2018
Dear Nijmegen (the city whose name I’ll never be able to pronounce),
This blog post is not being written from my PIRE home in the Netherlands, but from my real home in central New Jersey. As I sit here and reflect on the past 8 weeks, I cannot even believe how fast the time has gone. I genuinely feel like it was yesterday that I was...
Alla prossima, Firenze
Last weekend I left the Netherlands for the first time during my trip here and returned to my summer 2017 study abroad location: Florence, Italy. Let me first start by saying I don't even know how I managed to strategically plan this weekend trip (on a budget, might I...
Not in Kan(the Netherlands)as anymore…
It's interesting how much the Netherlands has come to feel like a Kansas to me. And no, I'm not talking about how they're both super flat with tons of rural farmland. I'm talking about what Dorothy actually meant when she said "We're not in Kansas anymore." What she...
Raw herring isn’t so bad… and neither is presenting my work
On Saturday we took the train down to Maastricht, which is a town in the little tiny part of the Netherlands that kind of hangs off from the rest of the country like a little frozen water droplet. This journey was a little bit different than our other travels, though,...
Another Week, Another Conference
This week I had the chance to attend another psycholinguistic conference in Nijmegen! This workshop was called "Formulaic Language Processing and Acquisition Research (FLIPR)" and was hosted by the Idiomatic Second Language Acquisition group. The speakers of this...
Maastricht & Lindyhop
I didn't even know how to title this one because this weekend was full of so many exciting (but also unrelated) events! Let's start with Saturday...Naturally another weekend is another chance to explore the Netherlands, and Christianna and I have been taking advantage...
Fridays are for food trucks (and testing)
Last Friday was my final day testing at one of the three schools I have been testing at!!! As wonderful as that feels, it is such a strange thing to look back and realize that my PIRE experience is slowly coming to an end. The children participating in my study have...
Rotterdam “Home of the Selfieccino”
Again, maybe not exactly what the Dutch call it, but let's just go with it... On the 5th weekend here (where is the time going?!?) Christianna and I spent Saturday exploring the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands! I had heard a lot about Rotterdam being a really...
Bueller? ….Bueller? (i.e., A Review of Events from my Blog-Absence)
It's been a while since I've posted anything on the blog, but mostly that's because everything has felt pretty normal and not-blog worthy. But I suppose it's time for an update (and maybe things have been more interesting in the absence of blog posts than I had...
“So are you a PhD student?”: IMPRS Conference Edition
If I had a dollar (or a euro, maybe) for every time I was asked this question throughout the IMPRS conference this week, I would probably have enough money to buy all of the stroopwafels in the Netherlands. Yet, although a flattering question, the awkward transition...
4am mornings & lots of caffeine
Last week I spent every day traveling to schools to test participants throughout the entire school day. That being said, elementary school typically starts between 8:30-9:00am. Giving myself 2-3 hours travel time depending on the school, I was awakened by my...
“The Netherlands is SUPER FLAT”
Before I came here to the Netherlands, I asked my friend Travis if he could help me figure out some fun things to do while I'm here, since he had studied abroad in the Netherlands before. He wrote me up this amazing list of recommendations and not-recommendations....
The Hague: The Jersey Shore of the Netherlands
Okay so maybe that's not what they call it... but as a Jersey girl I couldn't help but to be excited by the small taste of a New Jersey summer that I felt at Scheveningen in The Hague (or Den Haag) last weekend while exploring this new city with Christianna. ...
First Day of Testing!!!
The day has finally come! After preparing all of the materials, testing the experiment, recruiting schools, visiting the participating schools, and creating a schedule, I have officially started testing my first few participants!! On Thursday, I was up before the sun...
Visiting Schools (and becoming a pro at the Dutch transportation system)!
Since May seems to be a time of many holidays in the Netherlands, I have not officially been able to begin running participants yet. However, this past week I was able to visit all three of the elementary schools that agreed to take part in my research project!!! The...
The Hague, My New Food Addiction, and Lab Updates
I think I'm actually going to work backwards from the title, and start with the lab updates. Running participants has been going really well - I had 21 participants come into the lab last week, and I have a good bit more signed up for this week as well. It's amazing...
Dutch Holidays Well Spent
So much has happened since my last blog post! While writing my first blog post, I was still brand new in Nijmegen and completely unfamiliar with the norms and day-to-day life in the Netherlands. Since then, however, I have had a lot of time to explore (last Thursday...
A day in the ~Dutch~ life
After a crazy final exam week, I packed my bags and set off on my first solo flight to Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Just beginning to work on my PIRE proposal seven short months ago, I could not believe that the day to depart was finally here! Surprisingly, I had little...
First Day(s) in the Netherlands
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....