The international student experience

Somehow, four months has come and gone, and now I’m once again looking at a very large and empty suitcase sitting on my floor.  My semester abroad is coming to an end, which probably means that yours is too (at least it is if you’re an exchange student – you Master’s students have another several [...]

While I’ve been studying at Erasmus, I’ve definitely been exposed to plenty of new ideas and schools of thought about international politics. Rather than bore you with theories of European integration, I thought I’d just throw in my two cents about how the EU works (or, in some cases, doesn’t), and why my outlook on [...]

Okay fellow international students: we’ve officially reached the last month of our exchange semesters abroad.  I’ll be the first to admit that I cannot wait to get home, see my family, and reacquaint myself with life back in the US.  At the same time, I’m freaking out a little bit – I can’t have just [...]

I’ve been very busy for the past two weeks – I found some spare time in my calendar and some extra cash in my bank account, so I booked trips for Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom.  Between trips, I had about 14 hours back in Rotterdam – usually just enough time to unpack, sleep, [...]

Fall is one of my favorite times of the year.  Back at my school in Washington, the leaves are all changing color, Starbucks is rolling out pumpkin spice lattes, and I get to put on my boots without feeling guilty about wearing fall clothes during August.  In Rotterdam, it’s a bit different.  I’ve been wearing [...]

Rotterdam is a great city for several reasons – it’s diverse, there’s plenty to do, you can get kebab at all hours of the day (and night), and it’s in a great jumping-off location for traveling to other places in Europe.  I’ve definitely been taking advantage of this – so far I’ve been to Amsterdam [...]

Now that the semester is halfway over and the initial excitement of being in Holland has begun to wear off, I’ve realized something – life abroad can be really stressful.  Living in another country can be really awesome most of the time, but other times (like when your internet gets shut off and you have [...]

Now I know that talking about the weather might seem like a bit of a boring topic, but I think that when we have five straight days of sunshine, I should take note.  If nothing else, this blog entry will prove to the outside world that Holland can occasionally have gorgeous weather during the fall. [...]

You find several lists like this one: http://www.perfectgroup.com/blog/2011/07/you-know-youve-been-in-the-netherlands-for-too-long-when/ For those of you who don’t feel like clicking on the link, it’s basically a list of typically Dutch things.  The people who have lived here for a while probably don’t think twice of most of the items on there.  I, however, find stuff like this way [...]

One of the (many) wonderful things that ESN does for international students is organize trips to cities around the Netherlands.  I never really appreciated the fact that ESN takes care of all of the planning aspects of the trips until I attempted to plan my own excursions – let’s just say that it’s really, really [...]