I’m not sure whether to refer to it as one day or two days ago (considering it’s only been one real “night” for me), but I left for the Netherlands. A few friends dropped me off at the State College airport, and then I was on my way!
It’s been pretty good here so far. I don’t feel super jet-lagged, so that’s really nice (though I did end up sleeping longer than I intended to this morning.) During the afternoon yesterday I had the opportunity to meet Dr. James McQueen, the person I’ll be working with here, in person. So that was great! He’s a nice guy, and not too long afterwards he hosted a “happy hour” event that I was invited to, which was also entertaining.
At the happy hour, we split up into the group to do some “language quizzes,” which consisted of five main “guessing” parts: 1) the accent of speakers 2) the language of speakers 3) which languages idiomatic expressions belonged to 4) “untranslatable” words and 5) the real words to English songs, after seeing the misheard version of the song lyrics on the screen. All in all, it was a fun time and an easy way to get to talk with some of the people there. One of my favorites of the activities was the first one, in which the accented voices were reading tweets from Donald Trump.
Today I went in to go through the lab intro meeting, which was pretty straightforward. Afterwards, I went to go buy some groceries at a market nearby, but didn’t realize I needed to bring a bag with me. I think bringing your own bag is a great idea, because then you don’t have to throw away a plastic bag later! I just didn’t have a very large bag with me at the time. Fortunately, I didn’t need a whole lot for the night, so I just bought what I could carry and decided that I’d come back better prepared another time.
So, there we have it! Two days all done in the Netherlands already. Off to the left is a picture of the sunset from my apartment. I’m looking forward to spending more days here!