Little bit about everything

Hello again. This time some random stuff.

School


One of the main thing that we have to do is to design a house. Our group have to design a house for a person that is on a wheelchair. This is an interesting assignment because there is so much to think about what special things you have to consider. And thanks to my group mate Simon, now I know that toilet needs to be the focal point of every house...

My school building is right next to the highest building in Amsterdam, the Rembrandt Tower. The school it self has 15 floors. Sometimes the wait for a elevator can be a long one.
The weird thing is that Dutch people don`t eat proper lunch at school. They only eat sandwiches and cookies. I`ve learned to appreciate Palmia cafeteria at my own school.

Rotterdam


I visited my EILC buddies Stuart and Erik in Rotterdam a while ago and I have to say that I liked the City quite a lot. It reminded me of New York City. Rotterdam is modern and has a lot of skyscrapers.

I think that the next city that I will visit will be Eindhoven.

United States of America

I also did a trip to United States. We rented a car and drove over 3000 km, visiting Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Lake Havasu city. Along the way we saw for example Universal Studios, Walk of fame, Sunset strip, Golden Gate bridge, Alcatraz, Hills of San Francisco, New England Patriots@Oakland Raiders NFL game, forest fire in Yosemite national park in a middle of a night, Death valley, Las Vegas Strip, Winning big times in Vegas(not really), thrilling rides at 300m high, Grand Canyon, a lot of dessert and World Finals in Jet Ski Racing. 

And it was nice to return from sunny and warm California, Nevada and Arizona to rainy and cold Amsterdam.

Diemen

I been living in Diemen for couple of weeks now and it`s quite a change from the center of Amsterdam.
The distance between Diemen and city center is 6-7 km. It takes 20 min by tram, 10 min by train and 40 min by bike.
Diemen is your typical suburb, with one mall, lot of row houses and some apartment buildings. Lots of students live here and they a live in five, fifteen story apartment buildings. That area is really easy to notice.

Diemen itself is really quiet during evenings, not like Amsterdam at all. We have a nice soccer field right next to us and we use it often (damn you Spanish guys! You are going down!).

Here are some photos from Diemen:

That is it for this time. Next update will be about school :)

It`s Alive!

It has been awhile since a last posted, but I have been rather busy.
Since my last post, I indeed received A1 level in Dutch which means that I can say thank you in Dutch :)

I want to wish all my EILC-buddies good luck with your future studies. You all made the course what it was. And that is extremely memorable.

Vacation

Last week I had my summer vacation. Few days without any obligations and just being in the City and exploring the nearby area.

Here are some highlights:

I ran into J-Lo last week.

If you are going out on Friday night, nice way to start the night would be to go to House of bols. On Friday nights it is open until 22, ladies get 5 euro discount and students 20% discount. So the ticket costs 6.50-9.20 euro and that gets you a tour that includes f.ex. test, where you can smell all the bols drinks and you have to guess what they are(which is actually quite hard). Ticket also includes one cocktail of your choice and two shots. Extra cocktails are five € a piece, and that is bargain in this city.

Smelling challenge at the House of Bols.

Boom Chicago is in the heart of Leidseplein. It is comedy theater that has different kind of shows. We saw show called Social media circus, and if you use facebook or twitter it is a must see! All the actors are Americans, so it is easy to understand everything. Show also includes lot of improvising. Free tip, when they are looking for Mr. Facebook, raise your hand!

Stage is set.

Friday morning we went to Alkmaar to see the Cheese market. It is organised only on fridays and it is really popular. There you can find the finest cheeses from The Netherlands. Alkmaar is also so different than Amsterdam. It looks like some medieval village from England.

Rye bread

I got some souvenirs from Finland. And o`boy the Finnish rye bread is good!

Diemen
I moved in my new room on Wednesday. It is located in Diemen, in Amsterdam suburb.  The neighborhood is really quiet compared to the lively central of Amsterdam. My room is actually quite nice. I was expecting lot worse.

My actual school starts on Monday, so I will have some new posts about that real quickly.

Farewell to EILC

The first part of my journey is coming to an end. Final test of our Dutch course was held on Friday and we will get our certificates on Tuesday.

It is little bit sad that our group is braking up. We have a lot of students who study different subjects and it has been great to talk to people with different backgrounds. From now on I will meet mostly Engineer students and normally WE are not the most awesome people in the world.

From Wednesday to Sunday I am actually going to be on holiday and I will be a tourist and a tour guide at the same time :) I am really anxiously waiting Wednesday to come!

I have noticed that it much harder to be funny in English than Finnish. Sometimes things just don`t translate well and there has been few times when I have made myself an idiot when realizing in middle of sentence that "yeah, that really isn`t that funny in English".

