Hitchhiking

2012-02-11 Saturday

I’m just so excited to tell this story so I don’t know where to begin.

Anyway, Owen and I went to Utrecht, which is southeast of Amsterdam and takes about 35 minutes driving (23 miles). Few days before today, one Calvin student was visiting his friend in our group, and he was hitchhiking all around Europe. That inspired for Owen and me to hitchhike to Utrecht. We looked up the direction to Utrecht and put our thumbs up and smiled at the people in the car. Some people just waved and smile. About 20 minutes after we started, one lady stopped but she wasn’t going to Utrecht, and told us that this was not a good spot to go there so we moved closer to the high way. After moving three times, we ended up by the entrance to the express way to Utrecht, which was good.

Finally, one taxi stopped and asked us where we want to go, but we thought that we had to pay so we just said free? And he said yes! We hopped in and he told us that he was going toward southeast, not Utrecht but he would drop us up in the direction to Utrecht. So we were out on the nowhere. Just field and cars all around. Again, we stood on the roundabout to hitchhike. Fortunately, another taxi driver picked us up and said his was on his break and he would love to take us to downtown, Utrecht. That was so nice of him. He traveled a lot around the world and he could speak four different languages. We talked about places we’ve traveled and such. From Uilenstede to Utrecht, it took us about two hours.

This was something that I always wanted to do, but I didn’t know how to do about it. I think that the first time is the hardest like everybody says. Now I can go further just hitchhiking. This was a totally new experience that I had to be out of my comfort zone, which gave me a full of adrenaline until now. This feeling is difficult to share if you haven’t done it. It’s a bit a risk, but it was great. Now, I have to wait for what my mom is going to say.


Picture - Museum Speelklok, Utrecht

First day of School

2012-02-06 Monday

First day of school, I only have two classes, which one is in the morning and the other one is in the afternoon. I’m sitting in the lobby of the main building (like Spoelhof lobby) and watching these tall people getting coffee. My first class was electromagnetism class and my professor was not a Dutch nor American. Because I haven’t taken Calculus in three years, I’m probably going to ride the strug-bus. I hope to get help from my Calvin friends and professor, I guess. For the month of February and March, I only have three courses on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It will be interesting to have two days off in a week.  I am hoping to visit downtown Amsterdam as much as I could. It will much easier when I get my bike and weather gets warmer.

Here, I don’t see many Asians like I see in America, at least at Calvin. There are more different Europeans like east to west, not just Dutch people. Also, I definitely thought that America has higher obesity population than Amsterdam. This place is so foreign to me right now. New school for four months should be interesting. It’s weird that even though I’m at the café with a lot of people around me, I don’t know anybody. If I went to Johnny’s for lunch, I will see people I know everywhere. I wonder that the people around me know that I’m new. Probably, not.

I met some people from my floor and my floor is very diverse. There are Dutch, Romanian, German, Chinese, American, Korean and more. I like how we have a community kitchen so we can meet people on the floor. I get to cook and share food with other people. One Egyptian lady offered me some of her food one night and it was delicious. Oh, I was thinking that it will be chaotic without any RA, but it actually wasn’t crazy, which was interesting. I like the freedom.

Picture - Cafeteria in VU

On the way to Amsterdam

2012-02-02 Thursday

Right now we are in the plane to Amsterdam for spring semester. I have been excited and nervous about going. I was excited to live in Europe for four months and to experience something new totally different from Calvin College. In other hands, I was sad that I had to leave all my friends and school behind. Now I feel like I got to be close to all of my housemates and we could have so much fun. This is definitely a bittersweet thing.

I was in a plane to come back to Michigan from being in Korea for the Christmas break and Interim. And a week later, I’m back in a plane to totally different world. There are a few goals I have in mind for this semester. First of all I want to visit almost all the museums in Amsterdam. I found myself enjoying museums and love spending time in the environment. Second, I’ve never had a blog and I don’t really like writing, but I’m going to try write a blog every week and reflect myself what is happening and what I’m learning. And of course, I want to make friends from all over the world. At the end of this semester, I will be excited to read what I have done.

In the Netherlands, all of us are going to have a partnership with Calvin alumni. Annie and I are in one group with one person. We already email her about ourselves and check for a time to meet. She already had in mind to take us to Germany or Belgium. It will be great to know people who lived here for a while and show us around.

I can’t wait to see my apartment, school and where I am going to live for four months.



Picture - me and professor Aay in Schiphol