Thursday, May 31, 2012

June!?!?

How the heck did it get to be June already?  It seem like both last week and five years ago that I showed up to this city like a chicken with my head cut off and now it's June!?!?  When I was skyping with my friend from home last night, she told me that I seem very settled and at home here. And it's true.  In no time at all, I fell right into a routine and made myself a nice life here.  And now it's June. 

I had my last class today.  I technically have classes next week, but since I'll be in Rome with a different class, I won't be there.  I have my last two exams on the 12th and 13th of June, and that's it for school.  Oh, that and the 25 page paper I need to turn in and that presentation I have to do in Rome, but that's beside  the point.  How can I already be done with classes?  I've been planning for these classes, and especially this Roman Renaissance class, since October, and now they're almost over.  I have just fell into a rhythm of going to classes here that you'd think I've been doing it for years. 

As I'm entering into my last couple of weeks I keep thinking about everything that I do and how it might be the last time I do it.  It's the last time I'll have class in A Weg 30, or the Heymanszaal in the Academy Building, or the Harmonie Building.  I probably won't be spending a lot more time in the libraries, or the study areas.  It's so weird.

The law students have their finals this week, so people have already begun to leave.  It appears that it is starting to be the beginning of the end.  June 25th used to seem so far off, and now it's in a few weeks.  I went for a walk with a friend the other night and we started talking about our first week here.  We talked about how lost and confused we were when we first showed up, when we first met all of our friends, how we failed miserably our first time grocery shopping, how we bought the crappiest bikes in the world from strangers we found online, how we made a huge list of all of the places we wanted to go and then went crazy making it our mission to check them all off. 

I'm not ready to do a final reflection yet, but I've done enough of one to realize that I'm really happy with what I've done and how I've grown this semester.  But before sitting down and looking into all of that, I need to spend the next few weeks continuing to live in the moment and enjoying this experience for all that it's worth.  I'm leaving tomorrow for Rome, a trip I've been daydreaming about since October when I signed up for the class with the promise of an excursion.  It came down to the choice to stay for the last week of classes or to go to Rome.  I was really hesitant to make this decision, but then it occurred to me: I really couldn't not go to Rome.  If coming here and being here has taught me anything it's that I should take advantage of as many opportunities that come my way as possible.  So, instead of continuing this monologue, I'm going to pack my bags and head out to witness first hand the city I've  only been able to read about up to this point. 

Languages

I've been thinking a lot about languages lately.  Everywhere I've gone, I've tried to learn some key words in that language to help navigate around and to make an effort to show an interest in the culture that I'm visiting.  Everyday here I'm surrounded by languages I don't know and, for the most part, don't understand, and it just makes me think how much more I wish I knew.  I know what I know, and I know what I don't know.  But there's so many languages out there that I don't even know I don't know.

On our trip to Switzerland, I went with two people from Spain, one from Italy and one from Brazil.  Within the group there were people who knew English, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, and German.  For the entirety of the trip, we were trying to teach each other new words and phrases in our native languages.  It seemed like we were constantly switching back and forth between languages and we all learned something new.  Obviously though, our interactions were about 95% in English. 

The funny thing was, my Italian friend told me at one point that she understood me better when I was speaking in Spanish than when I was speaking in English.  I wasn't sure if this was a compliment of my Spanish or an insult of my English.  But it does kind of make sense: my Spanish is a lot more basic than my English, thus easier to understand.

Last night, that same friend from Italy was teaching me a bunch of new words and phrases in Italian to use when I go to Rome tomorrow on a class trip.  I was surprised how similar a lot of the words sound to Spanish, but it's still its own unique language. I really hope to learn more of it.

The reason that I'm telling you all of this is because, this semester has really made me wish that I wasn't a native English speaker.  I know that sounds stupid and I should feel lucky that I naturally speak one of the most dominant languages in the world, but I really wish I would have had to work to learn it.  That way I'd be forced to be fluent in at least two languages.  Of course, my friends from other countries have said that they want to speak English to their kids when they're growing up so their kids don't have as hard of a time learning English as they did.  I understand that, but I think that having English as a native language is almost an excuse for not bothering to learn other languages of the world. 

