Highlands

Long time no see, well actually no hear!! I’m sorry for letting you wait for this blog. The last couple of weeks were quite busy. My tutorials started, which means a lot of reading and group work! And last week my parents and little sis were here to visit me for 5 days! 

Sinterklaas!

They arrived on Tuesday 25^th of October in the afternoon. It was great seeing them again! We got a taxi from the airport to the hotel. The taxi driver asked us from which part in the Netherlands we were. We responded with Roermond in the South. “You’re kiddin’ me!! I go every year to Marina Oolderhuuske on holiday with my family and friends!” (Marina Oolderhuuske is a resort near Roermond.) “You’re the first people I’ve met from Roermond here in Glasgow!” Well, he was the first Glaswegian who even knows about the existing of Roermond! So the first meeting with Glasgow was a great one for my parents and sister. In the evening they gave me lots of presents, early Sinterklaas. The next day we explored Glasgow and I showed them my flat and they met a couple of my roommates. Unfortunately they got to experience Scottish weather! It rained a lot in the afternoon, but when we got to the West End it stopped and I’ve showed them another sunny side of Glasgow.

IX

Hey!

For the first time here I´ve visited another city than Stockholm in Sweden. There was a trip to Uppsala! This is a typical student city, where around 50% of the population is students. We got a guided tour there, where among other things we saw the very nice old university, but nevertheless this was kind of boring. So we decided to part ways with the group to check out the little town on our own. We found out that there was a guitar festival that day, and after an hour of wandering around we finally found it! There was a little fair, a lot of classical guitars and some case shows. Afterwards we went to the various student unions that are established in Uppsala. It was quite similar to the student union bars in Tilburg or any other Dutch student cities. Afterwards there was a big student party. It was a welcome change from Stockholm, but after 1 day I longed back to my current hometown again!

Maintaining Tourist Status

Hi everyone!

These two weeks have been full of some ups and downs for me. Luckily, I found the solution on how to avoid the downs and only feeling high up in the sky all the time =)

It is not that easy to really integrate in the Hungarian society. There is mostly, as I expected, contact with other international students and together you really create an 'Erasmus Society'. Personally, I do not mind about this. I love that I learn about dozens of other cultures anyway and I am lucky some of my courses at uni really focus on the elements of Hungarian/ Central European society!

I have been living in Hungary for 2.5 months now and it has been a hell of ride. So many experiences, so many things to do and things to see.. However, if you do not pay attention, things might start to get normal at some point. You might start to get used to all these amazing people and sights around you and might not even notice anymore that you live in another country. I personally try to remind myself of how special this all is as much as possible, especially since I have the tendency to adjust to things really quickly. In general that I consider that to be a really good quality, but on the downside it sometimes means that things become too much of a routine to me and if there is one thing that does not fit me... So, my intentions for the coming months: Maintaining Tourist Status =) Visiting other countries, making a list of tourist stuff to do in Budapest itself, going out for dinner and taking a lot of pictures! It works!

Back to Business

After ten fantastic days of acclimatization, enjoying the city and going out a lot, it was time to find an apartment and getting ready for Peking University. On Sunday during my long search for five minutes, a message popped up on the Facebook page of our exchange (yes we have Facebook here, thanks to the VPN of Tilburg University :). The message was from a small cute Norwegian girl, who looked for a flat mate. Exactly in the area I wanted to live in, between the university and the lively student area Wudaokou. One phone call, a taxi ride of €2,30 and forty minutes later, I had an apartment!!! Yes lucky bastard, were the words of many people who had been looking for an apartment like this for many days.
Two days after that was the introduction and the registration on the campus of Peking University, which they call “Beda” here. The campus is huge and beautiful, with its big lake, small bridges and old Chinese style buildings.

The main building of our business school: Guanghua School of Management is, on top of that, the fanciest one of all. Registration and the campus tour where not impressive, however

Singapore food

As I promised some blogs ago I would tell you more about the food and drinks in Singapore. Food is next to study or work the most important thing in the life of a Singaporean. You see and smell food everywhere and you can buy food on every single corner of the street. In Tilburg I prepare my food always by myself or with my roommates, here I did that only once. This has two reasons, it is more expensive to do groceries and prepare dinner yourself than to buy it somewhere and the food here is so amazingly good!!! The most common place to eat is in a food court, which is a collection of food stalls from different countries. You can choose Thai, Indian, Korean, seafood, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Japanese or Western food. I have to admit I love almost all the food, but in my opinion Korean is the best. Although, seafood is also very very good. 

