Dutch Language and a Personal Adventure

Week 3 (08/02/16 - 14/02/16)

Sunny day in Leeuwarden...
for a change

After a wonderful weekend adventure it was back to the daily grind of student life. A difference from university at home is that our weekly timetable can change slightly every week and therefore we need to keep on top of checking it at the beginning of each week. This week we began on the Tuesday with our first class of "Dutch Multicultural Society". This also gave us the opportunity to finally meet our main contact within the university as he is the tutor. As it was the first time we'd met much of this class was spent getting to know one another and it was clear that again this class would be a lot less formal than home and have an emphasis on discussion and comparison.

We continued classes on the Wednesday first with "Innovative Dutch School Systems" in the morning where we discussed some key educational reformers such as Freinet and Montessori and their key ideals (which I am looking forward to investigating further) as well as being told about our final assignment. It appears rather daunting compared to the assignments given at home as it is a 10 - 20 page paper on the reform movement and how it relates to our home school systems. We have to include an index as well as chapters and sections which we have not had to do before however I am sure we will be given further guidance. On the Wednesday we also had our first "Dutch Language and Culture" class. This is the first class we've had that has other Erasmus students who are not doing the teacher training course. So far language has not been a great barrier to completing everyday tasks as everyone seems to speak near perfect English however I was looking forward to learning more of the language and some of the culture. After a very fun class due to the mixed chorus of accents attempting their best Dutch impersonation, I left confident in my ability to count to 20 and recite the months of the year however after attempting the next day it appears I will require more practise.

'One test of the correctiveness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.' 

- Maria Montessori

One of my many trains

Lucy's a better cook than me

With Valentine's Day falling over the weekend I decided to make the 6 hour train journey to Hasselt, Belgium to visit my girlfriend who is also on Erasmus. As my Thursday class was cancelled I was able to begin my journey that morning getting the 0944 train which got me to Hasselt at 1549. This being my first long, solo excursion I was rather nervous, routinely checking my train schedule to ensure I was getting on and off at the correct stops to make my 4 change overs. After 5 trains it was nice to see a familiar face. With the poor weather there was little opportunity to explore so the next 3 days were spent catching up on our favourite TV series' from home and some cooking lessons (teaching me how to correctly cook rice). The one good day Lucy took advantage to show me what she could of Hasselt. With a busy main street and an array of restaurants we were spoilt for choice for our mandatory Valentine's Day meal. The long journey home was less daunting having done it once before and having made plans to hopefully travel to Bruges for a day I can not wait for my next visit.



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