The Delicious Stroopwafel

This is my friend Joe's picture of a Stroopwafel. Last Tuesday we had an Arnhem City Tour, but it was just like a scavenger hunt throughout downtown and one of the "clues" we were able to get a free Stroopwafel. I think it is my new favorite food. They are absolutley delicious! It is hot & fried with like caramel/toffee on the inside. They even have Stroopwafel McFlurries at McDonalds!

Of course we all gather...

... to jump online and skype with family!

Manuel is to the left of me, From Munich and plays baseball! He even knows who Prince Fielder is!
Then is Alex from Spain - one hellova guy
And last on the right is Michael, he is from Munich as well and goes to the same university as Manuel.

I've learned here NO ONE calls is "university" or "college" everyone shortens and says "uni"! Ha ha. I think it started with the Australian girl, though the London kids and others say uni too

Here is where I am living in Honigkamp

This is the front door entrance

Some of the students

So here we have a picture of a few of us.
The girl in the gray sweater in front with the long brown hair is Carmen, she is from Spain. The girl next to her in the white and black is Ezra and she was born in Turkey (I've heard her speak turkish!) and when she was 12 moved to London - so of course she has an awesome accent. The girl next to her in the black is from Spain, but is studying abroad in London with Ezra for 4 years, and among that decided to study here! So even being in London for a short time, Jess has an absolute english accent. Gemma in the blue is from Spain, and behind her Joe (From UW-Whitewater) has the white collared shirt on. Next to Joe in the back in the black is Austin he is from San Fransisco. Then from the left we have Tayler (From UW-Whitewater) with the blue cup, next to Tayler is Tad from San Fransisco, next to Tad in the striped shirt is Xavi from Spain, next to him in the other striped shirt is Esteban, he is from Chile. And then there is Roselyn from Russia! And in the middle with the black tank top on is Lauren, she goes to UW-Whitewater as well - and over Christmas is doing a trip to India for Operations Management through UW-Whitewater.

So here are just a few of us.

Classes Start Today

Today Classes start and I'm getting excited. Monday's I don't have class until 14.15 and that one is Marketing Communications. This is my only class/module outside of the exchange programme. Then on Tuesdays I have E-marketing and E-Commerce in the morning and B2B Marketing in the afternoon. Wednesday's I have Marketing communications again in the morning, Thursdays are OFF and Fridays I have International Marketing in the morning.

We're told to check online and on the TV's at school everyday for changes. It isn't like school in America where you have a set room and time each and every day/week. The schedule changes so they urge us to check it every day online and on the TV's at school. JUST LIKE AT AN AIRPORT!

Arnhem Business School

Click on this link to see a picture of my school!

Check out the weather today!

Presikhaaf

Check out this link! We live in the Presikhaaf neighborhood, that is where just about all of the students live - and there is MAJOR flooding today. My friend Kristie (from Australia) and I walked to the super market today and it was raining off and on and off and on, and then we found this! The website is in dutch, though you can look at the photos. It rains a lot here, but there is major flooding in our neighborhood right now!

We are fine though - no worries.

A Few Facts about Arnhem

I wanted to look up some facts about Arnhem cause I've been getting lots of questions :)

Arnhem is one of the larger cities in the Netherlands with about 146,095 residents (June 2009). It is in the eastern part, and I am a one hour train ride away from Amsterdam. I am seven hours ahead of Wisconsin's time zone. In August hi/low temp is 53 and 72 degrees F.

My school is called - HAN University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen in Dutch), often abbreviated as HAN, with campuses in Arnhem and Nijmegen in The Netherlands. I am obviously in Arnhem, at the Business School. Is extrememly new only like 10 years old or something like that, as I have heard. The business building is very new and modern. The Arnhem Business School classes are taught in English with over 600 students from over 20 countries.

Amsterdam is the biggest city in North Holland and Rotterdam is the second biggest city in South Holland. The Netherlands has an estimated population of 16,491,852 (as of March 2009).

So many students in Arnhem!

