Friday, January 16, 2009

This morning we met at 10:30 to discuss some basic information needed for the semester. We also discussed culture shock. We ate lunch at Leiden University. I had a ham and cheese sandwich. It was different than in America. It was on hard bread. On one side there was ham, lettuce, and tomato. On the other side was a slice of cheese, cucumbers, sliced hard boiled eggs, and a few bean sprouts. I also tried something that was our Professor Dennis’s favorite Dutch food. I don’t remember the name of it. It was about the size of an egg roll. It was filled with some type of meat and sauce. It had a breading around it and was probably baked. I thought it was pretty good. After lunch we took another tour around Leiden. We went into the University of Leiden’s first building. We also saw a few gardens. These are partially private and partially public. People live around them and their doors and windows open into the garden area. However, the public is welcome to look at them. It sort of reminded me of the secret garden, because you don’t know they are there until you open the door to the square. Our last stop on the tour was the Pilgrim museum. It was very interesting. It was a few rooms in which one of the pilgrims used to live for a period of time. There were many artifacts from when the Pilgrims lived in Leiden. The man there was full of knowledge and had many interesting stories. After our tour, we met a few of our professors and got an overview of classes that would be offered this semester. We will have to decide which classes we are taking in a few days. To begin the semester we had what the Dutch call a borrel. Basically it was a time to socialize with drinks and snacks. After dinner, Joel, Kyler, and I went to our first Dutch grocery store. It was interesting. Just about everything is in Dutch so it was a bit difficult picking out some of our foods. I bought some bread, which they don’t add preservatives to so I need to eat it in the next few days. I also bought some meat and cheese. These were hard to pick since I didn’t really understand the Dutch words. I also bought some pasta and sauce which I made for dinner. I think I bought some cranberry raspberry juice. It tastes different than what I am used to. After dinner, I decided to relax, organize my things, and update my blog.