Friday, November 6, 2015
Since I last wrote, much has happened. For brevity, I will end at last Friday's events, so November 6.
First, something a little different:
How do you fall in love with a country? Or in like with a country? I suppose you do it slowly. You get used to the way the weather changes. The way it pours in the morning and shines in the afternoon. The way an eerie thick fog can make your windows appear as though you are in a cloud… all day. The way it is freezing one day and the water in the air seeps into your bones, but warm the next, with a brisk sunlight that bathes everything with a filtered cleanliness. You wring out your clothes at home and hang them up to dry with a towel underneath to soak up all the drops.
You listen to the Dutch on the street, a language that moves from jarring to familiar. You understand a little more of it each day. You wake up to the late sunrise outside of my window, on the days you see the sun. In an hour, you hear school bells and children shrieking at play. While shopping, new words appear, a little boy practicing them with his mother as he helps her put them on the belt to pay: een bloemkool, twee bloemkool, soep, peterselie, tomaat, banaan. In the afternoon, you hear mothers collecting schoolchildren and chattering with them about what happened behind the low fences of the playground, proof of a trust in society.
You traverse the city on two wheels. At rush hour, in the morning, in the afternoon, lines of bikes fill the lanes. Teenagers with gum in their mouths and backpacks on their backs, yelling and zigzagging their way home. Students with a test or a coffee on their minds, earbuds in, professors in glasses and sweaters, slacks and skirts, women in heels, men in ties, mothers and fathers with carts full of children, maybe a dog. A man stops at the next light next to you, his two year old son slumped over, sleeping with his little forehead on the handlebars, undisturbed by the sounds of the city or the slow left turn.
In midday and at night, the low houses watch you and you watch them. Five stories, open windows, full of light, endless avenues. In the late mornings, elderly men and women do their shopping and sit in the windows, drinking coffee, passing the time. At night, the sun goes down early, the windows glow, no curtains drawn. You could stand outside and watch people’s lives like they were actors on a stage. There are cups and plates, wine glasses and mugs, relics of dinner on a table. Here and there someone studies at a desk near a window. Shelves full of books stand waiting to be read. Little girls and boys play in a living room or press their noses to the glass, in pastel pajamas, looking out at the roads before bedtime.
I go home and turn on a light, adding myself to the myriad of eyes in the city.
Second, the usual:
I had my first set of exams, got my new set of classes, had a swim meet, Matthieu came to visit, got my first set of grades, and I have begun to have a new and more steady routine. I will do my best to talk just a little about each of these things, and then post some pictures of the other things I have been doing.
Classes here work in “sessions”. Sessions 1, 2, 4, and 5 are eight weeks long approximately, with seven weeks of class, and one week of exams. Sessions 3 and 6 are five weeks long with four weeks of class and one week of exams. In Sessions 1, 2, 4, and 5, we have two classes, both in about four hours a week (2 x 2). In sessions 3 and 6 we have one class in about seven or eight hours a week (4 x 2). I finished Session 1 in the third week of October with two exams. In Session 1, I had Epidemiology & Research Methods, and Psychopathology. In addition to about 8 hours of class, I have about 150 pages of reading or so for my two courses combined per week, and about 10 more hours of work that are related to writing, presentations, etc. In Session 2, I have the second portion of my Psychopathology course, which spans two sessions, and an elective course in Juvenile Delinquency and Antisocial Behavior. In Session 3, which is in January, I will have Theories of Therapeutic Intervention.
The grading system here in the Netherlands is different from that in the US. Details can be found at this website:
https://www.studyinholland.nl/documentation/grading-systems-in-the-netherlands-the-united-states-and-the-united-kingdom.pdf. Long story short, the grades range from 1-10, but 10 is never given (basically). A 10 would imply that everything was perfect and there was nothing to improve at all in your responses. Grades are less inflated, an A is 7.5 or higher, and everything below a 5.5 is failing. I got my first exam grades back, and everything was in the A range, but I studied quite hard. the highest scores on the exams were around an 8.8. This is only half of my grades, however, because I still have essays that I need to turn in and essays that I need to have returned before I know exactly how I did in the courses as a whole.
I had a swim meet in Den Haag the weekend after my exams, which was a nostalgic experience, since I hadn’t really raced in a pool in about five years. I only swam 50 m. freestyle and 50 m. backstroke, but that was plenty for me, given that I hadn’t raced in a very long time. After this, I went to the airport to pick up Matthieu, and we spent the week together, which was a nice “vacation” after my exams (even though I still had classes). We went to the Bodies exhibit here in Amsterdam, which is similar to the one that tours in the US. It was really interesting to see some of the things that I have learned about in classes from so much closer (I touched a brain!). We also visited De Poezenboot, which is a houseboat in Amsterdam where they keep about 20 homeless cats. Some of them are constant residents and others can be adopted. I would recommend this to any person who likes animals, especially cats, if they visit Amsterdam, but it's only open on very limited hours, so make sure you plan it out well.
My new courses are interesting- Juvenile Delinquency has a lot of readings, but it is a new experience to be able to explore an already specific topic from such a thorough and multidimensional perspective as we do. The course really has yet to develop as I've only had two classes. I had a field trip today with my Psychopathology course to De Bascule and specifically a research institute where they are investigating a type of therapy called Parent Management Training. I’ve met with my mentor for the next two years, a PhD student who I get along with really well. I’m excited to be able to have her help me through the program and I think we make a good team.
The weeks have begun to fall into a routine. I have class on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday for this session. I read before class on those days, while I have breakfast and hang out in my room. Usually it is fairly late by the time I get back from University, but I also do a little bit of work afterwards. On Wednesday, I have Dutch in the evenings for about two hours. On Monday and Thursday, I go to swimming in the evenings with SPONS, a student swimming association here. Much of my work is independent, but if I become immersed in a topic, I don’t notice that time pass. On weekends and in my free time, I might go out on runs, go to a local market, have dinner with friends, or go for a drink together, read a book, or go hang out in a park.
The weather is quite often nice enough here that being outside is definitely a possibility. As one teacher put it “the more time you spend outside here, the less it rains.” This is true, but we have had some strange weather. The beginning of this week we had heavy fog for days, and every time I looked out my window, it appeared as though the building was an airplane and I was in a cloud... The fall colors have been beautiful, but are slowly starting to disappear for good. The wind has been wild lately, making biking a challenge. You can literally hear it howling at night, sometimes.
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