Friend time!

Summarizing last blog: Valencia was awesome! We arrived at our casa in Madrid around 1.30 a.m., so that was pretty late when you realize that we supposed to have classes the next morning at 9. So we decided to skip university all together that day and focus somewhat on our homework.
Later that day something way nicer was about to happen. Xander, a friend of mine from Holland would arrive at Barajas Airport. He arrived in the afternoon, so I went with him to his hostel in Calle Fuencarral, which is in the heart of Madrid. A great location to start exploring the city! After dropping of his stuff, we went to Parque Retiro to enjoy the ‘ever-shining’ sun.
In the evening Kelly made some delicious Spanish tapas for us. My friend cannot say that that that was not a warm welcome.

my parents are here

Hello everybody, last time I told you my best friend was here. I will continue my blog from here. Sunday we ate our lunch in a very nice bar, its called 100 monteditos. If you are once in Madrid you have to go here for sure. For just 1 euro you can get a little bread. This ones are really small, more like a tapas with for example smoked salmon and tortilla. Next you can get a pull with 0,5 litre of beer for just 1 euro or some soda. We had a nice lunch there and it is always crowed.

Northern light and more

I would like to start with something surprising: last Monday I saw the northern lights and I was really overwhelmed by this appearance! During the day it was very nice weather in Bergen. The sky was clear, blue and the sun was shining. Since we thought this should be the last sunny day we decided to have a barbecue. As usual everybody took some food and this resulted in an extensive dinner from the most nasty German sausages to the best Spanish tapas. It was a wonderful evening and those are, especially at the end of October, quite rare in Bergen. After dinner, around 10 o’clock, a part of the group went home, but I decided to stay together with a Russian girl and an Austrian guy. While talking about culture differences, habits, and our experiences, we watched the stars. In the meantime, it was midnight and gradually it was getting colder. Then something weird happened. The sky became much lighter and it looked like we could see each other better. A green light appeared slowly, became stronger, and moved relatively fast. The light was mostly green, but sometimes there were also blue and red parts in it. We couldn’t believe it, but it was the northern light! The polar light, which everyone hopes to see in the northern part of Scandinavia during the winter months. It was Monday, October 24^th (actually is was Tuesday early in the morning), we were located in Bergen (in the southern part of Scandinavia) and the appearance of the northern light was a fact. It seemed like a dream, but it was real!

The Spanish life

Hey all!

It is time to give you an update again! Of course I studied, cleaned the house etc, but I don’t think you are very much interested in that. That’s why I quickly go on with one of my favorite hobbies: football. On Monday September 19 I finally had my first futsal training. Indeed: futsal. In the Netherlands I play ‘normal’ football, but that was not possible this semester at my university. Therefore, I decided to try to be selected for the futsal team. I was very curious about how many girls would come and how well they could play. I enjoyed the training very much, because it was three weeks ago that I played soccer for the last time. The girls played well and were very nice too. After three trainings, the trainer told me I was selected! In the Netherlands, I am very used to the concept of having a drink after matches and trainings. I was wondering whether this was usual in Spain too. Well, yes, the Spanish girls know this element very well! I really enjoy having a drink with this team!

Except for playing football myself, I also enjoy watching football matches. And of course, Real Madrid’s stadium Santiago Bernabéu is one of the best places to do this. I managed to arrange tickets for the match Real Madrid – Ajax (for the Champions League)! Tuesday September 27, I went there with 4 other girls and we had a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the tricks of Ronaldo and Kaká…

Spanish Culture

After two months living in Madrid I will tell you something about my experiences with the Spanish culture. The first weeks on University were hard for me. Unlike in the Netherlands the difference between teacher and students is much bigger. For example when you are quite sure the teacher is making a mistake and you try to tell him he can become very grumpy.
In the Netherlands we are used to have your own opinion here it is better to follow the opinion of your teacher.

