The school that I'm going to is called the University of Groningen, or rijksuniversiteit groningen, or RUG for short. It's located in the city of Groningen which is also in the province of Groningen. The school is almost 400 years old and the city, and the village that came before it is much older than that. I got corrected by the man at Customs when I landed in the airport because my initial pronunciation of the name was not up to par. It is not as easy to pronounce as it look and, instead, the "g" makes more of a "khk" sound that I'm told should come from your tongue moving at the back of your mouth. I've also been told it both a hard sound and a soft sound, so good luck with that. It takes some practice, but I think I'm starting to get it.
When we finally got into the city, it was dark out so I didn't get to see much from the walk between the train station and my student house but the whole city is very large, about 180,000 people (50,000 of which are students at one of the two universities here) but compact because it's not congested with big roads and traffic. Instead, a lot of the roads are narrow cobblestone with one-way traffic and are used primarily by bicycles. My mentor told me there are more bikes than people in the Netherlands and that definitely seems to be so. Instead of cars and parking lots everywhere, there are tons of bike lots intermingled throughout the city. The few cars that are here and very compact and utilize parallel parking alongside the roads. Our student house has a bike shed right next to it because everybody has a bike.
My student house is called Blekerslaan consists of 51 students from around the world and a student manager who is Dutch. My next blog will go into this in detail because it's a very cool set up that has really been a great experience so far. But for now, here is the view outside of my bedroom window from the daylight, and I think it looks even cooler at night. It snowed last night so here's a picture of the before and after.
At our introduction meeting yesterday in the Academy building, there was a professor from the UK who talked about what it was like being a foreigner in a new place.
Check out the inside of this building where it was held...
The main message he gave was that one of the biggest things you learn about coming to a new place is about yourself and where you came from. He said there are stages of acclimation where, at first, everything the new place does seems great and better than where you came from. Then come the point where you start missing home and there are things about the new place that you hate an drive you crazy. And then he promises that there is finally a settling in part. He said he have to accept the different parts we don't like, because we're only here for a short time and we have to embrace the different parts we do like, because we're only here for a short time.
I think his message really made sense and that he has a point, we're only here for a short period of time, so we must make the most of it that we possibly can.
Much more to come later about getting to know Groningen.