Currently I've been in Arnhem for 8 days and have met SOOO many people. The people I've been haning out with are from San Fransisco, one girl from Austrialia, a bunch from Spain, a few from France and there are many others. There is a guy here from Mexico City, some from Poland, Russia and Turkey. Really, there are people from all over which is really neat - because they are all living in my building "Honigkamp". Some people live in different housing, like shared apartments and stuff all over the city, but the majority are in Honigkamp. It is 5 floors and I am on the third floor. I've absolutley love living in Honigkamp. I have my own bed and desk, and my own toilet and sink/mirror in my room - and then there are shared showers which really aren't so bad. Lately, we've all been gathering on the ground floor to hang out and chat and kind of meet up. Two nights ago there was a big party on the fifth floor and it was full of people. We always gather in the kitchens, there is a stove top (no ovens though) which a microwave (some actually don't work!) and a sink with fridges. On the third floor we have two kitchens to share. We have mini fridges so you have small space in the fridge and then you have cabinet space for things. I've learned we'll be grocery shopping a lot as we don't have a lot of space to store things in the fridge. There is a mall and a few supermarkets right by Honigkamp, so we've been walking there a lot.

On the 19th we all met up with the "What's your Flavour" crew near the Arnhem train station, though this was shut down because it is under construction. This is where we met a lot of the other students. "What's your Flavour" is 4 students from the Arnhem School that set up activities and help with the International students. We had a "going out" night with the Whats your Flavour folks on Saturday night and then Monday we had the Arnhem business school day and tour, Tuesday we had a scavenger hunt throughout the city with them, and then yesterday they organized a big soccer game (here it is futbol though) and they had a huge stage and dj's at the school for a party for us last night. The soccer games were fun and also the dj's and big party was fun last night too. It was all outdoors - and it rained last night :( so that kind of stunk, but we all had a great time. You bought "tokens" for beer and they served beer outside right by the big stage with the DJ. This is a picture of the club on campus, right next door to the business school "Lokaal '99". Its not my image, a girl from France took this, but you can see the beer stand and club and also a little area of where everything was at the party last night.



All of the international students participated in the activities this week on Mon/Tues/Wed. Then today (Thurs) and tomorrow we don't have anything scheduled. Though Friday a bunch of us are going to HAN University (the name of our school, I am in the Arnhem Business School) - to pick up our schedules. We don't have these yet! And then we start school this Monday August 30th. We have our planners though, so we know times we have off and what not, but I haven't had the time to look through it. Once we all get our schedules this Friday, we're going to start to plan trips throughout Europe. There is a lot I want to do and see - though I'm keeping in mind the budget! I think we all are.

I've noticed in the clubs and bars that we've been going too, they play a lot of American music, though there are a lot of songs I've never heard before and there are a few Dutch songs. So its funny listening to a song but not knowing any of the words because it is in dutch! But it is still fun none-the-less.

In our area by Honigkamp, there are a few places to eat, and a few supermarkets (ALDI's is one) and the mall, but to go out we go to the city center. Our school is about a 15 minute walk from Honigkamp, and then to go anywhere you take a bus. I bought a 48 "trip" buss pass for 22.50 Euros and have been using this a lot. It takes two "strips" to get to the city center, and I bought the largest with the 48 strips. We go to the city center for just about anything. There are tons of bars and restaurants there, and its a really, really neat part of town, we like it a lot. Though the city center is a very far walk back to Honigkamp, this is why we always take the bus.

A few more photos from Amsterdam...

