Tuesday we had a bunch of informational meetings at the university, and it really made things more clear for me. I guess I’d been craving a little structure and it gave me that feeling. So that was good. After the meetings the Dutch students in the Erasmus Student Network took us on a tour of the city to show us the downtown city-center area. The ESN is a student organization at universities in the Netherlands named after a Dutch philosopher. The whole purpose is to make foreign students feel welcome and help them get their bearings. They are so SO fun. They’re really cool, down to earth people.
We got to see all the awesome old buildings and shops and just wander around some at the Vrijthof (the big city square—it’s like the downtown area) This city is really cool. Cobblestone streets everywhere! There’s so much character in all the buildings.During the tour, we saw some shops where we can get stuff that we need including cell phones. So some of the girls and I went to about 4 different phone shops looking for the best deal. We ended up finding one pay-as-you-go phone that offers 9 Euro cent calls a minute to lines in the Netherlands and lines in the US. But the cool part is that they double all the money you put on for free always. So I put 20 Euro on the card, but received 40 Euro of credit. So basically, it’s 4.5 Euro cents a minute. Awesome. Texts are also 9/4.5 cents. It was by far the best deal, and I feel so much better now that I have a phone.
After we shopped a bit, we all went back to The Guesthouse and relaxed for a bit before the Inauguration was supposed to start at 5:30. Betsy, my roommate, and I went out to grab a couple of bottles of cheap wine at the grocery store to drink during the ceremony, and then settled in to watch it. We originally had it on some channel that was covering it live for Dutch people and all the commentary was in Dutch. Eventually we found the BBC where there was at least a British commentary going on. It was interesting to hear a different perspective on the whole thing, but to be honest, people in Europe are just as Obama-crazy as people in the US. When we were out there was one really funny Dutch guy who kept yelling, “OBAMA!!” every time he saw us.
After the inauguration, the ESN students picked us up at the front place and we walked to the restaurant where they had planned a dinner and drink for our group. I had dinner with a Dutch student named Jules who told me that the traditional Dutch food offered
there was called sate and that they had really stolen it from Indonesia (pizza anyone?). I ordered it because of that. It was pretty good. It was hunks of chicken on skewers and doused in this peanut sauce that was a really different taste. It came with fries and a salad. I tried the fries with the mayonnaise because it’s also very European. I can’t say I’m too disappointed that I didn’t like it. I definitely do not need more mayo in my life. Hahah… Jules and the other girls at our table and I had a really fun conversation about differences between the US and the Netherlands as well as perceptions of Americans in the Netherlands. He said that Dutch people see Americans as really loving America, which is generally true, but I’m not sure he meant it completely positively. We talked about how loving the US doesn’t mean that we think other places are sub-par.After dinner the ‘drink’ started. Jules taught us the drinking game to be played called “Beer Rally.” Beer Rally is basically just like flippy cup, but there’s no cup flipping involved and you chug a whole beer. So you have teams of four and one team lines up on each of the long sides of a table and kneels with their hands behind their backs. The judges are each at the short ends of the tables. The judge
s take a sip of their beer and then the first judge to set down her beer starts the game on that side of the table. The first person chugs the beer (Heineken) and then has to prove the beer is empty by turning it upside-down on his/her head then slamming it down on the table which is the next person on the team’s cue to drink. It was a really fun game. We thought we were doing well until the Dutch students joined the game and then it was embarrassing how bad the American teams were. Those Dutch can really throw down. They were consistently finished with all four beers before anyone else was done with 3. It was insane! Our team lost each bracket in which we competed (sad!) but the Dutch team said I was really fast and that I could join their team. Aren’t you all so proud of me? Haha…I’m not sure if they were joking or not. It wasn’t my best work, but then again I learned to chug with water not Heineken. I was a little off my game. ☺ We had a really fun time though.At eleven, we left the restaurant we were at for dinner and the drink and headed to a bar called the Shamrock. It was a little hole in the wall type bar where there was a pool table and a few tables. We all sat around and drank some beer and talked for a while longer. Some Scottish girls joined our group and around 1, we all headed back to our original restaurant, which we had heard turned into a dance club after 1. At this point there were probably a good thirty people in our group going from place to place. Most people were drunk and so we were really loud. I am not sure the residents of Maastricht really appreciated the loud mob of people running through the streets, but we definitely had fun. Our huge crowd piled into the place and we started dancing to the entertaining mix of old American songs from the 60’s (Oh what a night!) to the 90’s (The Bad Touch: You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals…) It was really fun. We had to be up at 9:30, though, so I decided to head back with a couple of guys from the program. The group who stayed apparently ended up going to a couple of other places and going totally nuts, but I think my first time out was great fun. Although, maybe next time I’ll roll with a slightly smaller group…It might be less conspicuous…..
On Wednesday, we just had a few more informational meetings at the university about our residence permits this time. We filled out the forms and had some AWFUL pictures taken. (They wouldn’t let us smile except for these silly closed-mouth smiles….haha…needless to say we all looked like convicts in our pictures.) We also had a meeting about our study trip, which starts tomorrow!!! I can’t wait! We’re going to Luxembourg, Brussels, Bruges, Versailles, Paris, and Reims. We’ll see so much awesome stuff, and I really can’t wait. I’m not taking my computer with me on the trip, so I’ll have to write a huge blog about the trip when I get back. ☺
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