Week Fourteen

Professional

The main focus of this week was finishing an assignment for Dutch Culture and Society; I really enjoyed the course as it gave me a good insight into the Dutch culture, Dutch festivals and also the history of the Netherlands for example we learnt that the Netherlands have a government that is solely for the management

Dutch Culture and Society Class

of water, we learnt how the water is managed through canals, dykes and polders. We also learn about the Dutch Golden age and how the Netherlands came to discover the ABC islands and colonised parts of America. During the course we also had a opportunity to learn about the cultures of the other people in the class , we learnt a lot about Austria, Greece, Finland, Spain, Belgium, Latvia, America and also thought more about our own culture than we ever have before. I loved making comparisons for example the children in the Netherlands finish primary school at age twelve whereas at home they finish at eleven, In Finland the children take off their shoes in the classroom and at home we prefer for the children to keep theirs on. Overall it was a very interesting course and one I was glad to have taken during my time here.

Our final assignment for this course was very interesting and I had a lot of fun doing it, which can’t be said for every assignment that I have been given at university. We had to take fifteen pictures that we would describe as typically Dutch and then in two hundred words describe why, from our time here; we have come to see them as typically Dutch. It was very interesting to see how our opinions have formed and changed from we first arrived here and also to see the different things people have picked. For the sake of entertainment I will show two of the pictures I picked and why.

Windmills are very stereotypically Dutch; they were the one thing apart from tulips that I thought of before coming here. From my trips to the Arnhem open air museum and the tour to the west, I have a better understanding of how windmills work and what they are used for here in the Netherlands. At home windmills are just associated with grinding wheat to make flour; I did not know that they could be used for water management, or to make oils and paint. The main reason that I will associate a windmill as typically Dutch is the windmill on Sint Annastraat, every day that I cycle to class and see that windmill it serves as a wonderful sense of relief in the mornings during the cycle to Pabo, because I know that as soon as I see that windmill that I am nearly there and my legs will stop burning with pain because of the unusual amount of exercise that they are now having to undertake due to cycling. It will be a wonderful reminder of my time here in Nijmegen every time that I see a windmill.

Two decks on a train, before coming to the Netherlands I had only ever seen Double Decker buses imagine my surprise when I sat on top of the second deck of a train, I loved being able to gaze out of the window at the Dutch landscape. The trains in the Netherlands are very reliable and apart from a few occasions are always on time, if there is a delay or the train has stopped unexpectedly there is always notification or another way to travel is given. This is very strange for me as at home trains are not the main means of travel and when you do have to travel by train they are always late. The different sections on the train seemed quite strange to me like first and second class, speaking and non speaking and it was quite daunting at first to try to establish if you were in the right part but now I love travelling by train and have taken the train most mornings to get to my school practice, I love how vast the rail network is in the Netherlands and how you can travel anywhere you want to by train.