When Spanish people give an answer on a teacher’s question the will always start their answer with ; Maybe … because you cannot be as sure of your answer as the teacher. One day the average grade of an exam was around 2 or 3 , the teacher asked us how it could be possible that nobody understood the exam. I told him that the questions were a bit unclear so I did not understand what he was asking for. The whole group of Spanish people looked at me in shock because they thought I was very rude by telling him what I was really thinking. However after me some Spanish people were carefully supporting me by admitting my point.

Sinchon

This blog will be a little different.
I here present you a video for you to enjoy, about the area 'Sinchon' which is the area that is mostly visited by students from our university, Yonsei. All of the bigger universities have these designated "area's" which are usually named after the uni it belongs to. For example, Ehwa, the womens university close to us, has "Ehdae". Hongshik, another university close to us, has "Hongdae".
Hope you guys like it!

The first period of exams has finished and I think I did quite well. My written answers in portuguese will probably not be perfect but luckily the professors are really cooperating. After the exams, I really enjoyed my spare time, because beginning lectures on 1th of August took all my holiday.

After three months living in Rio de Janeiro I thought it would be a good Idea to travel around to see some other wonderful places in Brazil. First, I went to visit my family in their sitio near Petrópolis. After three hours driving in respectively a bus and a car, we finally arrived at their house. No roads, no neighboors and no cellphone signal means that you are probably in the middle of nowhere. However, we really enjoyed the nature and climbed up a yet unvisited mountain.

My second trip was

planned to São Paulo. As one the largest cities in the world it is hardly possible to find your way in the complex system of subways, trains and junctions. We stayed at a house of my French fellow student´s friend, visited some musea and discovered the exciting nightlife of the city.

Crazy study, great life!

Can’t believe already one month past since my last post. Almost every day I told myself I should write something, but it just ended in doing tons of assignments. I even started to think of myself as Queen’s students instead of an exchanger. Exchange life should be much easier, right?

I do think I should spend a little time talking about study life here. I admit, that Queens’ students are being “intense”, especially commerce students. I’ve heard about this tense study atmosphere in the North America for a long time, but the fact is that, when I see by myself, I was still shocked. I went to Stauffer Library, the largest one on campus (4 floors) on SUNDAY (it’s Sunday! Not even Saturday) to get some of my stuff back from my friend. Well, as what I had experienced in Tilburg, library on Sunday is almost empty, though there might still be some hard-working students. But what I saw here is that, it’s not simply that there are students, the whole library is FULL!!! You can not even find a place to sit! 

Lisboa, Lisbona, Lissabon, Lisbon...

It's holiday in Europe, the tourist level in Lisbon is rising again. I see traveller guides in 10 different languages, I start getting sick of tourists:p. They are always asking me the way, standing in the way and they are not going away. But all the tourists think I'm Portuguese and that pleases me.

Portugal in fire:

Nowadays Portugal is not doing well. Every day when I'm walking downtown I see huge demonstrations. I see a lot of people suffering, pickpockets in my supermarket and huge amount of homeless people. But the country stands also literally in fire.

Life at NHH, in Bergen and Norway

As far as I can remember, last time I wrote in particular about travelling in Norway. I travelled a lot around the country in both August and September and that has been a good choice. Now, about three weeks later, I can proof this for sure. The last weeks it is getting colder and colder, it is raining and blowing even more, and in some places which are not far away from Bergen, is it even snowing.

Next to this, from the last weeks on it is becoming busier with presentations and deadlines for assignments. I would really recommend to travel around during the first months if you are planning to go on exchange during the fall semester. But if I am honest, in June and July Norway is at its best. About three years ago I made a round trip through the southern part of the country (in July) and that was amazing! I saw the most beautiful sceneries, enjoyed the wonderful nature and luckily de sky was blue most of the time. This trip was one of the reasons that I wanted to go back to Norway for an exchange. As I have already mentioned in one of my previous blogs, the best option in Norway is to discover the country by car as then you are able to go wherever you want and you will reach the most magnificent places.