Update on Mr. Crab

Our beloved neighbor Mr. Crab disappeared this past week. We were all devastated and sad because he left without telling anyone anything.
Hopefully he got to a place where he can be the happy and joyful himself that he was during the time he spend with us.

Friends

I would like to introduce some of the people I have met here.

Paul 

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He`s moves are so good that even camera has trouble keeping up.

Paul is future semi-engineer from Berlin. Really funny guy who loves to dance and who isn`t afraid to bust his moves where ever there is music. 

Paul is also THE most American German guy there is. "Euroshopper Rocks!!" Is my favorite quote from Paul.

Stuart 

Second coming of Liam Gallagher

Stuart is future media superstar from Aberdeen, Scotland. Loves to say Kippis. When he needs to go to supermarket to buy 3 things, will come out of the store with 25 things. 

Isn`t the biggest guy but eats like one, which is really respectable. 

Erik

Me, Erik and Marlon@ some thai bar

Erik is from Slovakia, but studies in Prague. He will be big time C.E.O in few years.

Erik is one the most easy going guys I have ever met. Hell will freeze over before Erik stops smiling. When I feel frustrated at Dutch class, Erik is always trying to get me be positive and usually successfully. 

Eddie

Two Barca fans together...

Eddie is from Madrid and will run Mark zuckerberg out of business some day.

I`ve known Eddie for two weeks and he already feels like a brother to me. Is always willing to help out and expects nothing in return.

Eddie is the proud owner of Eddie`s INN. Eddie`s INN holds at least 17 persons and is excellent place to hang out. Eddie will make you chicken soup at any time of the day, literally. 

Eddie has one flaw though. Being from Madrid, he of course is supporter of Real Madrid. This Sunday will be the first match of the season between Real Madrid and F.C. Barcelona, so we will soon see who has the bragging rights. I think Bacra has had the upper hand lately... 

Gay pride

Gay Pride parade was yesterday and what an event it was.

The streets were full of people; families having picnic, old people, young people, crazy outfits...
At one point, massive rain shower came upon us and soaked us all. At that point I was thinking about leaving but as soon as the rain stopped, one of the parade boats started playing It`s raining man, and everybody started dancing, it was impossible to leave.

I had a Playmobil Pirate ship when I was little younger. The crew on this ship
is dressed up slightly differently.

For all the techno lovers(such as myself ;) ) it was 24 hour trip to paradise. The music was blasting everywhere.

all in all, it was really interesting and memorable day and a lot of fun.

I`m not a tourist, not yet a local...

Tourists has been starting to ask directions from me, which is cool. Only downside is that I can`t give them good answers. Hopefully that will change eventually. And that I didn`t  send them to Rotterdam...

New neighbor

Few days ago, we got a new neighbor. This crab just appeared in to our corridor.  It didn`t wanted to come to the parade, though.

Where have all the rye breads gone?

It is impossible to find decent rye bread around here! The only one that I did found was from from Euroshopper, and it might have been the worst thing that is ever been called bread. I was putting butter on it and when I was finished I had 25 small pieces of bread. And the texture was mixture of porridge and chewing gum.

We buy all of our food from stores called Albert Heijn. They have this amazing bonus card. With the card you will get lots of discounts. For example: 24 bottles of beer costs 7,99 €. And no, I haven`t used it for that, yet.

The weather here has not been so great. During my first week, there has only been one warm day and it is only 3rd of august! In Finland the last month was so warm, so I was little disappointed when I got here.

My friends here are dumbfounded when I am talking about the summer in Finland. They can`t believe that there was heat all of July. And there really are no polar bears walking in the streets of Helsinki...

 

Uitstekend!

I will be blogging during my visit in the beautiful city of Amsterdam.

Here are some background information for those who don`t know anything about my trip.

I am taking part in Erasmus exchange program in Hogeschool van Amsterdam. That will start 29.8.2011 and will last until end of January 2012. I am studying power electrical engineering and in HVA I will be part of department of E-technology, which teaches both electrical and electronics engineering. There will be a lot of project works in which I will be participating and I`m really looking forward to that. 

I am going to be living in Diemen, about 5 km from center of Amsterdam. The locals are calling the apartments "containers", so I can not wait to see what they look like :)

 Learning Dutch

I arrived in Amsterdam 27.7 to take part in EILC (Erasmus intensive language course) Dutch course. The course will end 17.8 and by that time I should have reached level A1 in common European framework of reference for languages in Dutch.

During the course I´m living really close to the central station of Amsterdam, which is cool because almost everything is walking distance away from flat. 

My mansion

Eastern wing of my mansion

We have a really fun group of students who are taking part in the course and the time has flown by so fast. 

but that`s it for now, later on I will tell more specific what`s going on here. 

Alles goed in Amsterdam en tot ziens!