It's Finally Here!

Let's get a few things straight: I love it here.  The place is gorgeous, my cohorts are great, dutch is a hilarious language, and the people I've met are nice.
OK so I hinted that getting here was a slight adventure...

After we got off of our all night plane ride, we finally arrive in Amsterdam Schipol Airport.  This airport has a big shopping area/train station connected to it, right after you leave the arrivals area.  So we were supposed to depart on a bus right after the plane landed, but due to traffic (which is apparently constant in the Netherlands) the bus was running late.  So Drs. Baker and Abell let us go grab some breakfast and wander.  I was with Leah, and we wandered around for about 15 minutes and headed back to where the group was to meet.  When we were near, we saw that it was just Drs. Baker and Abell with all the luggage carts there, so Leah decided she needed to go to the bathroom, and grab a coffee from the espresso bar near it.  After this 10 min detour, we head back to the meeting area, and lo and behold: everyone was gone.  Leah begins to worry, and I simply go "oh they probably left us because we took our bags with us, guess we should go look for them, and if worse comes to worse, we have our eurail passes and can just buy a train ticket to Maastricht."  Luckily, our TA, Audrey, reminded Dr. Baker to do a head count and check names on the busses, and they realized that Leah and I were missing.  So Dr. Baker found us at the meeting point, and all is good.  Needless to say, I now have a reputation for being the one who wanders off and goes missing (even though Leah was with me she has dodged this rep!)
So we take the bus ride to Maastricht, which is about two and a half hours, and finally arrive!  Despite all my jet lag, I am thrilled to be here!  We took a brief tour of the "mall" which is really a short walk from the Guesthouse (dorm) that we're staying at.  Interesting fact about the Netherlands: they don't take credit cards at grocery stores, only cash, so you have to be sure to have enough!

Syelexyz Bookstore

Gate to the Masstricht University Library

I really love the city of Maastricht, it's a really old city, but they have modernized old buildings, like the church that was emptied when Maastricht was conquered by Napoleon, and now the city has renovated it into a new bookstore (which the NYT called the Most Beautiful Bookstore in the World). And then the University itself is beautiful, with the School of Economics and Business used to be an old monestary that they renovated.  The buildings literally blend 14th, 15th, and 16th century buildings with 21st Century ones in ways that are unique, and the university extensively remodels all the buildings they have to have ultra-modern interiors and amenities.
Today was the first day of classes here, and I really think I'm going to enjoy them!  My class days (Tues, Wed, and Thurs) start very early, with required breakfast at 7:30 am, with my first class, Epidemiology with Dr. Abell, starting at 8am.  Then I have Pathophysiology with Dr. Baker from 9:30-10:50, followed by a break for lunch.  Then at 1:15 I start back up with the one team taught course here: Clinical Decision Making. That goes till 3:30 when on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have my one class through the Maastricht Center for European Studies, Modernism and Beyond, a survey of British and Continental Literature.  Then we have dinner, and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I finish the evening with History of Medicine from 6:30-8:30.   So that means that Thursday evening at 5:30 until Monday night, I have free to travel! 
Plans for this weekend: My roommate Nathan, and four others of us are going off on a whirlwind orientation of our region.  Thursday night and Friday in Amsterdam, Friday night and Saturday in Rotterdam, Saturday Night and Sunday in Brussels, Belgium, all to come back to Maastricht Sunday evening to enjoy the activities for Inkomen, which is the marking of the start of term for the University of Maastricht new students.  It sort of makes me homesick, seeing these students, because here in the Netherlands, most of the students we've seen out in town are members of fraternity and sorority type groups, and they are all wearing rugby style shirts while being about town doing activities, much like my Student Foundation Jersey... I wonder if I tied my jersey around myself and hopped on a bike, if people would notice that I wasn't a Uni Maas student... probably so, simply because of my lack of skills on a bike!  The streets here are a little crazy for me to be riding... I much prefer to ride off street, or on Baylor's campus where the streets are all blocked to cars!
Well it's time for me to go get some sleep... I have class early tomorrow!