Unfortunately, this time I won’t be able to tell you something more about trips in Norway. The last weeks I really had to study and work on my assignments as I hadn’t spent much time on this before. But of course, this is also an important part of my exchange. Last week I finished the assignment for Purchasing Strategy & Supply Chain Management, presented it in class and now I only have to pass the final exam. For another course, called Social Media Marketing Research, I also have to do a research project and present it afterwards. But this is one of my most interesting courses since it is applied on practical business issues. It is about the role of social media in business which is considered as one of the most important things with regard to doing business in the future. My third course, Quantitative Risk Management, is a hard one. It is a kind of combination between finance, statistics and mathematics. Finally, I attend the Norwegian language course. It is nice to learn this language as you are able to understand things in and around the whole country. Furthermore, is quite similar to Dutch and German, so therefore I don’t need to put a lot of effort in it.

It's all in the Mix

It's all in the Mix

My second post might be a little late, but that makes it not less interesting. I will continue where I ended my first post.

The first two nights of my stay in Beijing I booked a hotel, which (when I got there) did not have a window. This seems quite common here. After checking in and some "lost in translation" I wandered around outside in one of the many "hutongs" (small alleys) surrounding the hotel. A maze of small shops/homes and genuine Beijing life, in one word: Fantastic!!! Every corner suprised me and it still

My third week in Spain

¡Hola a todos!

This time I will share with you my experiences of my third week in Spain, the moment that my classes started.

This third week was so nice, I thought it could only get worse afterwards, but by now I know that this is just how my weeks look like here on exchange! Let’s give you a chronological description, while leaving the study-related things for the next paragraph. During the weekend I enjoyed some drinks on a terrace together with two other girls on Plaza Mayor. It was very nice, the parasols even sprayed a little water, which was really refreshing. Afterwards, we visited Mercado San Miguel. On Saturday night we went to the cinema. The movie was awful, but we had great fun! On Sunday we visited El Rastro, one of the biggest markets of Spain. I bought a nice poster there, to decorate my room with. When I was almost back home, I came across something really fun! I just had to cross the Gran Vía, but….that was not possible! The last stage of the Vuelta a España was there! I am a real fan of sports, so this was a nice surprise for me. As you can understand, I had a good afternoon ;) From Monday till Friday I had to follow some lectures of course, but besides that I also went to the gym a few times, I ate delicious yoghurt ice creams with my flatmates, I met three new flatmates, I ate tapas, I went to an Erasmus party, etc. 

VIII

Hej Everyone!

I thought I would describe a day in my life here in Stockholm. This way it will be clearer what a day of an exchange student looks like. I´ve picked a random date before I knew what that day was going to bring, so it might be not the most interesting story to be told. However, it will be an honest way of showing the exchange life.

Well, on the 13^th of October I got up around 09:00 to get ready to work on an assignment at the university. The courses usually are in the afternoon or at least at 13:00, so getting up really early is not necessary. I met my international marketing group at the university to work on the group assignment, where we have to do a cultural analysis on Hong Kong in this case. We discussed the main points and divided the work. After this we went to have a quick lunch at one of the many cafeterias at the campus, around 11:30. Since there are some Swedes in my group, it is fun to actually hang out with the real inhabitants here. They tend to know which places to go a little better than us exchange students!

Pictures speak more than a 1000 words!

Ãs Promised! No words just pictures, of the life of travel, birthdays, rugby and partying!

Toronto: SCHULICH & Travel & Sports & Multiculti

Hey future exchangers,

My original plan was to blog 4 times a month... The fact that this is only the 2nd time that i write a blog signals that time is a very scarce resource here. It's hard to manage a life of a schulich school of business student, travelling exchange student, and sporter. ;-D though.. Its LOTS OF FUN and i really enjoy life here. I would like to inform you shortly about how life is here by pointing out the main things i think would be valuable for you.

Start of Fall Semester

Dear blog-readers,

The Fall Semester started in Seattle: the lectures started, the beautiful UW campus is crowded because of all the students and it is real Seattle-weather: sun, rain and wind at the same time! 

Vamos a la Playa ohohohoho

Madrid, what a city! It really starts to feel like home. Every time the university is finished it really feels like going home; something I did not expect in the beginning. It is how it is supposed to be.

Like every week there are some classes to attend. Sounds kinda boring, but they are actually getting better and better. Making homework is not always something I am looking forward to, but with this method totally different from the one at Tilburg University, you do understand the subject matter more quickly. I can so far only conclude that this only means that I have a real Christmas holiday. The first 3 days of the week went by very quickly.