We decided that we're going to have a child exchange program when we grow up.  We're going to send our kids to each others' houses during the summers to learn new languages.  They did make me promise that I wouldn't feed their kids too much peanut butter in the US and they promised to take it easy on the Nutella so my kids don't get spoiled.  Really though, I think we all agreed the best way to learn a new is to be immersed in it.  What you learn in a classroom, typically from non-native speakers of that language, cannot hold a candle to the real experience.

The thing about English, though, is that it brought us all together.  To study in the Netherlands, we all had to know English.  To communicate with each other, we all had to know English.  And I think it's really special that we all have something like that that bonds us together.  It doesn't have to be English, that fact is merely a product of history and society, but it's nice that there is some language we can do it in.  Having a mutual language allows countries to preserve their culture, heritage and national languages, but still allows people from all nationalities to bridge gaps.  It would be virtually impossible to be able to speak in the natural language of everybody that we meet here, but we have found common ground because we have the link of a language, in this case English.  There's no way we could get to know each other, learn from each other, and form everlasting friendships without this imperative link.

Having this link of language also catalyzes the expansion of our knowledge base into other languages.  While I'm helping other learn to say the phrase they want to say and helping them words their essays in ways that make more sense, they're teaching me bits of their languages so that I can expand my vocabulary too.  I mentioned a month or so ago about the phenomenon of "minglish."  That's still true, my English has warped a little.  But I would trade that any day for all of the new things that I've learned along the way.  I'd say it's a fair compensation.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Switzerland


About a month ago, a group of friends and I who live in Blekerslaan decided that we all wanted to take a trip together.  Without any immediate ideas for destinations, we decided on a two-fold approach to decide on a location.  Since three of the people I was going with were from Europe, this already narrowed down our choices.  Perhaps even more significantly, we weren’t too keen on spending a ton of money to get somewhere.  Our strategy, therefore, was to find a destination that (a) none of us had been to and (b) somewhere that Ryanair went to for a relatively cheap price.  Come to find out, this place was Geneva, Switzerland.  Not knowing a ton about Switzerland, our mutual anticipations included mountains, clocks, chocolate, and Swiss army knives.  

Not until the day before arriving in Geneva did we find out that it was a special weekend for the city.  Come to find out, Geneva was having a “Cave Ouvertes” that weekend where the local wineries in areas surrounding the city open up their doors to the public.  This provided us with a unique opportunity to take advantage of to get out into the countryside and see a new side of the local culture.  To get there, we had to take a train to a station about a half an hour away and where there were free shuttle buses taking visitors between wineries.  This taste of culture was a lot of fun to share with my friends and we all enjoyed touring the various wineries.  This was definitely something my mom would love, so I figured I had to check it out or she’d never forgive me.



One of the things we heard about Geneva, and that we really noticed when we got there was how international the city was.  Everywhere we turned, we heard people speaking different languages.  It wasn’t just on the tour, because I understand that there are tourists around, but the city itself seemed to have permanent residents from all over the world.  A lot of the people we talked to who said they lived in the city, weren’t originally from Switzerland.

Still not venturing into the city, we decided to hop on the train the next day and to check out some of the other towns around the magnificent Lake Geneva.  While the city of Geneva straddles the border between Switzerland and France, the gargantuan Lake Geneva expands vastly into the middle of Switzerland and its mountains.  We first took the train to Montreux  along the lake. Other than it being inhabited, or perhaps because it was inhabited, with these creatures....

...it was really beautiful.  We walked alongside the lake for about 45 minutes until we saw my new home.  






The Château of Chillon is a castle that nestles right up to the waters of Lake Geneva.  With plenty of bedrooms and excellent ventilation, it is to be my next real estate purchase.  It looks like it might be a bit drafty in the winter, but the view of the snow-capped mountains is to die for and it's conducive to the most amazing parties and festivities.  Plus, if you think about it, it's a rather sound investment, because any visitors I have to the region are more than welcome to stay in my castle.  I should be able to find an extra bedroom for them. 

