Week 2

As my 2nd week here is coming to an end, I can’t help but wonder where the time has gone. Its pretty amazing how fast these 2 weeks have gone by, but at the same time, its starting to feel like I’ve been here forever.

The past week has been fairly busy. The international student group here organizes an “introduction week” for all of the international students, which is full of all kinds of activities and gives us a chance to meet a whole bunch of other international students. It’s been a lot of fun, but I am completely exhausted right now. There have been a lot of parties, a lot of late nights and a whole bunch of bruises that seem to have appeared out of nowhere. I also finally bought a bike, which makes getting around the city so much easier. It’s pinkish-purplish and turquoise and very pretty, and my butt is very sore from all of this riding! The amount of bikes here is pretty amazing and the traffic that they cause is a little overwhelming….it actually kind of scares me to have to drive through the city center sometimes because there are bikes, pedestrians, cars, buses, taxis and pigeons coming at you from all directions! But I’m still alive and I think it’ll just take a little while to become a bit more comfortable with it. I’ve also (kind of) acquired the skill of riding a bike drunk (Mum you can ignore this part). I’ve managed it a few times, except that I had a little bit of a wipeout last night, but I’m still alive to tell the tale.

I guess I should also mention that classes have started. I’ve decided that my least favorite part of being an international student is the fact that I actually have to study. It’s been incredibly frustrating because the international office (the place where they set up all of my classes, etc) has been extremely unhelpful. It’s kind of been like jumping through hoops to get my classes in order. I had signed up to get a student number last Wednesday and was told that it would take a day or 2 and then I’d be able to register for my courses. Of course, the number wasn’t available until Tuesday and without it, I had no idea where or when any of my classes were. I had to spend a chunk of time deciphering a Dutch website in order to figure out the timetables which was a lot of fun (please try and notice the sarcasm here). I went to my first class on Tuesday, but for some reason, the teacher never showed up, so I guess my first actually class was yesterday. It was a psychology class and was horribly boring. Its kind of unfortunate that the university offers so few psychology courses in English. Their semester system is also somewhat different. Instead of having on semester that goes from Sept-Dec, like it is at home, that semester is split into blocks. So I have some classes that fall in the first block, so Sept-Oct, and others that are Nov-Dec, which means that the class that I’m going to be taking this block is basically the same workload as a course at home, except only 7 weeks long. Even though I’m only aiming for a passing grade, the amount of reading I’m going to have to do is somewhat overwhelming!