And So It Ends...

Well folks, my semester in Amsterdam has drawn to a close. I am now back in the US, having flown home on the 5th of June. I'm not completely done, as I still have some work to turn in via email, but I am back home in NJ. (Besides, I'm sure those of you reading are really not all that interested in my ramblings on immigration and homonationalism). As such, this is going to be my last real post on this blog - hope you all enjoyed reading it! (I will post once more with pictures from my last trip to the pancake bakery once I find my camera cable).

I feel like I should be writing something incredibly witty and insightful here about my experiences, but for that I am drawing a bit of a blank. While I did enjoy living in a foreign country for a semester, I believe that any revelations that I had were more to do with my personal development and independence than with any expanding of my view of the world. I suppose that makes sense - I lived in England as a kid, and my dad is currently living in London again, so living in Europe was not something entirely new to me.

Still, I have already noticed some things that I will miss/am missing about the Netherlands. First and formost? Strong coffee. Before I went over in January I used to enjoy the Dunkin Donuts beans my mom used to use at home. Now that just tastes watery and weak to me. This is going to be a problem, as I tend to drink a good deal of coffee.

Another thing I'll miss is the variety of sweet dairy products. I have already posted about my love of vla and kwark so I will not repeat myself, but I will be seriously trying to find a recipe for vla at the very least...one can hope, right?

I have definitely appreciated the Dutch's tendency to be very blunt, especially after living in Los Angeles for the last few years. I always talk about missing the NYC attitude...but the Dutch are even more direct. It is usually awesome, though I will admit I was less than pleased with how some topics in my classes were handled without any sensitivity. (Showing Geert Wilders' political film "FITNA" which includes slow motion footage of 9/11 requires at least a warning before showing it to a bunch of American students, especially when the group contains students from the area, who knew people who didn't survive. No, I am not referring to only me). The flip side of this experience is that I have become more blunt myself, and less tolerant of evasive answers. It should be interesting to see how that works out for me back in Los Angeles.

Other things I will miss
Stroopwafles

Pancake Bakery/Dutch Pancakes
Kilimanjaro (Ethiopian restaurant that was AWESOME)
Good public transit
Smog-free air
Green space that is readily accessible
Hoegaarden Rose (The first beer I have ever liked)
Real whipped cream being served everywhere with hot chocolate
Being able to walk pretty much everywhere easily

Being able to walk home at night and feel safe

Hearing at least 2-3 languages spoken everyday, and not finding it unusual

Fries served with mayo, usually in a paper cone (especially from Burger Bar)

Going to artsy movies with Jantien

Gay bars that make killer cocktails

The feeling of superiority of being able to laugh at the tourists who don't know to not walk in the bike path

The concept of gezellig

So long Amsterdam, and thanks for the fish.

(Actually, not really. I never did try the herring, nor did I have any desire to do so. Maybe someday when I visit again).

Fun Dutch Facts

I have a bunch of things I want to post about, but I'm about to head to London for Easter to visit my family. SO for today, I will leave you with a handful of fun Dutch facts my Dutch teacher shared with us in class the other day. Some I knew, some I didn't...and here are my favorites!

1) The Rijksmuseum was designed to represent a church and "The Night Watch" by Rembrandt formed the 'altar piece.'

2) Manhattan, among others governed by Peter Stuyvesant around 1650, was purchased by the Dutch West Indita Company for the equivalent of 25 euros.

3) When you arrive at Schiphol Airport, you are four and a half meters below sea level.

4) The Dutch swapped New York, formerly called New Amsterdam, for Suriname in 1667 in a trade with the Brittish.

5) For more than 200 years, from 1639 to 1868, the Dutch were the only westerners in the world allowed to trade with the Japanese.

6) Sri Lanka was a Dutch colony from 1656 until 1802. Therefore, Dutch has contributed substantially to its official language Singhalese.

7) The last German emperor Wilhelm II found asylum in a castle near Utrecht in 1920. The castle used to be the home of the grandmother of Audrey Hepburn.

8) When queen Beatrix turned 65 she received a state pension just like everyone else, despite the fact that she is worth $300 million.

9)If requested, a sex worker will be provided for a physically and mentally disabled person, paid by the state.

10) The Dutch company Philips invented the CD player in 1979.

