Ik Sprekt Geen Nederlands (I don't speak Dutch)

Of the students visiting from Carleton University I am second best at speaking dutch and while Jay speaks fluently now I can only say enough to be polite and I can't answer questions. This has lead to a few somewhat humerous occurences in the past 48 hours so Here I go with more stories
Friday
By the time I arrived in Rotterdam on Friday evening I had barely slept 3 hours of the past 48 and was becomming a bit loopy. While Anna, my land lady, was doing her best at keeping me occupied I began feeling very home sick as I realised that I did not have access to the internet yet and felt totally disconected from everyone. It was at this point that I decided I wanted to go to a cafe which I had seen ( a cafe here is a bar) to try to meet people, but I soon realised I had no idea where the cafe was and so I returned home to eat dinner with Annad. In retrospect this is rather humerous because one of the reasons I had freaked out was because I was so tired listening to people speaking in Dutch was making me laugh because they all sounded like the Sweedish chef to me in my tired, delussional chef and it was rather upsetting.

Saturday and other stuff
All of the Pictures Which you see were taken on Saturday around Rotterdam.

My House and My Neighbourhood
For Rotterdam I live in one of the more upper class neighbourhoods with larger houses and very close to the university. The first thing which I noticed upon entering my neighbourhood was that there are streams surrounding everyone's houses or neighbourhoods, in some cases they actually look like moats. Many of these streams are completely covered by some form of Agae and have many different kinds of water fowl living in them. Ducks and Geese here are quite different from how they are in Canada but thus far I have not got a picture of any ducks or Geese. The swans here however are the same and they also swim through the streams.
My house here is quite lovely, there are three floors, the main floor, the second floor and the attic, I am currently living out of two rooms on the second floor but once the atic is finished being redecorated I will be moving up there.
My land lady, Anna is quite sweet and has helped me in many ways. She's given me a whole bunch of Tommy Hilfiger products which she recieved free through her job and she has taken me grocery shopping. I was quite suprised when I went grocery shopping to find many of the same brands in the stores were the same as Canadian brands, like Keloggs and Kleenex. Something else interesting foodwise in the Netherlands is that it is forbidden to genetically modify food, and I have actually found that a great deal of the food here tastes quite different as a result.
The Market (Blaak)
Yesterday afternoon I met up with some other students on exchange here from Carleton and we went down to the Open Market which is called Blaak, which is actually very similar to the Byward market but on a much larger scale. Many things are sold in the market like plants, all kinds of food, clothing, bags and shoes. Surrounding this area are a great deal of shops, many of them selling electronics and clothes, which look interesting but that I have not had the opportunity to visit yet. At the market yesterday I bought two plants, one was bamboo and another is some viney thing that came in a very nice pot. Plants here are very cheap, the bamboo only costing me 2.5 Euro.
Night Life
After returning to the student residence we all came to my house to drop my things off and we decided to go out afterward. Since I reside very close to the university we concluded that there would be a lot of students out however, what we found were more families and older people. It was later explained to us by a student who we met outside of a Frat house was that students tend to go out more towards the centre of the city, which is why we didn't see anyone. We still had a good time though, we ate at a cafe and I had an excellent meal and unfortunately my first Heiniken. I did not want any beer however our original waiter didn't speak English and brought me a Heiniken when I asked for a moment to decide. Well alls well that ends well I suppose.

Weather
One last note is on the weather. Since I have arrived it has been very cloudy and today it is windy and raining, apparently this is pretty much the norm for the Netherlands but I've heard some talk of the weather improving by next week.

So I start orientation week tomorrow so I'll let everyone know how that goes.

Cheers!

P.S. the Pictures were all taken in down town Rotterdam