Woohoo, the language barriers were (partially) broken! Today has ended the first week of my Dutch tuition on James Boswell Institute...needles to say, I am very excited about all the things going on around me. I am getting quite an orientation in the city, also enjoying all the wonderful architecture and exploring the international cuisine (Not a dutch one though, as these people deep fry everything they've got, perhaps excluding fruit and most beverages ;-).
And guess what - I have a bike!
Well, to be honest, I don't have my own one yet. Blessed neighbors from the apartment where I live said that there are a lot of bikes in the room's basement and if I'd dig out one from the back of the room, I could probably use it for a while...without making a loss to anyone. So I did and the Thing, as I merrily call it, works pretty well..! I should make a better picture of it, just to fortify your imagination :)
The lessons on the JBI are really fine. Our tutors are naturally dutchmen (allthough not flying) and they've got really good teaching attitude. Daily we are staying in the school for 7 hours, with coffee breaks counting altogether for more than an hour.
Uithof Campus ----->
As the lessons are passing, I am beggining to speak Dutch in the shops and on the streets - it's quite funny, because dutchmen speak very rapidly when they think that the other person is also dutch...so that I am losing the line after 3 or 4 words and generally I have to apologise and make up for the inconvenient situation in English...but at least I am trying!
My classmates are really "leuk", i.e. nice... Our group is of about 20 students and is quite nationally diversified. The only numerous group are the germans, quite surprise, huh? :) The incredible thing is, that on the JBI are four czechs! Me, Tomáš from MatFyz (on the pic), Petra from Palacký University and Ondra from IES...great guys. This fact was really surprising, and I can tell you, It is really comfortable to stop speaking english/dutch/spanish for a while and relax with nice, ordinary, Czech chatter... the only pity is, that Ondra is in another tuition group and hence he's a bit separated from our words and deeds. Just yesterday, we were "repairing" Petra's misbehaving notebook with a little (and later stronger) help of south-moravian homemade red - therefore today's lessons were not so passing through as they should...well, whatever ;)Tomorrow we're going to Maastricht, our tutor told us that it is the least dutch "stad" in all Netherlands...which is good, as he claimed. It's situated in the south part of a country and is very close to the belgium borders. It will be surely gezellig (nice, cozy [chǝ'zǝlǝch]) , 'f course if it won't be raining all day...
Dag nau! (bye now) J<
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