My castle is pretty old.  Through the tour we could see many facets of its history, with the earliest known part of it being created in the 2nd century.  Chillon was made popular by Lord Byron when he wrote the poem The Prisoner of Chillon in 1816.  I'm not honestly familiar with that particular piece of work, but, oddly enough, I just read a piece by Henry James today called Daisy Miller, from 1878The story began with an American who was living in Geneva and went to tour Chillon with a lady.  He described walking along the path that we had just taken around the lake and what the castle was like.  "Pretty neat," I thought, "I'm buying a pretty popular piece of history." Here's my first picture on the dock of my new estate...

On our train back to Geneva, we stopped at Lausanne, a big university city also situated along the lake.  Nobody warned me that it being situated in the Alps meant that the roads would be fairly steep to climb, but the view from the top made it well worth it.  It was a really beautiful and sunny day.  Finally it seemed enough to soak in some rays, but, at the same time, we could still feel the slightly crisp mountain breeze blowing.  Quick Jeopardy fact: Lausanne also houses the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee.









We were spending our last day to actually explore the city of Geneva.  A pretty city, but pretty low-key, many of the locals didn't seem to think it should be a hot tourist destination, claiming that it was rather boring.  However, Geneva is a really nice town, situated in an even nicer region. The majority of the population speaks French in the city, because, as I said, it's right on the boarder with France.  Switzerland also has three other national languages, that vary on the region: German, Italian, and Romansh. We wandered around the town a bit, taking in the cathedral, the international monument of reformation, a giant chess set in the park, found a strange statue to climb on in front of the museum, and checked out the massive fountain on the lake.  All in all, it made for nice day and a wonderful trip.  If you're ever in the neighborhood, call me up because you're more than welcome to stay at my new humble abode. 














Monday, May 21, 2012

True American Cuisine

A few months back we had an international dinner, where everybody in our house was supposed to make some dish from their home country.  My friend Renee, from North Carolina, and I thought really hard about what "real" American food was.  We settled on the idea of making meat loaf and homemade macaroni and cheese.  She also made an apple pie for another similar occasion.  While these are definitely things that people eat, we decided, for this particular dinner, to make some authentic food that people eat at home on a regular basis.

The first step to our gourmet trio was good old fashion PB & J.  Of course, we had to call it by its long name "Peanut Butter and Jelly" to our friends, because they didn't understand the initials.  Then we had to explain that all there was to it was in in the name. Believe it or not, it didn't win over a lot of people.  Many of the people we know from Europe aren't big fans of peanut butter, and we knew that going in.  To be fair, looking at the table full of delicious dishes, who could blame the people who skipped over the triangle cut sandwiches on plain white bread?   We could have gone fancier, but we wanted to preserve the integrity of the original PB & J: plain bread, peanut butter, and strawberry jelly.  I can't honestly say that I like PB & J, but I know it's nearly unanimously approved of at home.  However, many of the people who did try it last night didn't really like it. They said that the taste of peanut butter was "just too much" and "too sweet." Mind you, this is coming from the land of Nutella and some of the people who put chocolate bars on their bread for breakfast. One girl said that it was ok for a bite, but that was enough to last her the rest of her life.  So far we weren't really selling the American culinary experience.

Our next masterpiece used the same quality bread and was the amazing grilled cheese sandwich.  We did have to make a minor concession here because we didn't have access to the rubber patties in the cellophane wrapping known and loved as "American Cheese."  We were also unable to find cheddar cheese, so, of course, we ended up with a mild Gouda.  While frying up these morsels of cheesy goodness, the guy cooking some elaborate pasta dish on the stove across from us looked up and asked why we weren't doing the international dinner.  Apparently he didn't think our sandwiches looked like acceptable dishes to pass.  At the very least, he thought we needed some meat on the sandwiches.  Don't these people understand we were maintaining the integrity of the original creations?!?  Well, the joke was on him because the grilled cheeses were actually a big hit.