11) Out of the 16 Dutch Nobel Prize Winners, 10 received the prize for their research in physics and chemistry.

12) The first dikes were built around the year 1100 by monks.

13) The original color of a carrot is not orange. The Dutch artificially manipulated the carrot around 1600 into orange to match it to the national color.

14) In 1679, the Dutch scientist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek found for the first time bacteria and spermatozoa with his own made microscope.

15) According to Dutch scientist Simon Stevin, Adam and Eve spoke Dutch in Paradise, and Dutch would be the most logical language in the world. Therefore he wrote most of his work - late 1500s- in Dutch. This is the main reason why in Dutch most scientific words are Dutch not Latin.

16) In the beginning of the 1630s, tulips were more expensive than gold and cause a tulip mania. It collapsed as they didn't know yet the different colors and stripes were caused by a viral disease.

You Know You're in a Drinking Culture When...

1) There is a "borrel" (party) almost every night of the week, and everyone goes regardless of whether or not they have a 9am class. (This means that I end up being super lame, because I just can't handle a 3 hour class when hungover/tired, or when my body keeps getting sick). Borrels are not just student run, but are also put on by the university as a way to mingle with students/professors.

2) Your Beginning Dutch Professor spends time in class explaining the types of beer glasses you can ask for, and not to ask specifically for Heineken (because if its not on tap it will be 2x the price), and that using the diminutive biertje is only polite, and has no relationship with how big your beer will actually be.

3) It is normal for students to try to ride their bikes home drunk (or high).

4) You are more likely to get stopped by the police for not having bike lights than you are for biking drunk.

5) Adults go to and actually enjoy karaoke. Why? Because it's pretty hilarious when you're drunk. Only after drinking a few beers does singing Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me" sound like a good idea.

6) They only sell non-alcoholic beer at football (soccer games), in order to control the aggressive soccer hooligans. The also have breathalyzers at the gates for big games, ie Rotterdam vs. Amsterdam (but not U.S. vs. Netherlands).

7) Finding beer sold in a bar for less than two euros is a big deal, regardless of how big that beer might actually be.

8) Your study abroad program gives you two drinks at every official event/dinner, despite being an American program with American students.

NOTE: Some of these are true of Dutch culture, some of international student culture, and some of both. It's hard to tell, since the international student population is fairly isolated from the dutch student population. The only Dutch student I have regular contact with is Jantien, one of my ISN orientation leaders.

Is This Grade Ok With You?

In the last two weeks I have had to do my two big presentations for my UvA classes. For both of them, I had to present some of the weeks readings, provide connections to current events, and lead discussion and/or class activities.

For my sexuality class I got to work with a partner, which was actually really fun for a change - usually I'm not thrilled about group presentations because I want to control everything, but my partner was this awesome grad student from Spain who was super smart, so it was really. Though, he and I both talk too much.

My presentation for Religious and Cultural Diversity I was on my own though, and I have to say, that presentation was one of the most stressful presentations I have ever given, since I had to talk about somewhat dense political theory, and be sure it made sense to the rest of my class that thinks linearly, not in my weird looping logic.

(For those of you who were in the American Presidency seminar, I now sort of get what Heldman was trying to accomplish with our presentations. We were just so far from that its funny, but then again, we also only had 10min).

I got the grades for both of my presentations this week, and it was very odd. After Sexuality on Tuesday, Silke (my prof) walked up to me and said that she had been thinking about my grade for the presentation, and was wondering if I thought an 8.5 was ok? (it translates to an A/A-). She was basically asking what I thought my grade should be. I was a bit confused by this, and just said yes of course. A similar conversation took place for my other presentation, with the prof asking me if I thought my grade was about right for the class standard (he was subbing, my normal professor had a stroke and is out for a month).

When I texted my dutch orientation leader later I found out that this a pretty standard Dutch practice. Apparently, here professors are less interested in a hierarchical interaction with their students, and treat them more as equals. They also sincerely want your feedback on the class, and your feedback on how well you think you are doing. This is pretty strange to me, since I feel like talking about what grade you deserve feels a bit like grade grubbing, but apparently that is not the case here. It's somewhat refreshing in a way, but at the same time quite unnerving, as it is definitely not what I am used to.