2016
From London, to Ibiza, to Rome and everywhere in between
by Dorothy Lila Schaadt | Jul 23, 2016 | 0 Comments
There's no denying that Europe is a great place to travel. With everything being so (relatively) close, and the abundance of low budget airlines, I have been able to take advantage of my time here and have traveled somewhere almost every weekend. Travel has also been...
Analysis update
by Dorothy Lila Schaadt | Jul 23, 2016 | 0 Comments
Although my time with PIRE has been a bit of a different experience than the other Penn State students that were here in Nijmegen with me (due to the fact that I had already collected my data before coming), it has still been one of the most valuable and educational...
Last Week of Testing
by Erika Exton | Jul 16, 2016 | 0 Comments
My final week at Radboud was the week of June 27. It was a week full of wrapping up, goodbyes, and planning for my next adventure. After so many 9-hour days of testing participants, it was bittersweet to be going through the motions on my last day. On Wednesday I got...
Het Loo, Amsterdam and Italy
by Lina Ruth | Jul 16, 2016 | 0 Comments
During our time here, I have been able to take advantage of our location in Europe and travel a little bit in the Netherlands. One of the reasons I love Europe is because it is always a lot easier to travel around than through other countries. Every weekend I have...
Biggest surprises in Nijmegen
by Dorothy Lila Schaadt | Jul 11, 2016 | 0 Comments
One of the coolest things about traveling is seeing and experiencing things that are different from home. It’s especially interesting when you find things that surprise you, or that you didn’t expect. So here’s a short list of some of the surprising or interesting...
First few weeks in Nijmegen
by Lina Ruth | Jul 11, 2016 | 0 Comments
I have been spending the past few blogs writing about Colombia and what we did there as we were analyzing data, so now I am going to catch up on what has been happening in Nijmegen! We arrived in the Netherlands on June first, and we travelled by train to get to...
My Final Thoughts
by jqz5203 | Jul 11, 2016 | 0 Comments
Well, today is my last day in Nijmegen. This is actually my last blog for the summer. Once again, I cannot help but think about how quickly my time here has gone. It does make me a little sad to see my time here end. Despite not knowing how to speak Dutch (or...
The End
by jqz5203 | Jul 2, 2016 | 0 Comments
Today is Saturday, July 2. Yesterday was my last day of testing. This is my last weekend in Nijmegen. When I think back to the day I arrived in Nijmegen, I can picture everything as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. I cannot believe that it has been 8 weeks....
3 Year Reunion
by Dorothy Lila Schaadt | Jul 1, 2016 | 0 Comments
This blog post requires a little bit of a backstory, so bear with me. The year after I graduated high school I decided to take a gap year to study abroad and learn Spanish before going to college. That decision landed me in a small town in central Ecuador where I...
Travelling to Amsterdam
by Amy Kinsey | Jul 1, 2016 | 0 Comments
This past week has involved trying to recruit even more participants. I've been posting flyers, recruiting people outside of the dining commons, and sending out emails to spread the word to as many people as possible. Participants have been trickling in, and I think...
The Final Week
by jqz5203 | Jul 1, 2016 | 0 Comments
This past weekend was supposed to be the last weekend that the six of us would be in Nijmegen. It actually turned out that this past weekend was the last weekend four of us would remain in Nijmegen. Saturday morning, three of us (Erika, Lina, and myself) decided we...
An Ode to Dutch public transportation (what I have learned about traveling in the Netherlands)
by Erika Exton | Jul 1, 2016 | 0 Comments
**This blog is from last week, I forgot to post it** Over the past few weekends, I’ve been traveling to various Dutch cities: Utrecht, Rotterdam, Maastricht, and of course Amsterdam. Between those longer trips and my time on the bus between Huygensgebouw and Centraal...
CLS non-nativeness day
by Erika Exton | Jul 1, 2016 | 0 Comments
On Monday of this past week, the Center for Language Studies at Radboud University hosted a non-nativeness day where various language scientists gave short presentations about the work they are currently doing related to non-nativeness. Even though we are technically...
Cultural Differences between Palenque and Nijmegen
by Lina Ruth | Jun 26, 2016 | 0 Comments
Before going to Colombia, I had never been to South America. However, I had been to my grandparent's village in rural Spain, and so I was at least a little prepared for what to expect. My grandparents live in Las Canchas near Ronda. Palenque was definitely a little...
Amsterdam
by jqz5203 | Jun 21, 2016 | 0 Comments
The Netherlands. The first thing I used to think of when I heard someone say “The Netherlands” is Amsterdam. Surprisingly enough, I had not been to Amsterdam once in the six weeks I had been in The Netherlands. It was not until my friend, Cara, came to see me that I...
Dutch Weather
by jqz5203 | Jun 21, 2016 | 0 Comments
Before coming to Nijmegen, I had been warned that it rained all the time. When I was packing to come here, I brought all of my rainy day essentials: a rain jacket, boots, an umbrella, a waterproof cover for my backpack, and, of course, waterproof makeup. For the first...
First two weeks in the Netherlands
by Dorothy Lila Schaadt | Jun 15, 2016 | 0 Comments
I've officially been here in Nijmegen for two weeks now, although to be honest it feels like it has been a lot longer. The past two weeks have flown by, and I know time isn’t going to slow down any time soon. I spent the first few days here just figuring things out,...