Finally came my personal favorite, macaroni and cheese.  We weren't going to do it from scratch this time.  We wanted people to understand what the typical mac and cheese of choice is.  We found two boxes of mac and cheese in the international section at the grocery store.  There's a small American section that houses some off-brand US products like box brownies, frosting, microwave popcorn, and mac and cheese.  The looks we got when we poured out the pasta and added in bright orange powder were great.  After two simple steps of dumping in milk and butter, we were all set.  It didn't honestly taste the exact same as the stuff at home, but people got the gist.  There were mixed reactions on this one.  Again, though, to be fair, it was sitting right next to a homemade pizza made by an Italian and a homemade lemon meringue pie.  I guess it's all relative. 

While it may seem like we took the easy way out, this trio was a calculated decision made by the two of us to share some everyday food that we've grown up with with our friends.  They may not have loved it all, but they did enjoy trying some of the food they associate with American movies. 

Happenings in Groningen

I mentioned in a previous post how the author of a book I read for my Hungarian history class was coming to visit last week.  Well, there was an event last week with both Dragoman and his wife, a famous poet.  It was very cool because they both gave readings of some of their works, in both Hungarian and English.  Needless to say, I couldn't understand the Hungarian versions, but it was really cool listening to an author read their own piece, especially poetry, because it is the only true, genuine reading where the audience can see something exactly as the author had intended.  They both also talked about their writing processes and histories, answered questions and signed their books.

My teacher had asked two other students and I to organize food for a reception after the event.  So, afterwards, we got to spend time with the Hungarian studies department and some other people teaching and studying history and/or literature.  It was a really cool experience to get a taste of another form of academic involvement at RUG.






In the city center, there are two large open squares, the Grote Markt and the Vis Markt.  Three days a week they're reserved for markets, and they were also full of food stands and concert stages for Queen's Day.  Last week, however, a festival rolled into town.  The who city center was crammed full of portable rides , so much so that I'm pretty sure that if a bus rolled by at just the right, or I guess wrong, moment, that it could be hit by the swinging seats on the big spinning ride.  Nonetheless, we had to check it out.  The festival was a lot of fun, especially the rides that spin you way up in the air and upside down.  It's not too often you can see the skyline of the city at night, particularly upside down.  There was one ride that was less than satisfactory, which made us all decide to call it a night, quite soon after due to a prolonged feeling of nausea.  The ride was like being in a continual car accident for 7 minutes, but also being a rag doll in a steel box without a seat belt.
 














After spending most of the weekend cooped up inside doing homework, Charlotte and I headed out to the lake in Groningen.  The sun was finally out and everybody in town was soaking up as much of it as possible. Probably because we're all aware of the fact that it's a very temperamental and fleeting celestial bulb, at least around here. It was gorgeous today and, rumor has it, the sun will be out tomorrow as well.  We've got a picnic and homework session planned at the lake tomorrow, so, fingers crossed, it better stay this nice.











Friday, May 11, 2012

Study Abroad Humor

The other day, a few friends and I were sitting next to a friend on the computer, when we stumbled upon a jewel of a website describing the experience of studying abroad. Obviously, they didn't all apply to us but we were laughing so hard that we started to get strange looks from the other people in the lobby.  I thought I should share a few little gems with you.  I'll try to explain their significance along the way, but I can't promise they'll all make sense if you haven't personally been in some of the situations. I'm just going to post them as I find them so they're going to be in a really random order, so please, I beg you, bear with me...

These are all hyperlinks to websites.  Click on them and they'll take you to a new page...
1-
Sagrada Familia was a beautiful cathedral in Barcelona. It was started by Gaudi a long time ago and then has been under construction for decades by a different architect. The basic gist of this post is that it's massive, awesome, and, more than anything, it doesn't seem real that we've been able to see so many cool things.

2-
Such little cars and even smaller spaces.

3-
Now, I promise you that I didn't actually try to do this, but I've seen people all over the place bothering the poor royal guards. They jump around in front of them and pose next to them for pictures like they're statues. Poor guys.

4-
I told you it was awesome!

5-
The bread at the market really is amazing.

6-
The lights don't bother me as much as the trumpet they play after we land and it's still the crack of dawn.

7-
I'm not sure why people try this, it seems so dangerous. I do need to give serious props to the Dutch girls, though, because they are always riding their bikes in high heels.