On Icelandic Politics

Dear readers,

Today I would like to share something on Icelandic politics.

Now I can be either very short or very extensive on this;

In short; it's ridiculous.

[Those who went for this option can stop reading now...]

Travelling!

Life in Turku is in many aspects much different from my life in Tilburg. Not only because of the (relatively small) culture differences but most of all because of all the activities I have. Compared to Tilburg I have a lot of time left. On exchange there are no obligations except for passing exams to get credits. Here I’m for example not in any committees, boards or sports associations and I don’t have to spend time on family (only the couple of hours that I skype with them). This means that I have a lot of time left to do other things. For example on travelling and there is a lot to do and to see in and around Finland.

Holland in da house

Hello blog readers,

Last weekend I went to Valencia, we came home at 01.30 so the Monday after I couldn’t go out of my bed. I made my homework for that week and rest a bit in the morning. Jasper went to the airport to pick up Xander a friend of him who I know as well. That night they came eating with me so I made some delicious tapas.

Tuesday we had classes and Xander came for dinner again. Wednesday we always have one class. That night we went to the parque de la Montana with our friends to have dinner end enjoy the sunset. It was a very nice evening. I still like the fact that so many people hang out in the parks at night. People from the age of 8 who belong in bed in the Netherlands at 21.00 pm and also a lot of people from the age of 80 who are outside the whole day long, while in the Netherlands a lot of them hang out inside their houses. It is so cute to see an old couple in the metro who help each other to go in. I guess people live longer because they are so often outside. I think I am going to miss my dinners in the parks when I am back in the Netherlands.

Things are heating up

Things are heating up, in two ways. First off, we found out the dorm has floor heating. This is quite nice in winter I suppose, but due to the fact that they simply turned it on throughout the building without an option to turn it off is a bit less pleasant. Second, midterms are coming up: I’ll have two next week and one in the week afterwards. Besides that, I’ve made some decisions regarding my future in the last week.

My birthday, Yogyakarta and Bali

Long time ago, so enough to tell!! This story is going to be a long one, so be prepared! The semester in Singapore is already halfway gone!!! How crazy, my last final is in one and a half month! In the middle of the semester we had a recess week, one week without lectures. This doesn't mean holiday for Singaporeans, because of course, busy busy busy and looooots of work. For exchange students..... YES it does mean holiday!!!! The week before recess week already felt like holiday as it was the week of my birthday. I've been looking forward to my birthday every year again for a long time, nowadays I can get a normal sleep, but when I was young it was even hard to fall a sleep ;). Well, how to celebrate your birthday 13 000 km away from home? 

Happy Budapest!

Call the Washington Post! Send an email to The Guardian! Send smoke signals to NRC Next! The biggest news of the past weeks is.. that I turned 21 =D

I am probably the only one (besides the Americans here) that is that excited about this news, but still.. worth mentioning! Especially, because a lot of the events I will be telling you about in this blog are related to this. Happy birthday to me =)

Erasmus life in Athens!

Hey everyone !

So far I've only written about the Greek culture and the economic crisis. Now, let's talk about the fun part! The Erasmus life!

The ESN in Athens is very active and they rea

lly try to get all Erasmus students together. Just after my arrival was the introduction week. There were 2 activities each day, a cultural activity in the noon and a party in the night. I Think that approximately 75 Erasmus students atte

nded the introduction week. Also after the intro week they organized parties at least twice a week and the other days you just organize parties yourselves w

ith the friends you made during the intro week. Yes, the first weeks of your exchange are more like a holiday than an exchange :p. But you'll have to learn to drink ouzo ( if you never drank it before )because the prices of the alcohol you're used to drink are probably more expensive here than in Holland.

MYKONOOOOOOOS !

Beautiful Edinburgh!

Here it is! My second blog and as promised I will tell you about my trip to the AMAZING city Edinburgh and the start of my classes.



The first two weeks here in Glasgow felt like an incredible vacation, meeting new people, partying all the time and shop till you drop. However, all of that came to an end when my classes started… Just kidding! 

VII

Hej everyone! Time for some new anecdotes from Stockholm!

