Blogs from North Brabant, Netherlands, Europe - page 12

Departure, arrival and settling in Monday was greeted with enthusiasm, anxiety and mostly apprehension as to what the rest of the day would have in store for this 'newbie' traveler. A quick coffee was shared with two of my closest and oldest friends in the morning before making sure bags were packed and weighed. A last skinny-dip in the pool was a suitable goodbye to sunny South Africa and the warm weather. At the airport the bags were wrapped in plastic to preserve the highly-valuable rooibos tea and home-made CD's. My Sector9 trilam was also included in the wrapping process and the skateboard stuck out just as badly from the bag as I did as a foreigner when arriving in Holland. I was very fortunate to meet an acquaintance in the CT airport. Torbjorn was a ... read more

I cycled with Ron to Load where he had a gig. All the bands were mostly playing covers. Ron played keyboards and backing vocals. His band was really good and it was really nice having the opportunity to go there and see something different. His family came to support him too and then invited me back to theirs for dinner. So after the gig I cycled with Ron to his house were I ate onion soup whilst they all had chicken soup! Followed by poffertjes which I thought was desert, we had the real desert which was some sort of toffee jelly. Ron started playing piano so I joined him and he tought me a little with both of us improvising! Next time I hope to learn some more and also play some guitar together. His ... read more

Most international students arrived Friday morning so there was a welcome organised for them. I was also invited even though I'm already two weeks in my course. Most of these students are studying International Business and Accountance something like that, or another subject I cant remember... Matt decided to join the welcome in Breda so he could get a tour and meet more students, as only two had signed up in Den Bosch and 60 signed up in Breda! We arrived early but discovered it wasnt neccessary to be there until 3 hours later! So I showed him around St Joost campus and tried to cycle with one of us sitting on the back of the bike- I've never known a dodgier cyclists but I've laughed hard all day!! The two of us spoke a fair ... read more

Had a one-to-one tutorial all in English. Came with ideas but definitely felt I needed this tutorial to help push me on. I figured as Dutch seem to be so honest, frank and open I didn't have to hold back with my opinions and some disagreements. My tutor said making people feel angry is more interesting than boosting their confidence so I disagreed because anyone can make people feel angry but to help people gain self confidence is not quite so easy as so many people lack it, and plus I want to create work that's of some kind of benefit to society! Anyways I still took note on his points and figured I just need to find a balance to show both sides of a story, to be realistic as aposed to painting a pretty ... read more

Made an embarrassingly stupid mistake this morning- woke up bright an early with plenty of time before uni. I leisurely cycled in for our presentations only to find everyone had already long started. I was surprised my tutor was unimpressed to see me arrive supposedly late- I thought five minutes early wasn't that bad. Until I later discovered that when a student told me class would start half twelve, this meant twelve minus thirty and not half 'past' twelve?! I know I won't make this same mistake again! I was glad to be able to listen to several presentations before mine, so I could apply some of their feedback to my presentation. It was inspiring to see the variety of student's practice and approaches on this project. I chose to play an audio of a couple ... read more