Little Victories

The first few days of my study abroad experience has been trumpeted by little victories.  Some things have gone smoothly, navigating our flights and the train, while other things have been a little rough, navigating Maastricht and our flight was literally bumpy. However, Olivia and I have been able to appreciate that we made it through the first day, fairly successfully. Here’s a few of our little victories.

Little Victory #1

We made it to our apartment!! After the bumpy flight, and an insignificant amount of sleep we made it to Brussels safely. We picked up our luggage and found our way onto the first train. We had to hop trains two times but did so with the help of some nice ticket takers and found our way to Maastricht.

Little Victory #2

We found Maastricht University! After setting our rooms up Olivia and I decided to head out to find our school. We aren’t set to check in until today but we wanted to know where we had to go ahead of time. We also used this time to explore the city. The university is intertwined with the city and has several buildings throughout. I’m excited to take a tour and find out where our classes are located.

Little Victory #3

Ordering Dinner. This is the point in time where I really questioned what I had gotten myself into. Everything is in Dutch, making it hard to figure out where you want to eat and what to order. After walking around for a while we settled on Azie Tapas. I decided on the Wrap Carpaccio (dun gesneden rundvlees met rucola, parmesaanse kaas en truffelemayonaise). It sounded like a wrap with meat, parmesan and some sort of mayonnaise in it. It wasn’t a spectacular first meal but it was good enough to feel better.

The view from where we ate dinner.

Little Victory #4

We have groceries! Olivia and I wanted to get some groceries so that we don’t have to depend on our Dutch to eat out all the time. We found a grocery store near the town square where we ate. After walking the 1.5 miles back to our apartment we knew there had to be closer places. Luckily we met a hall mate that informed us of a few choices that are within a few blocks. So we will not be walking a long way with groceries again. PS. You have to bring your own grocery bags or else you pay .15 Euros to buy bags.

Little Victory #5

Figuring out how to change my internet settings so that everything on the computer isn’t translated into Dutch. This is just one of those little quarks that was unexpected. My computer was taking me to the Dutch version of every site and that was a problem as I don’t speak Dutch. So with some research and a lot of google translate, I figured out how to revert to English.