went to check it out, to see if I could find a broom for my apartment. The outdoor market had just about everything you could think of to eat, like fresh bread, dutch pastries, fruit, cheese, and meat pies. You can buy flowers, jewelry, kitchen utensils, paintings, shampoo, watches...the list goes on.




Sadly, I did not find my broom. My apartment really needs a good clean...


Here is the outside of the student apartments. If you look to the left, you'll see some familiar flags in the window.


This is inside my room. I'm glad they included mini fridges in all the rooms. For a kitchen, I share with about 6 other people or so in our common room. It has a full kitchen with a TV and sofas. There's been more than a few parties there already.



This week of classes seemed to go by quite fast. I'm finding the structure of teaching here really different than at Malaspina. From my perspective, the teaching method itself seems a bit unorganized, but then the professors expect our group work to be extremely organized. For example, we had to create an 'action plan' in our group, to outline all of our projects and group responsibilities for the first period. Some of our projects include creating a research proposal for a community in the Netherlands, as well as another proposal for a community in South Africa. We'll also be participating in a festival of our choice, and we have to provide some sort of information to people at this festival about community-based tourism. We can be as creative as we like about how we do this.


In our group, I'm the secretary so I'm always in charge of keeping minutes of our meetings. Once I've formatted the minutes, then they are posted on an online program called Blackboard, which is the same idea as Moodle at Malaspina. It's where students submit their work, and also were the professors post any updates or readings.

So another week down, I wonder what next week will bring.

(Happy valentines day, by the way. I'm still recovering from the valentine's pub crawl we had last night, which was organized by the school)

First Week of Classes

This is the entrance to InHolland University in Haarlem. It is actually known as a Hogeschool, which literally means highschool, but it's actually a sort of University with very practical, applied programs.


This is the main reception desk, when you first walk into the school. It reminds me of a giant peach. The school itself is actually pretty big, with about 4 or 5 levels, and lots of different sections. All the sections are given a letter of the alphabet, and then the rooms are numbered. It was pretty confusing the first day, finding where my lectures were.

We've already had our first week of classes. It turns out that I mostly only have lectures on Mondays and Tuesdays...the rest of the week is set aside for group projects. It seems like this program has a large focus on group-work.

The semester here is broken into 2 periods. The first period is to learn the tourism theory, and the second period is for the fieldwork in South Africa. This period, I have four classes with different lecturers. I have: Creative Promotions, Intercultural Communication, Research Design, and Tourism & Development Issues. I think the amount of schoolwork will be about the same as at Malaspina, but it's just structured differently.


This is one of the main streets in Haarlem...there's bikes EVERYWHERE. I'm still working on not getting hit. I think tomorrow I'm going to cave, and buy myself a bike at one of the local dealers. Although now that I think about it, I think everything closes on Sundays...


This cafe is right next to the Grote Markt (pronounced: HHHROE-tay market) which is a large square in the centre of Haarlem. Every Saturday and Monday vendors set up for market, in the square.


This is Sint Bavokerk (saint bavo's church) right next to the main square. It's the largest church in Haarlem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sint-Bavokerk


Yesterday, Jeroen took me to Zandvoort aan Zee (pronounced: ZAND-vort ahn ZAY) which literally means sand fort/castle by the sea. It's a city maybe 5-10 minutes west of Haarlem, which touches the ocean and includes the dunes. The dunes are large rolling hills near the ocean, which is the only bumpy part in the whole country. I think the reason people ride bikes here so much is because there's no such thing as an incline.

Right now, bars and pubs are being constructed on the beaches of Zandvoort. They are built every year directly on the sand, and this is a very popular party spot in the summer for tourists. Jeroen told me that Zandvoort is over-run by Germans in the summer haha.

These are more pictures that other people have taken of Zandvoort: http://photo.shoq.com/tag/zandvoort


This last picture was taken from our shared kitchen balcony last night. I'm not sure which church steeples those are off to the right.

Next week I'll post some pictures of my apartment to show everyone. Just think: Ikea.

Arriving in the Netherlands

(the pictures above are from our latest trip to Amsterdam, yesterday)

Instead of sending out mass emails, this blog will document my exchange program in Holland and South Africa. I’ll be updating it once a week. For those of you who don’t know, I am currently enrolled for one semester at InHolland University in the Netherlands in the Tourism and Recreation Program. My concentration is in Community-Based Tourism.

So one week has passed since I first arrived! I’m still shaking off the jet-lag time difference of 9 hours. I flew into the Amsterdam-Schiphol airport on Sunday, January 27, and luckily I met up with a friend who I knew from working at the resort in Kananaskis last summer. By chance, it turns out that Jeroen (pronounced yer-OOn) happens to live in Haarlem, which is the same city as the InHolland campus. Jeroen drove me to a Hostelling International location in Haarlem, where I got to use my HI discount card. I stayed at the hostel for 4 days this past week, before I could move into student housing.

My first night in the hostel, I ordered a pizza. I thought this was pretty funny...

From Monday to Friday this past week, there were orientation activities planned for all of the international students. So far, I’ve met students from Finland, Sweden, France, America, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Brazil. Although there’s no other Canadians, I don’t mind…it’s kind of fun to be a novelty. The first day of orientation, I met 3 Finnish girls at the same hostel I was staying, and tagged along with them, since they’d taken the bus system once before. Public transit is amazing here, although some parts of the city are very pedestrian-unfriendly. I think soon I will have to invest in a bike, as I got more than a few dirty looks from cyclists this week, because I kept walking in their ‘bike-lanes’.

Orientation included a general introduction and tour of the school, a walking tour of Haarlem, a crash-course in ‘survival Dutch’, an overview of Dutch culture and social life, and a full-day excursion on Friday to Amsterdam. A busy week!

At the top of this post are pictures I snapped on our trip to Amsterdam. We went for the day, and first stopped at the Rijksmuseum (http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/index.jsp) which was very interesting. After that, we went to a reconstructed boat that was moored in the Amsterdam harbour, and the boat was a smaller-scale replica of the ships used in the Dutch East India Trading Co. (this is the same company that's mentioned in Pirates of the Caribbean). Finally, we took a boat tour of the canal.

It was a good trip, and now everyone is getting ready for classes, which start on Monday. I'll keep you posted!