‘It was easy’

I’m not going to lie, studying abroad in Europe is a pretty great way to spend the summer. However, there are some things that were hard to get used to and made me miss Boston just a little bit. The main difference that we all experienced were the hours of shops in our town. Almost everything closed at 5 or 6pm, and because we had class almost everyday until 5pm we really weren’t able to shop around town afterwards. Most places also have limited hours or are closed on Sundays, so it was hard to squeeze in everywhere we wanted to go. I remember the first Sunday we were there my allergies were going crazy and I was desperate to find a pharmacy. Unfortunately, NONE of them are open on Sundays so I had to go all around the city trying to find any sort of grocery store or convenience store with medicine. One difference that was very easy to get used to was the availability of ice cream. There was an ice cream or gelato shop on almost every street and you could find it for a euro per scoop-a welcome change to JP Licks or Ben and Jerry prices. Other food offerings were less impressive. The lunch scene in the Netherlands is not spectacular. Oftentimes people will just have some slices of bread with various spreads-tuna salad, egg salad, etc. I’m definitely looking forward to getting back to all of the lunch options we have at home (Rebecca’s I’m coming for you). I think it probably took us all a week to get oriented in our new surroundings and used to biking everywhere. But because we had a heavily scheduled program it was easy for us all to jump right into things and get acclimated. Our post-dialogue travels will probably result in more culture shock than our Dialogue did. Many people are hitting a lot of places in a short amount of time, so I’m looking forward to hearing about all their travels! As for me, I’m off to Paris, London, Budapest, and Amsterdam before heading home.

Until next time, doei!