Last week I had my first exam here in Sweden; The Swedish course level 1 exam. The exam was pretty long considering the fact that there were only 6 real lectures. It consisted of 12 assignments which all had 10 to 20 small assignments. I think it went well enough to pass it! However, I don´t really have the feeling that I´ve learned that much, so I´ll probably also take course in level 2. Of course I would be deeply ashamed if I can´t speak fluent Swedish when I leave here!

Tinto!

Fans, readers, followers, another update from Madrid! Again packed full of adventures, so start reading …

On Monday I have my usual classes, which are often too early to give yourself the feeling that you are actually learning something. It are the most interesting subjects of the five, so I try to be a good student and participate as well as possible. The professor at Strategic Management was as unclear as always, so we did not know what we actually had to study for today’s review test.

College Life

Two weeks later! as promised an update about how my life at college is.

It's coming together, First few days I was completely lost and the only thing I could find the dining hall! But after two weeks I can find my way around quite easily.

Classes.

Because I take the two long distance courses, I only take three courses here! They have some courses they do not teach at Tilburg University, So thats cool!. I take Organisational theory, which is a follow-up of organisational behavior. I liked organisation behavior, so I thought this would be intresting, Furthermore, I take managing non-profit organisation, which I like because of the fact that non-profit organisations are not often discussed in IBA. Finally, I also take an economics course, which is in combination economics and law. Thats completely new.

But there are several other courses that are also intresting at TCD. The classes work pretty much the same however, they have a lot more focus on assignments and a lot less on exams. especially if you're here for the first term!

Rugby

I really wanted to try a new sport, so as mentioned in my last blog I chose to do rugby!

I now had three practises, because of a party tonight I am skipping the fourth, but that should be allowed. I am not playing games anyways. I am however joining as a supporter to the match on sunday! would be a nice trip as well as a nice way to get to know the girls better.

The Friendship Program

During the first week here in Turku I was informed about the Friendship Program. Through this program you can get in contact with Finnish people. I decided to sign up for the program to see more of the Finnish culture. Of course there are enough Finnish students here, but I would like to meet “normal” Finnish people to see what “normal” (not student) life is like here in Finland. A couple of weeks ago I met my “Finnish friend”. It turned out that it was a whole family. Mom, dad and two children of 10 and 9 years old. It was a very nice first meeting and we talked about all kinds of stuff. We decided to meet again and that was last Friday. I took my bike and rode to their house located in a small village to the west of Turku. 

Það besta sem Guð hefur skapad er nýr ðagur

As this exchange semester is something so totally different from anything I ever experienced in my life, I choose to see it as a new start. I took the opportunity to put some good intentions in place, as probably more people will have done; I bought a cheap second-hand guitar to pick up my guitar play again and promised myself to go exercising as I used to do quite some time ago. (Actually; way too long ago...)

Exams in Argentina

Horrible: Exams are coming up. What to expect? Such a different country, such a different style of classes, so how are those exams going to be? No idea..just learn and see..
and yes I found out. Its different, waaaaaaaay different.
In Tilburg the university tries to repeat as often as possible we learn to prove everything scientifically, here you just print every word in your head: learn everything by hart and you will succeed. If not, you doomed.

politica de producto: write everything down you know from topic 2. can be 2 or more pages long..what to do? write everything down you can remember, but don't mix the topics!
liderazgo: same
recursos humanos: learn 12 chapters, over 250 pages, and know the smallest details.

this is not all, the most cultural shock point on making exams is the following:
you enter the class room and wait until the teacher starts talking. he divides the class in different themes and everyone tears a paper out of his notebook. What? Jep, you need to provide your own paper and write down the question the professor tells you to answer. So if someone asks if the exams are different, yes!


Relaxing weekend in Rosario; beach + skydiving!

Trip! Santiago de Chile-Mendoza-Cordoba

How amazing is studying abroad: INDESCRIBABLE!

Attending courses, meeting interesting international people, partying and especially traveling!

I went with 4 friends on a 10-days trip: Santiago de Chile, Mendoza and Cordoba.
Summarized: Santiago de Chile, a nice, clean city with a lot of history. Mendoza THE wine district with uncountable vineyards (bodegas). Cordoba, the second biggest city of Argentina/the student city, where springbreak 2011 took place!

Uni a la south-america

Bien dia!

