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!