8-
This is particularly true when the aforementioned 'nod-and-smile' technique fails me.

9-
Greatest feeling ever!

10-
This would be my mother's reaction to this senario. I drink mostly water so it hasn't really bothered me, but the other day a couple of us were talking about how great a glass of ice water sounded. None of the European kids could understand why we'd possibly want ice in our drinks. They said the fridge makes things cold enough. My friend from Canada still couldn't manage to explain to them that it's not the same. A strange difference to notice, but it's true.

11-
Always a pain in the butt.

12-
Seriously though. I mean, everybody knows and speaks Spanish, but they all talk in Catalan with each other. Unlike most of the rest of Spain, all of the people we met in the city talk primarily in Catalan. I understood so many more conversations we overheard when we were in Madrid than Barcelona for this reason.

13-
My mom obviously hasn't sent me any peanut butter. The point is that so many of the international students that we live with don't like peanut butter at all. They were born and raised with Nutella and do not even come close to understanding all of the crazy things that the people from the US and Canada stick peanut butter on/in.

14-
When I was describing some of the new foods I've tried to my mom, this is what she said I was going to end up like when I come home.

15-
This has never happened. However, should it ever occur (in some crazy parallel universe), it would definitely warrant this response.

16-
I'm telling you, there's definitely a learning curve. For somebody like me who's never really utilized public transportation before, it was a very big accomplishment when I finally felt comfortable finding my way around. On the last trip alone we used trains, airplanes, public buses, metros, trams, distance buses, and one of those things that climbs the sides of mountains.

17-
It's really not as big as you'd think it would be.

18-
Definitely my initial reaction.

And now that we're getting closer to the end...

19-
This seems to be the overall sentiment amongst the people I have talked to.

School

I realize that the majority of my posts consists of stories about the various excursions I have been taking.  While it may come as a surprise to some, I still promise that I'm paying a lot of attention to school.  Overall, I have really been enjoying my classes.  They consist of a lot of reading and I have some ridiculously long papers and presentations to attend to, but the classes have all been pretty interesting.  I've decided to provide a few anecdotes about various things I've experienced in the classroom over the semester to give a glimpse of my experience in a foreign institution.

Unfortunately, I don't speak Dutch. Well, I mean I can pretend to know enough Dutch to make it in and out of the grocery store or to talk to the ticket taker on the train, but, overall, my Dutch skills leave quite a bit to be desired. I've mattered the art of the 'nod-and-smile,' but it only gets me so far.  There comes a point in many a conversation that one must admit their ignorance and explain that they have no idea what's going on.  The general rule is that if somebody talks to you for more than about two sentences, you're screwed and should admit defeat.  I tried to hold out longer at the library once, only to find out that the man was actually trying to kick me out of the room because he had a class coming in.

Fortunately for me, as well as all of the international students, the classes that we've signed up for are all in English.  That doesn't mean, though, that my classes are full of international students.  In all of my classes, I'm one of the very few international students, meaning (1) that it's partially my fault that the class is taught in English and (2) that I never understand what the other kids are always chatting about before class and during breaks.

I was terrified during the first presentation I had to give in one of my classes.  Not only was I overwhelmed by the fact that I felt like the only person in the class who didn't know everything there possibly was to know about Rome, but I was also that foreign kid standing up in front of all the locals. I survived and have lived to tell the tale, but it was a traumatic experience.  I was super confident about the next presentation I had to give, even though it was over twenty minutes long, but that may have partially been due to the fact that there were only four other students and the teacher in the room.  I was really prepared for the last presentation I gave and was ready to rock it, until I came down with the flu and proceeded to do more coughing up of my lungs in front of the class than educating them about the Victorian Era.

I got an assignment back in one of my classes and got full credit for it.  The professor did mention that my writing was a bit colloquial and archaic.  I found this statement to be a bit ironic because I'm the only native English speaker in the class, including the professor, and they're telling me that my English sounds different. Of course it's colloquial; I'm from a different local.  Go figure.  It didn't bother me so much as confuse me.  What did bother me was the next week in class when we were reading something in Middle English and he said that non-native speakers have an easier time pronouncing the language and that native speakers tend to butcher it.  Guess who he called on to read aloud to the class next.  This girl!

