Inner Mongolia blog long overdue

Dear all,

I've been crazy busy the last month and don't know where to start. At the end of September I started of on my first trip. After heavy discussion, me and four of my friends decided to go to Inner Mongolia, which is located in the north of China. We did not go to Hainan or Macau or the Yellow mountains because these are traditionally the more tourist places and seeing as we were traveling in the 7 Day National Holiday we thought it would be wiser to avoid those places. So we left by plane with a company called China-SSS which in my personal opinion can be referred to from now on as China-Ass. I must mention it is the RyanAir of China but the trip was not pleasant. Throughout the flight someone was screaming nonstop through the microphone in Chinese, it turned out this was advertisement and the seats were smaller than anything I have ever experienced. I’m 1.85m and I could not sit straight and had to sit sideways to fit into those ‘for Chinese made’ seats. Just another way of experiencing Chine!

Travel Tornado

Hello!

In this blog I put a lot of photos, since over the past two weeks I made another 340 pictures... Guess my camera was the best present I have ever had!
From today on I am going to stay in Budapest until Christmas =) After Vienna, Lake Balaton, Bratislava, Pécs, Belgrado and the latest additions Krakow and Prague.. it will be nice to have some more settling down in 'my' lovely city. Besides, my body started protesting this weekend (eye and troath infection).. So, time to stop running around Middle- and Eastern European. Time to slow down and enjoy the last weeks (!) of Budapest.

Culture shock, or the lack thereof

I’m sure everyone has heard of culture shock, it is the difficulty people have adjusting to a new culture which differs greatly from their own. In general, people tend to go through four major phases when going through culture shock; the honeymoon phase, the negotiation phase,  adjustment phase and finally the mastery phase.

It differs per person whether someone goes through these stages and also to which extent one experiences these different stages. 

'midterms'

After two weeks of 'midterms' I'm back in Lisbon. You will think, what does he mean ''back in Lisbon''. I had only one optional midterm, this means free time for a trip.

Actually I made the optional midterm, bank management, in the first 'midterm' week. The level of the midterm was probably the same as in Holland but there was a big difference. I only had to make 8 out of 9 multiple choice questions and 2 out of 3 open questions. That was more easy because I could skip the most difficult question.

After the midterm I could do some sightseeing. My parents and little brother came, which was really exciting. I could show them how I live in Portugal, of course they where a bit jalous on me. They slept in the hotel upstairs which was comfortable. After two days I went to Porto with them because they spent a week in Lisbon before. I am happy that I am studying in Lisbon and not in Porto. Porto is much more expired, beaches are less nice and the weather was terrible(unlucky)!

Episode 5: Intercultural experience

Hello readers,

This time we were asked to write something about the intercultural experience we had so far. Let’s start with a well-known theory on adjusting to life in a new country. This theory says that many students go through different stages during their exchange period: the honeymoon period, the negotiation phase, the adjustment phase and the mastery phase. In the honeymoon period, everything is exciting and you are enjoying new experiences and are very positive about your new home. My honeymoon period started when I had found a room and lasted approximately one month! Then normally the negotiation phase follows, in which students start to compare their host and home cultures more in depth and this usually leads to anxiety and frustration about the new culture. Students can get irritated by cultural differences and feel disconnected from the new culture. Well, I truly believe that I skipped this phase, because I immediately got accustomed to the new culture after the honeymoon period. 

Coldplay!

I will continue my blog where I left of last time: Kelly’s best friend, Jennifer, was here for her last day, but we had classes, so she decided to join us. Not that she really liked to get up a 7 a.m., but she had no other choice or she would be in our apartment all alone. Our teacher did not even look up when we were sitting front row; he probably assumed that she was one of his students who never comes to class. Jennifer enjoyed the class so much that she fell asleep after a few minutes.

Halloween and American Way of Life

Hi everyone!

Last Monday (October 31) was the day of Halloween! All the houses in the city were covered with pumpkins, ghosts, gravestones, skeletons etc. Some people even built a ‘Haunted House’ in front of their own house, which they use on the evening of Halloween. During my Halloween-dinner, the doorbell was ringing all the time. Children dressed up in very sweet costumes (one boy was dressed up as Obama!) asked me ‘Trick or Treat?’ and I gave them candy haha! For the Halloween-dinner we prepared filled pumpkin. The preparation of the pumpkin starts in the morning with getting out the content of the pumpkin and then filling it with vegetables, meat and potatoes. The filled pumpkin has to bake in the oven for the entire day. Furthermore, the student-Halloween parties found place the weekend before Halloween. Everyone wears a (scary) costume and it is quite similar to Carnaval in the Netherlands.

halloween

Hello people, here I am again with my weekly blog.
It’s already Halloween, a party they actually celebrate here and we got a day of for it. I went whit Jasper to the 100 monteditos to have a nice lunch. It was very hot again today and it could be maybe the last real hot day. Wearing a t-shirt drinking a Kas-limon and eating a delicious little bread with smoked salmon and scrimps with the sun in my face I felt myself really lucky! That night we went out for dinner with our Spanish friends and also our Russian friend came with us. We went to bocadillo de calamaris where we got a bread for 2,70 with calamaris. We went to La Latina a nice neighbourhood of Madrid were we bought a drink from the chino sellers which you can find everywhere. After we went to our apartment were also some other Spanish friends came so we were with a big group. It was such a very very nice evening! They learned me the Spanish and Latin-America dances. They also told us a lot about Spain and their youth. One friend of mine has a seconds house in Benidorm and invited us to go with him there for a weekend which will be so excited. Also his dad has his own hotel and every year he gives a big party there and he invited us for that party as well. Our Spanish friends are really so, so nice!

Singa after three months!

All the group projects are due the coming weeks, we have only one week of lectures left and the finals finish in 20 days….. AAAAH the Singapore experience is coming to an end!!!! How crazy is this, as I can remember arriving as the day of yesterday. Everything about Singapore seemed exciting and perfect, well now we know better ;). My parents and brother visited me last week and they pointed out the cultural differences to me again, while for me this all got normal and I’m used to it. We spend 5 days in Bali and 6 days in Singapore and it was good to show them all the places I’m spending my time here.

It’s hard to get a real impression of Singaporean people as they have very different personalities, but especially act differently in different contexts. In school I found out that there is a huge difference between the students in my marketing/business classes and my sociology class. In marketing and business they are not that keen on working with exchange students, they are competitive and go for their own success. In sociology class I made some true friends, we have lunch together, we talk about various topics and I get the feeling they actually do fun things next to their study and CV boosting activities. This is quite rare here in SMU!

Spanish culture

After living about 2 months in Madrid now, I can tell my loyal readers something about the cultural differences with the Netherlands.

First of all, the university. To be honest, it is not what I expected from a university. I would compare it more to high school because of the small classes, homework and the numerous cases and review tests. That was something I really had to get used to, because at Tilburg University there most of the time is only a final exam. So during the semester you do not have to do the cases, assignments and review tests we have to make now. When I think about that however, it might be a better way to get a higher grade for the final exam as you already have got some partial exams and midterms.

Finnish life and culture

I have lived in Finland for more than two months already and although I have mainly been hanging around with other exchange students you see a lot of the culture. Finnish culture is Western European and is in many aspects not very different from the Dutch culture. Still some things are remarkable and can be a little bit difficult to get used to. Let me reflect in this blog on the cultural differences I have experienced so far.

Short blog: Everything is going its course

It has once again been quite a while since my last blog. Since the last blog I’ve gotten the results of my midterms which have all gone very well; all my grades were above the average of the classes so I am very satisfied with my academic results.

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!