Philippines: what an experience!

Last weekend I went to the Philippines with my two Belgium roommates and another friend of us from Canada. We left friday early in the morning and after a 4 hour flight we arrived in Cebu-city, this is the fourth city of the Philippines, but also the oldest city. We stayed at an island close to the city, in a village called Lapu-Lapu city. When we arrived in this village, we immediately noticed the poverty of this country. Little houses, people everywhere on the street wearing old clothes and only flip-flops.. The streets were filled with crazy vehicles, motorbikes with sidecars, trucks and little open vans. And there the first Philippine wish came up, I definitely wanted to go with both the motorbike and the van. After a nice seafood lunch we walked around in the little city. There we were like attractions, everybody was looking at us, staring at my friends Tyler and Sebastiaan because they are so tall. 

stressful registrations for trips

At the moment I’m writing my second blog I’m full of adrenaline. At 19:00 (I’m writing at 19:30) was the sign up for the ESN trip to Lapland. With around 1000 exchange students that all want to go and only 250 places, everybody is on facebook and clicking on the link for over 100 times. I didn’t count how often I tried to refresh pages and clicked on all links possible but it took me around 30 minutes to get me and 2 friends of mine registered. At 19:00 sharp the registration should be open. However, the opposite happened, the registration link disappeared fully from the website. The only option was refreshing and trying to reopen it again. Reading all comments on facebook from other people that did not manage to register either calmed me a little bit down, but still I was stressed. Finally I received another link of a guy on my floor and I managed. You cannot imagine how happy I am to be registered!

Ágætis byrjun

My dad once told me that Frisians have always had this special bond with Nordic countries which would accomodate befriending, and would make cultural integration lots and lots easier. You know, when you simply understand eachother without putting extra effort into it. Now I am half-Frisian, and after more than a month in Iceland I think I can say that it is not (half) that easy.

First classes ...

After having two weeks of fun and the feeling like you are on holiday, it was time to start the real life called university. The good thing about it is that you build up a daily rhythm, but the bad thing is that I have to get up at 7 a.m. every day, except for Friday, which is my weekly day of and thus a great start of a long, well-deserved weekend.

my life in spain

18-9-2011

Every day I see them again. Blue skirts, Scottish diamonds, white polo’s and so on ; kids in school uniform. So cute to see. Not only kids from primary school but also high school kids.

Saturday the 10th I stayed at home to make homework even though it was 35 degrees outside and I were not really in the mood.

Sunday Jasper and I went to the finish of the Vuelta, the Spanish ‘Tour de France’. It was nice to see this, especially because we stood at the first raw and could see everything very well.
We also met two American travellers who were really nice! They gave us some tips for going to America. Jasper caught a bidon from one of the racers and I made some very good pictures.

IV

BLOG 4

Last Monday we had a pub crawl. For the ones that do not know what a pub crawl is: You basically go to a lot of different bars in one evening, and at most of them you’ll get a discount or a free drink. In this case, we divided into groups of 5, and we went to five different bars. At most bars we could get a beer for around 30 crones (3.30 euros)! We considered this very cheap! Those prices were a lot better than we had experienced so far! One of the bars was a really retro bar, with these typical 80’s hits. Definitely worth visiting again! In the last bar we gathered with all the groups. There my friends and I stayed for a while and chatted around. It´s always a laugh when I tell them the place I was born is Weert (pronounce it in English and you’ll understand). It was definitely a good evening!

Same same, but different ...

It is always nice to start off with a serious part first before you jump into the informal jibber jabber, so I start with that small formal part:

You can go anywhere in the world, from Toronto to Sydney and from Taipei to Beijing, I chose the latter and you will find out why during the process of this blog. The thing is choosing a Western country like Canada or Australia is really easy, you know in general the language, the food and the way people will react in different situations. However it will not provide you the insights of a real different culture, with all of her beauty and rich history as for instance China does. It is not a coincidence that they ruled the world for a long time in history and that they are now on their way of doing such again.

In the last quarter of a century (so my whole life) their economy have been growing so tremendously (yes their population too), that they draw the attention of

Another week in Korea

Caribbean Bay

Today, I went to the biggest water park in the world: Everland Caribbean Bay. There I experienced firsthand what recreation in Asia can be like.

First week in the USA

Hi everybody!

It has only been one week ago since I left the Netherlands, however I discovered quite a lot, so it feels like I have been here for a while. Last week I travelled 8000 km by plane, 650 km by car and 40 km by foot.