In the former blog I told you something about my university in general, in this blog I will tell you about my courses and all the differences I experience. The classes are 3 hours or 5 hours long, depending on the course. You really need a longer concentration curve here, because they only have 1 break for both. The 45 minutes in Tilburg don't sound that bad right now, right?;). Though, I really enjoy my courses here! They are really interesting and taught in such a different way!

Slides: too modern
Red line: not necessary
Books: as many as possible
Activity in class: as much as possible
So: different!

Travelling and studying

In my previous blog I wrote about the benefits which Norway offers. One of these are the surroundings and during the last couple of weeks I enjoyed it as much as I could. I spent a lot of days in the mountains, were I watched magnificent landscapes and beautiful nature. Sometimes we went for a hike to one of the mountains around Bergen, but I also participated in several weekend trips with other international students. Since the distances in Norway are large and the timetables of the public transport are quite irregular (especially in small villages), organizing a trip isn’t as easy as I thought. Almost all cities in Norway are located along the west coast, next to the sea. But in the middle of the country are a lot of interesting places, which offer glaciers, waterfalls, fjords and other beautiful environment. The best option is to hire a car for a couple of days, book a cabin on a camping and tour around the country. So this is what we did! 

Life in Athens

Dear Bloggers and readers,

I've been in Greece for 3 weeks now and it's amazing. To be honest, today is the first day I actually went to the university and the rest of the days was just "Erasmus life".

It's not that I didn't want to go to the university, which is really close to my apartment, but is had been occupied by protesting students for the last whole month and therefore we were not allowed to get in. Studying in Athens university is totally for free because it's a public school. Even the meals in the cafeteria are for free. Now the government wants the students to start paying a little amount of money and that's why they are striking. There are also protests and riots almost every day and at least one's or twice a week there's public transport and/or a taxi strike. That makes life a little harder because without public transport or a cab we cannot go anywhere and the streets are not really safe during a riot. Then I just have to stay home and listen to the sirens of police cars all day long. 

I feel home

Hello blog readers,

More and more I get the feeling that Madrid is my home now. My Spanish get better and better and we met some Spanish friends from Carlos III. Also I already used the Spanish Marktplaats which is called Segundomano.es.

Monday and Tuesday we had classes. More and more I see the advantages of this school system. Since we have to do homework and really discuss this exercises, and we also have review tests I guess that I will have a real Christmas holiday instead of Christmas-preparing-weeks-for-the-exams which I normally have in Tilburg. Also it is really easy to prepare these review test since they are about just three weeks of lectures so the exams will be more relax when you know that 40 % of your grade is about an 8.

VI

Now that I´ve started my second course here I´m getting the feeling that, as opposed to the stories I had heard from students that already went on exchanges, the courses at Stockholm University have a higher difficulty level than I´m used to. I´d heard a lot of stories about courses being a lot easier in other countries compared to the Netherlands, but I must admit I haven´t noticed that! The 2 courses I´ve followed until now (Real estate management and now History of the welfare state) are pretty die-hard! Maybe it is because you do not follow different courses simultaneously, but nevertheless the level is pretty high. History of the welfare state is actually the first real course for me, since I dropped Real estate management (see an older blog entry). The course basically consists of 6 lectures in total, and a lot of home reading. We’re talking about approximately 1200 pages of material here, so that’s not too shabby! Each lecture consists of a presentation by the professor, and 2 presentations by students, followed by a discussion. It is a very interactive way of learning and you really get involved with the subject. With 12 people it’s also a really small group, which is also nice. 

Dear Green Place aka Glasgow

Hi everyone!

You're about to read my first blog! I will start introducing myself. I'm Michelle Rewinkel, 20 years old and third year student International Business Administration. This semester I'm studying at the University of Strathclyde Business School Glasgow.

First amazing month in Lisbon

Already a month in Lisbon, unbelievable. My new courses are interesting, I went surfing, saw Benfica-Manchester United, and went to algarve. The whole month was amazing. I want to give you an impression of my erasmuslife in the first month.

University:

According to me, Universidade Catolica Portuguesa is a good university. The courses are really interactive, every week we discuss cases and have scientific roundtables. This is totally different from Tilburg University, but very good for my English and participatian. The courses are mandatory and we have never classes with more than 40 students. In every class there are as much Portuguese as international students. I like the principles during group work. Every time we have to mix international and Portuguese students.