Amsterdam August 18th

So we got off the plane at the Schipol Airport in Amsterdam with all of our luggage and got a cab right outside of the airport. I was traveling with 5 other UW-Whitewater students who decided to study in Arnhem as well. It was raining right as we exited the airport so I'm so happy my mom packed the last minute rain jacket! This has actually come to use many, many times. The taxi took us right to "Meeting Point" youth hostel where we would be staying. We landed at approx. 6:30am and then got to the hostel around 8am and we couldn't check in until 11:00am. We had a lot of bags and initally at the airport I was able to take out some money from the ATM so I had euros. The taxi ride took about 10-15mins (driving in the rain) and cost us about 50-60 Euros which we all split, so this was nice because we had all of our luggage. The man at meeting point hostel let us leave all of our luggage down in the basement, though we couldn't check in because he was all booked up. We were initially not happy to just leave our luggage at the hostel in the basement, but decided there really wasn't any other option. I took the most important things out and just wore a backpack, and the others did the same. At this point we couldn't stay at the hostel so we walked down the street to find somewhere where we could have breakfast and coffee. The hostel was right near all of the "action" right near the Red Light District and also downtown. We found a cute little breakfast place and initally they handed us the menu, and we were struggling because it was all in dutch, and then the waiter handed us an english menu (I think he could tell). I had a crossaint and some toast, and coffee. The crossaint was very flaky but I liked it a lot. And the coffee was a lot stronger and in a very, very tiny mug. NOTHING like in America at all. From here on out we basically had to kill time before 11:00am. We went to the train station and just looked around. We found internet that we all could jump on and quick email our parents that we arrived and what not. After getting to the hostel finally at 11:00am they were changing the sheets and what not, so we did have clean sheets which was nice. It wasn't too bad of a hostel, we stayed in a 18 bed room and we had a big window that we could look down right on the street which was cool.



We actually were missing the sixth person in our group, Tayler because he wasn't on the same flight as us. So two of the guys and myself took a train back to the airport (train is much more cheaper than the taxi) and we waited for him forever! We ended up paging him at the airport and looking at all of the gates but he wasn't there. After getting back to the hostel we were getting worried about where he could be - but he ended up back at the hostel, and just found wi-fi at a McDonalds so he could look up the address to our hostel.

That day in Amsterdam we walked around the city a lot, we took a lot of pictures (canals are everywhere!) and we did visit my first cofeeshop. As most may know, the "coffeeshop" in the Netherlands is a place where you can smoke, obviously this is legal here. That was an initial culture shock just to see that "wide" in the open, but people do it. I'm glad I actually got to visit one. You don't just walk down the street and smoke which some Americans think, you can smoke legally in coffeeshops and at your home and what not. It is legal all over the Netherlands, not just Amsterdam. We also went to a place for dinner, I got a 4 cheese pizza which was good and it had your "average" types of food (pastas, bread, pizza...etc.) and we all ate and had some Heineken's. We also went out that night to check out the Red Light District. I'm also excited to have done this - and it was a culture shock. But there are a lot of people out and about and there were a lot of people at the Red Light District as well. I thought they just called it that, but literally all of the windows with the women in them have red lights surrounding, so you knew exactly when you hit those streets, cause you'd see the red lights everywhere. We went to a few different pubs and actually went out that night with 3 guys from Wales. They were really nice and we asked each other a lot of quesions. Of course we had the politics talk and health care talk. They know a lot about American politics and we established early that American politics and news is covered everywhere, but none of the "Americans" knew who the Prime Minister was of England! They knew Obama and could go down the list of many, many more presidents and we only knew of Tony Blair. Another thing that made me feel stupid - but it was interesting none-the-less. We talked about American TV shows and music they listen to and things like that. And it was interesting just to get the prospective from people about America, who have never lived in America. The guys from Wales were in our 18 bed-room at the Hostel, so it was cool to meet them.

Time Change? This actually didn't phase me too much. The first day in Amsterdam just about everyone took a nap, because we had a harsh day of traveling, but so far the time difference really hasn't been affecting me to much, which is nice! I thought I would be a lot more messed up but I wasn't.

We went to bed late that night, as we were pub hopping in Amsterdam, but had to check out of the hostel at 10 the next morning. We packed up our stuff and headed to the train station to go to Arnhem! The 19th was the "official" check in day for students at the Arnhem Business School.

Going Away Party Tomorrow

Getting ready for the "going away" party tomorrow and also my sister's graduation party! Can't wait to see family and friends :)