Month: September 2015

It’s hard to keep up with everything that is happening here. A month has flown by. I’ve traveled a lot. I’ve studied. I’ve gotten homesick. I’ve gotten anxious. I am anxious right now.

Living in another country is a terrifying experience. That being said, it is also the most exciting thing you can ever do. Immersing yourself in another culture is overwhelming. You want to do it all. My life for the past month has felt like I am a freshman again. But I am a freshman in a world completely void of any of my past. I am new here. I am making new friends and new memories and like anything that is new, it is fragile and awkward.

Last week, I got a chance to hang out with the Ambassador of the United States to the Netherlands, Timothy Broas. Since I won the Gilman Scholarship, I was invited to attend a reception at his residence in the Hague, which is the Netherlands’ version of Washington D.C. It was such a beautiful city and the ambassador was very sweet. They passed around appetizers and wine and we all got to talking. It was a little comforting to see so many Americans in one place. It felt like home.

This past weekend, I went to London. Correction: I barely made it into London.
As per my agreement of studying in the Netherlands, I get a residence permit card that allows me to freely travel anywhere in Europe in the Schengen Agreement. (Quick fact: the UK is not in that agreement). So does it surprise you that when I got to the French border of the UK at 4am, because my roommate and I had taken a night bus there, they literally almost did not let me go? Well, it shouldn’t. I didn’t bring my passport, thinking my residence permit card was sufficient enough, ESPECIALLY since I have been told time and time again that Europe “has no borders”, and was almost left in a town called Calais, France all by myself.

I was freaking out! Thankfully, I was able to pull up a copy of my passport on my OneDrive cloud account and showed the much-nicer-than-US UK border patrol man and he gave me a temporary travel document. Lesson? ALWAYS bring your passport everywhere. Always.

London was beautiful and I will start posting pictures I swear. Another lesson? Always read all your ticket information. We got to London Victoria for our night bus ride back at 9 on Sunday night (9/27). We ran into our friend Margaret who we had met at our ISN introduction week and not only was our bus delayed by 45 minutes, we couldn’t even get on it because we had forgotten to check in with our passports. The check in had closed and we didn’t know what to do. We had to buy another ticket for our ride back.

It was a wonderful weekend, but a terrible time going there and back. Never take UK megabus. I mean you can take it, but let my story sink in very well.

Other than that, London was beautiful. Expensive as hell, but beautiful. I’m not sure how my friend Massy didn’t go broke there. It was very international but also very European. Everything was in English, which was pretty nice.

I don’t know where else I’m going next, but I think it’s going to be Berlin. Then maybe Budapest. Then Prague. Europe is amazing and now I am actually going to post photos!!

XoXo Pamela