Sunday, August 23, 2009


After the drunk priests in Dublin and another flight to Amsterdam, I had made the trek without any major hiccups. My next task was to find my way to Leiden, about 20 minutes by train from the airport. So I lugged my baggage through to the ticket station and hopped on the train. I befriended a Portugese student who was also traveling to Leiden and we started chatting about grad school and Europe v. America. Not noticing the time, the ticket counter showed up and told us we had already passed Leiden and had gotten on the wrong train. Typical. So we got off the train and looked for the next one to Leiden. As we approached Leiden, I was worried about our marked ticket and asked, who I thought was the ticket checker, if our tickets were still good. He said it was fine but didn’t work there and ran away laughing at me. So I made a wonderful first impression in Holland.



My plan to get over jet lag faster was to stay awake until dark. So I met up with my friend Henok from St. Louis who is also in the program and we walked around Leiden. In the city square there was a big group of people watching around the canal where there were fire trucks and city workers everywhere. There was someone scuba diving in the canal. After ruling out a dead body, a pet fallen in, and a bicycle, we asked the driver of one of the trucks what they were diving for to find out they were simply practicing and everyone was watching because it was such a nice day.



(so Dutch)

After trying to unsuccessfully sleep off my jet lag, the next day all of the other students began arriving in Leiden to begin orientation. That night we went out to a few different bars for drinks and icebreakers. Some of the students would be traveling to London on Saturday but it was still fun to get to know what kind of people were interested in this IR program and their different backgrounds.



(These boys were weighing down their boat but looked like they were having a great time!)

One student had lived in Leiden a few years ago with Webster and knew the city better than the rest of us. He took us to a hole in the wall bar with a pool table and a back smoking room. As many of you know, Holland is known for their laid back culture. So there we partook in the local flavor.



(group from the first night)

The Dutch are very friendly people and most speak English so talking to the locals is fairly easy. I haven’t heard such high reviews about the language barrier from our next country, Austria. I’ll keep you posted. Until then…



xoxo,
Amy

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