Week4 fun.......

Personal & Cultural

Time is going extremely fast here, this is probably why we were told to make the most of every minute we have here together! Before coming to the Netherlands I honestly thought that I would be missing home a lot and time would pass slowly but this is definitely not the case here and it’s great!

Its carnival week so no class for everyone for an entire week, what shall we do with ourselves? Tuesday was the day to go to Cuijk for carnival celebrations. At 12pm, we all wore our so called costumes (the yellow dungarees & green hair) to central station to find so many people with different ideas of what to wear; it made me wish I put more effort into my costume! Cuijk is a small city but on carnival day, around 20,000 people gather on the streets to celebrate. This was like nothing I’ve experienced before, although Halloween is pretty similar but so many people in one place, laughing and joking around together was great to see. It was like everyone’s worries and cares disappeared for the day. This is a tradition I would like to see introduced into Northern Irish culture, as it seems to be very popular around Europe according to the other Erasmus students here.

With a few more days off, a group of us decided to make the most of it and see a little more of the Netherlands while we could. On Thursday we set off to Maastricht in the south of the country for 2 nights. This was a fantastic time and the city was very different from Nijmegen. It has thin, cobble streets that were typically European to me and so many waffle/sweet stores that had so many different smells flowing down the streets. We went sightseeing both days but the highlight would be the Maastricht underground caves. Although the tour was mainly in Dutch, it was a good experience to spend over an hour underground were the Maastricht people hide from French invaders in the past. We also found a KFC in Maastricht which made a few members of the group very happy!This was also the first time I had to stay in a hostel which was an experience as I could only think on the movie “Hostel” when arriving. Thankfully we made it and I think I could easily stay in a hostel again! On Saturday we made our way into Liege in Belgium by train. Liege was like a ghost town as the streets were very empty and a lot of businesses were closed. It was very difficult to find good English speaking people in this city which was such a contrast to 30 minutes across the border were everyone speaks very good English.

This was a great opportunity to travel the areas within our reach and a good way to get to know more members of the Erasmus group on a personal basis. A great time was had by all and the travelling will continue as everyone’s friendship develops.

Professional Development

As this was carnival week, little studying was done by all. I guess this has developed my appetite for travelling and as it is my goal to leave Northern Ireland when I am older to teach overseas this experience is giving me the confidence to fulfil this goal. I would definitely take these experiences back to my teaching at home, for instance in Diversity through LLW, carnival or general personal experiences from Erasmus could be used in comparison to NI and the differences to the way we adapt ourselves to situations compared to Dutch/European people.