Last week I arrived in Seattle, USA. I am going to study for a semester at the University of Washington in Seattle. It was a long trip (10 hours flying) and the time difference is 9 hours, so that makes it tiresome. My father travelled with me, to join me in the USA for a week. We rented a car when we arrived in Seattle and it felt immediately like I was in the USA, the big highways, all thefastfood and the big cars and trucks.

Our plan was to make a trip throughout Washington State and finally arrive in Seattle.

My first day in Athens

Hey all

Thank you for reading my blog and I'll try to make it as interesting as possible!

This morning I arrived at the airport of Athens. My contact person ( so called exchange buddy ) was waiting for me there. The taxi drivers are on strike today because they refuse to start paying taxes so we had to use the public transport. Although all travel information was available in English I was glad that my buddy knew which train and bus to take. He guided me to the office of Stayinathens, the organization I booked an apartment at. There I met the landlord and he took me to my apartment and stayed there for a while because he still had to clean most rooms. His English is very good and like al Greeks he likes to have a long conversation. Of course, the economic crisis and the Greek culture were two of the many topics.

I love Budapest!

Classes have started! Even though I missed my first lecture of Social Inequalities already.. due to a scheduling fault of my own. Still, I am now an official student at Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem and that feels good!

The main building of the university is part of the UN

ESCO Heritage Site and I cannot disagree with that. It is really beautiful. However, most of my classe

s are in the C-building, which is located right next to the main-building and has a very modern architecture, which I also fi

nd very inspiring!

So, vacation is over.. and studying begins! Of course you will here many stories about that from me, but let me first tell you about my last 'free' week here ;)

Singapore study pressure

Everybody told me this and prepared me for the study pressure in Singapore, but until last week I didn't really noticed it.... but yes in the fourth week of my exchange in Singapore I got exposed to the stress which comes with studying here. I have four courses here and 2 courses in the Netherlands, for all the six courses I currently have group projects. Well, in the Netherlands we are used to dividing most of the theoretical part of the project. Here they first have a meeting to brainstorm about which sources we are going to use, then another meeting to set up a framework and then finally we start with creating the report. Those meetings last for around 2 or 3 hours each, they don't mind meeting up after 8 pm (while they do mind meeting up before 12).

Universidad del CEMA

Hola!

This blog is about my university here in Buenos Aires: Universidad del CEMA. I really like my university! It's well organized and it is a small university, really small! You may think, every university is well organized, right? I can tell you one thing: In South America well organized organizations/companies are rare. Personally, I am still a little amazed by the inefficiency I experience  every day, not only during the classes, but even with grocery shopping or getting a statement of robbery at the police office. Though it is a great experience and it makes you respect the Netherlands and its policies more, at least for me thats the case.;)
About a month ago my introduction days started. I just got back from my trip to Salta and was looking forward to meet all the exchange students of my university. Up to that moment I already knew a lot of people from di Tella, but this was a new opportunity to meet other interesting people. UCEMA has 2 introduction days, on those days the university provide you with all the information necessary to study at UCEMA and you will get to know your fellow exchange students. You can get to know all names in one day, because there are only a few international students. This is really nice, because you will get to know all exchange students pretty well and it is possible to organize dinners and activities with all of them. I really like my fellow exchange students, 5 are from south-america and the others from europe. We organize dinners with different country themes every wednesday and do a lot of activities together. The first days I felt really stupid, because my Spanish isn't that advanced as the others, all the others have, or spanish as mother tongue, studied already for a semester in a Spanish-speaking country or speak Portuguese what is kind of the same. Luckily enough, everyone is very kind and it is the perfect way to learn spanish really quick.

First classes at Uc3m.

Hello blogreaders,

Monday was my first day at Carlos III. I already found out a faster way to get there what is always nice to know when you have 4 days of classes at 9 am. My first class was Strategic Management. The new professors were as good informed as we were. ( Not really good ) so he didn’t manage to get the slides on the screen. He had to wrote down everything on the blackboard. His accent is really fun, but I won’t complain , this was one of the first people who actually speaks English in Spain so that was nice. The second class we had to watch a youtube movie about Enron.( I think we could do this also at home and better he told us a bit more about Enron himself) I have to get used to this school system, we have to make a lot of assignments, case studies and so on and they want you to be in class. In Tilburg I just follow some of my courses but some of them are so much easier to be studied at home and for these subjects I never go to classes. Because there are at max 30 people in the classroom you have to participate active and you can’t just sitting in your chair, enjoy a cup of coffee and a nice slice of bread. However I don’t like homework, I do like the fact that classes are just one hour, you got case studies out from the real life what makes it more fun and you can better imagine what the subject is really about. In Tilburg I sometimes really don’t. Also the rapidity of the classes is much slower than at Tilburg.