My Dutch roommate, Ineke, invited me to go to a festival in southern Netherlands on Friday night so 2 other UWP girls and I hopped in her little Euro car and we took off! Two hours later we arrived in Baarlo for the annual festival that resembled one from back home...beer tent, live band, and good company. But instead of Bud or Miller Lite, Amstel Light was the beer of choice and instead of pickup trucks filling the parking lot, there were rows of bikes, which quickly reminded us that we were over 4,000 miles away from home. We had a [View Full Entry]

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Four out of six roommates are here. Two more of my roommates showed up today, Hoai from Vietnam and Gulsah from Turkey! We started our orientation sessions today to brief us on what our courses would involve. We met our course coordinator, Mr. Hermann Schilt and the rest of our classmates in the International Rural Innovation and Development program. There are 21 students from Ghana, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia and the U.S. Ineke invited us to a party hosted at the university. The party was for the Dutch freshmen to celebrate their survival of initiation week. The [View Full Entry]

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Today was a free day before orientation starts tomorrow. It felt good to sleep in after a long day of traveling and majorly changing time zones! Once all of us girls were up and going we walked around campus to familiarize ourselves with our surroundings and then into town for more groceries. We took another route, which involved less exhaust and lots more scenery. The walk to town takes about 20 minutes but should be less than 10 once we get our bikes. CAH Dronten is situated in what is called the Agripark. It’s like an industrial park but with all [View Full Entry]

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Hello from the Nederlands!!! Well, after several tearful goodbyes and many well wishes, I made it here in one piece. Our trip began at the Dutch Mill park and ride in Madison and quickly followed with a slight detour to Janesville. There, we had to switch Van Galder buses due to a broken left blinker but made it to O'Hare in plenty of time. We checked our bags, found our terminal, sat around and finally boarded the big plane. The turbulence from Chicago to Dublin was HORRIBLE!! I felt like we were on a roller coaster, people were getting sick and [View Full Entry]

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I am going to take you on a photo tour of my apartment here on campus! [View Full Entry]

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