The Lab Learning Curve
by Amy Kinsey | Jun 15, 2016 | 0 Comments
These past few weeks have gone by so quick it’s hard to believe I’ve half way through this trip. After struggling to work through finding my around town to technical issues in the lab, I’ve started to get into the groove of things. Having troubles in the lab is both...
Problem-solving in Colombia
by Lina Ruth | Jun 15, 2016 | 0 Comments
When you are traveling to a different country, and conducting research, you definitely want to have a smooth journey with no road bumps. As we were getting ready to go to Colombia, I was not at all prepared for all of the things that would go wrong for us. In the...
No-shows and cancellations
by Erika Exton | Jun 14, 2016 | 0 Comments
As it stands now, I have had 12 participants. Given that I didn’t start testing until May 27, can usually only get the lab Wednesdays and Fridays, give myself 3 hours for every participant, and only need 20-25 participants, that really isn’t bad! But I do find it...
Testing out a Cube House, Sending off a Cruise Ship, and Out-running a Storm – Our Adventure through Rotterdam
by jqz5203 | Jun 10, 2016 | 0 Comments
This past weekend, the majority of the group of the PIRE researchers here in Nijmegen took a day trip to Rotterdam. It was a spur of the moment, we-need-to-do-something-now trip. We had no plans for what we were going to do that day. We were just going to do whatever...
Finally Testing
by jqz5203 | Jun 8, 2016 | 0 Comments
When I came to Nijmegen, I was not at all ready to test participants. I had nothing but a list of target words and pictures to match those words. All of my stimuli had to be recorded here in Nijmegen. That very first Thursday, I completed the first round of recording...
Colombian Adventures
by Dorothy Lila Schaadt | Jun 7, 2016 | 0 Comments
As day 6 comes to a close, I still can’t believe I’m actually finally here in the Netherlands. These past few days have gone by too fast, and it all still feels like a crazy dream. But before I get into my Dutch adventures, I must start at the beginning. And the...
Memorial Day from Afar
by Erika Exton | Jun 6, 2016 | 0 Comments
My family has a Memorial Day tradition: every year we go to York, PA to visit my dad’s good friends from high school. There are five of them who have remained close, so we celebrate our annual “Meeting of the Five Families.” Setting out for this weekend is never...
Newbies to Nijmegen!
by Lina Ruth | Jun 5, 2016 | 0 Comments
On Wednesday, Dorothy and I finally arrived in Nijmegen for the PIRE part of our research! We had spent two and a half weeks in Colombia collecting the data, and now we are here in the Netherlands to analyze what we had collected. For the first few weeks I will talk...
An eventful week pt.2
by Amy Kinsey | Jun 5, 2016 | 0 Comments
Friday was probably the most fast paced day I've had since traveling to Nijmegen. Yesterday, I was able to run three participants back to back from 11-7 pm. It could be a result of all the caffeine I had consumed that day, but nonetheless, I officially started...
An eventful week pt. 1
by Amy Kinsey | Jun 5, 2016 | 0 Comments
After getting through all of the preliminary paperwork and piloting, I'm officially ready to start testing participants this week. So far I've only had a few sign ups, but it's exciting to see more and more people fill in the times slots on the SONA system. I have my...
It works! It works! I coded my experiment and it works!
by Erika Exton | Jun 2, 2016 | 0 Comments
After two and a half weeks of confusion and frustration, the title of this blog post is the text I sent to some of my friends on Wednesday, May 25. It was a truly glorious day. As I wrote at the end of my last blog post, I fixed the main problem in my script....
Radboud Rocks
by jqz5203 | Jun 1, 2016 | 0 Comments
There always seems to be something going on in Nijmegen. Between all of the educational talks taking place on campus, concerts, and street fairs, there is never a dull moment here. It seems that Nijmegen, like New York, is a city that never sleeps. On Thursday, the...
Every Dutch Cloud Has a Silver Lining
by Amy Kinsey | May 29, 2016 | 0 Comments
You never know what to expect when you’re travelling somewhere new, especially a different continent. As I packed my bags to prepare for my trip to Radboud University which is located in the Netherlands, specifically the town of Nijmegen, I felt excited, nervous, and...
Working out the Kinks
by Erika Exton | May 23, 2016 | 0 Comments
As just about anybody who has spoken to me in the past two months knows, my first step in actually being able to test participants here in Nijmegen is recoding my study. While Penn State uses E-Prime for EEG experiments, Radboud uses Presentation, so I had no choice...
Living in a Bilingual Society
by Erika Exton | May 19, 2016 | 1 Comment
Exactly a week ago, I arrived to my apartment at Radboud University after having gotten on the plane at the Newark airport over 12 hours earlier. The journey from the Amsterdam-Schiphol airport to Nijmegen wasn’t without its confusion, but that part was comparatively...
We Made It!
by jqz5203 | May 19, 2016 | 0 Comments
We made it! That was my first thought as I stepped off of the train in Nijmegen, The Netherlands after travelling for 9 hours. The plane ride had been fairly uneventful – we only experienced a small amount of turbulence. Figuring out how to get to the waiting platform...