Adventure is out there!: Intro Week

Today is the last day of Intro Week for freshman and exchange students. It's been a blast but also has been extremely busy. They packed our schedule full with activities for pretty much every hour of the day, leaving very little time for sleep. We had a sports day, a scavenger hunt around the city, a formal dinner, a pub crawl, and so much more. Needless to say, we are all extremely exhausted, but I've enjoyed every minute of it!

We went into town to get our basics yesterday, and I got a bike! I'm really excited about it. Everyone here has one, and the facilities they have here for bicycling are amazing. When we biked to the shopping center yesterday, we parked our bikes in a free and secure bike storage facility. I've never seen anything like it! They also have bike lanes on every road and traffic lights for bicycles specifically. Nobody wears helmets because they've made it really safe and easy to get around for bikes. Also, the entire country is literally flat. I have not seen one incline at all.

Also, I have been getting to know my unitmates better this week! There are 12 of us living in "The Wall." It's the building connected to the outer wall of the campus, so they call it that. I love how their dorms work here. Instead of having huge buildings with tons of people on every floor, they split the dorms into units so that you will have a little family. I love our group -- it's comprised of 3 Dutch girls who live in Holland, 1 Dutch girl from Chile (I think?), 1 Dutch girl from the UK, 2 Dutch boys, 1 Italian guy from Thailand, 1 Belgian girl, 1 German girl, 1 American boy from Germany, and me. It's a good representation of the demographics of the school. It's all very diverse and accepting. I really love it!

Anyway, I'm just getting ready for school tomorrow now and buying my textbooks, etc. I'm really excited for my Intro to Dutch Studies class. It's so cool hearing everyone speaking Dutch around me and many other languages as well! Everyone in my unit is at least bilingual, and among all of us, we speak a ton of languages. It's such a wonderful place to be. Here's some pictures from my week!