Oranje is the New Black

I decided to start a blog about my experiences as an exchange student in The Netherlands for three main reasons: 1) so friends and family can keep track of me, 2) so I can remember all the little details years down the road, and 3) more self-indulgent bullshitting a la Facebook.  I will try to keep posts succinct and, when possible, [insert other preferable adjective].

For this first post, I'll work my way chronologically through my trip thus far.

1)  Plane rides - Both flights were like earthquake simulators.  Except in a simulator you don't usually worry about the possibility of falling out of the sky to your watery or explosive demise.  To add insult to near-death and/or injury, the nearly-eight hour transatlantic flight didn't have TV monitors for each seat!  What is this, 1842?!  I thought in-flight movies were about as prevalent as VHS tapes at Blockbuster by now.  Overall, the flight went something like this:

2)  Trip from Schiphol Airport to Rotterdam - HiSpeed rail here is pretty dang awesome.  I got from Amsterdam to Rotterdam in about 27 minutes and it cost me 14.50 euros.  Because I was under a bit of a time crunch to get to the keys to my apartment, I took a taxi from Rotterdam Central Station, which cost another 15.50 euros.  The only thing the driver knew how to discuss at any length in English was the generally high level of attractiveness of Dutch women.  However, he also gave me very critical advice: "There are two unpredictable things in Rotterdam: weather and women.  And you can only control one of them."  Okay, sir.  

3)  Rotterdam so far - My first impression is that Rotterdam is a typical European city with a more modern business-looking flair.  It appears peppered with glass high-rises and abstract-style architecture.  Everyone speaks English around here.  Which led me to think: it shouldn't be so easy for me to get by in a country without knowing a single word of their language.  But English-speakers get away with it all the time.  Dutch students coming to the United States have to know English; how many of us would learn and fluently speak this crazy friggin language?!  The Dutch language is like the Island of Misfit Vowels, where all the unused vowels go to wallow forever in agony.  I can't tell if something is a road name or a Scrabble tile holder.  There's definitely more vowels than people per capita here.  

This all caused massive amounts of fun (?) in the supermarket, Albert Heijn.  When you first walk in, you see this:

For the record, those are all varieties of lettuce.  Considering I can't read the name on anything, I have to guess what I'm buying.  It's also especially sanitary when you can't tell if you have to refrigerate after opening, or if it's actually rat poison with an unassuming chocolate label.  I just resorted to buying obvious-looking things, as well as a durum at a local doner kebab shop (look it up).  

In addition to food (I hope) shopping, I got my phone configured with 1 GB of data and 50 minutes local talk time through T-Mobile.  Therefore, if you need to contact me, use online means - don't bother with texts or calling.

I am so ready to not be awake for a day and a half.  Until next time: Vaarwel!  Let's go out on a high note:

Dat Helpt!