Week 1 of School Abroad :)

Well it's official. I have now completed one week of classes abroad!!! :) and now for an overview of the past week....oh boy..

I will start with the past weekend. I had mentioned previously, I believe, that I had finally gotten a bike.

My "new" bike! Most like an American mountain bike, but works
great so don't care.

A "traditional" dutch bike.

A great invention. A lock attached to the bike
and has a bar that goes in between the spokes
on the back tire. On most bikes already.

Maandag en Dinsdag

Monday and Tuesday

This was The Programme Kick off International Students days, complete with various welcome and introduction speeches, English placement tests for those who are not native English speakers, and group and individual photo session. Which was when we found out there are roughly 100 international students this year, their biggest group yet, and spans 17-18 different nationalities. Amazing, no? Another piece was a mini tour of the campus. See photos below, hoping to add a video as well..

Tuesday night we also had a home-cooked Chinese dinner by Wu Shen and Deng Lin but I will post in separate post. :)

An auditorium, usually for large classes, important speakers,
and graduation...not even close to uw-platteville's lecture hall...

Comp lab balcony, over-looking
cafeteria in main building

Their "main" cafeteria. Again, platteville's is maybe 4 times
the size of it.

Jamilla, our International Business contact, with the Sports
Facility in the background

Me in front of the Business building

On first floor of business building

High-tech looking vending machines

Every classroom has windowed walls, its a little unnerving at first

Staircases/ramps along back sides, very open.

Sit-down area in Engineering building

So.many.bikes. And this is only one area, there are like 4 more
just like this, and just as full if not worse.

Very common to just sit out in between classes with friends

Ok, X building is the Business building, T is Engineering, A/B/C is the main building, and still have yet
to find out what D,E,F,G, and H are besides random classes..

Woensdag
Wednesday

First day of classes!!!!! And sure enough it was my "busiest" day of the week, with three (drie) classes. However, since I don't take the English Language classes, I didn't start until 5th hour or 2:30(14:30). My classes were: Trends in Communication, Business/Presentation Skills, and later in the night Dutch Language I: Introduction. All the teachers I've had so far speak very good English, not that I'm surprised. This school is known for their International Business program, and is recommended for those studying it in other countries like me. Although it is interesting to see the different teaching techniques and student-teacher relationship in other countries. For example, my teacher assigned us a "small" project in my Communications class, with very little explained as to what it is on or needs to include. The Dutch and Portuguese kids had no problem with this and started discussing topics, whereas the Chinese and myself felt lost and wanted a more structured description as to what the project should include.The Dutch Language class seems a little fast paced right now, but I'm still very excited to be attempting to learn such a "complicated" language
 according to everyone here...Which speaking of hard and complicating
languages some of the Polish girls want to teach me Polish in our down
time....so far I know Cześć (Hello) and Na Zdrowie (Cheers, bless you).

Donderdag en Vrijdag
Thursday and Friday

Thursday was less exciting, because I only had one class, and in the middle of the afternoon. Global Trends and Issues, which I found very interesting. But again, not much explanation and more assuming we already knew what he expected.
On Friday, today, I had a (NO JOKE) five hour class. -_- ahhhhh. It was the "Kick off," group work, and feedback session of our Project 1 class. Surprisingly enough though time went by pretty fast. For this project, each group has to "evaluate the performance of a multinational company from the perspective of the stakeholders." Which we will then analyze the international context of the company in order to deduce global and regional trends. The restrictions? Must pick a company in one of the group member's home country, and preferably a food company. So since I'm the only person from the United States, my group was the only group able to pick a US company, and what does my group pick??? McDonald's......yup. At least it will be really easy in finding information...eh.