Spending a semester in a foreign school has really been a really cool experience.  I love hearing about the different perspectives and backgrounds that people bring into their interpretations of what we're doing in class. The other day in one of my classes we were talking about the point of education and who should be responsible for funding it.  A lot of people in my class all believed that the government should be in charge of funding education because they set the standards.  Students in the Netherlands get funding from the government to live and go to school.  This has obviously shaped part of the educational experience in the country and it's been cool to see how things like that alter the viewpoints from which we discuss things in class.

In my Hungarian cultural history class, we've done a lot of discussing how the material we've examined impacts us based on our background and relates to us based on our background.  It's kindof a cool class because the teacher is Hungarian, as are two of the students, and the other two are Dutch.  We all came in with different life experiences and it definitely makes class discussions, which are the main component of the class, that much more meaningful.  I read a novel for class this week called "The White King."  It was written by a Hungarian author, so I was obviously reading a translation.  It was an amazing translation, though, and really seemed to keep the integrity and point of view of the original version.  It also kept the setting very real but was still something that could be related to. 

The coolest part was that I read the book in English, two students read it in Hungarian, and two read it in Dutch.  Comparing our experiences with reading the different versions made for an awesome class discussion.  I really, really enjoyed the book and it was neat to see how the others interpreted it.  The best part is that the author is actually coming to visit next Tuesday!  I'm super excited to meet him and think that this is such a great experience.

Overall, this semester of school has been great so far.  I still have a lot of work to do and exams to take, but I'm ok with that.  It did bum me out a bit that everybody at home is now done with school, but, all things considering, I'm not really in a place to complain about things like that, am I?

Czech it Out!

I know, corny title, but, hey, that's what all the shirts said in the tourist shops in the Czech Republic when we went there last week. Thanks to the beloved queen, we had May Break last week in celebration of both Queen's Day and Liberation Day.  With the ugly orange nail polish still clinging to our nails, two friends and I took advantage of the break to head south east to czech out the area.

Our first stop was Prague.  I have to admit, I didn't really know what to expect with Prague, even though I've always heard such great things.  However, I think it has made the list of the top three places that I've been so far.  The hostel we stayed at was amazing and it's such a beautiful old city. Here's a glimpse at some of the awesome things we saw and did. A lot of the time was spent just wandering the old downtown area.  There were so many old buildings that wandering around aimlessly was exciting enough.  We also went up to the castle on the hill with the cathedral and climbed a big tower on the hill to see an awesome view overlooking the city.














Our next stop was Vienna in Austria.  It was only a five hour bus ride on a really cheap bus line.  The drive was beautiful through the countryside of the Czech Republic and Austria.  We went to the magnificent gardens of the Schönbrunn Palace, the St. Stephen's Cathedral and wandered around town. There was a big festival going on that day that we were going through.  I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure we heard a Jimmy Buffet song in German.








On our last full day we took another bus and headed to Brno, Czech Republic, where we would be flying out of the next day.  It was a really pretty city and I believe they said it was the second largest city in the country, but it also had the feeling of a small city.  We have been very lucky in every city that we have been to to manage to get a bird's eye view of the city.  We happened to luck out again in Brno, where we climbed up a very steep hill to the castle on the top.







I feel so fortunate to have had all of the opportunities to travel that I have.  It's still hard to believe that I have been able to do so many things.  I think I've learned a lot from all of my traveling experiences and that Charlotte and I have gotten into a very efficient traveling groove with our adventures.  Other than becoming better at figuring out the logistics when traveling, we both decided that we've also gained a lot bigger appreciation for culture.  Having been to so many different places, we've been comparing and contrasting the atmospheres that we've felt in the different cities and really appreciating them for what they are.  We make a point to sample the local cuisine in places whether it be wienersnitchel, some sort of mixture of cabbage, potatoes and ham, various drinks or my new favorite food, Lángos.  These are a healthy combination of fried dough topped with cream cheese, garlic and cheese that we found at a stand on the streets.  Yumm!