Finally Feeling Adjusted

Written on Sept. 25, 2022

School/Life balance

This week I truly started to feel like I live in Amsterdam. Each day, I have a daily commute, go to class, do homework in a cafe with some of my classmates, and spend time with friends somewhere new in the city.

I’m still adjusting to the school workload because it is more homework than I am used to having at NAU. Normally, my school assignments are fairly light, and my schedule is instead filled with multiple jobs and extracurriculars. Little things like not knowing how fast I bike and unpredictable rain also affect my generally stellar time management skills. In my current program, we are doing two large projects and many smaller assignments all at the same time. For my classes this week, we took portraits in Nieuwmarkt — an iconic square in the city center — to practice aperture. We also worked on a marketing brief and sketched product redesigns for our large rebranding project.

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Product redesign sketches and a few photos I took in Nieuwmarkt during class.

When I’m not in class or doing homework, I’m making sure to do new things with friends. One day, I went thrifting at the Waterlooplein market, tried cheese samples at the Amsterdam Cheese Museum, and got Dutch fries in the Jordaan neighborhood with Sophia, my friend from Germany. On another day, I went bike riding with my friend Silje from Norway, so we could better orient ourselves to the city streets of Amsterdam. We found a gorgeous overlook of the Amstel canal and later met another friend of ours from India for an Italian dinner.

The Jordaan neighborhood, the cheese museum, the Amstel canal, and friends.

Me Time

I try to still take some time just for myself as well. I know this is incredibly important for mental health, and it lets me sit with my thoughts. Many nights I like to unwind by watching Brooklyn 99 on Netflix (sidenote: Netflix here is superior). It’s lighthearted and fun so it makes me smile after a long day. In a weird way, watching Netflix makes me feel more at home because I have done this in every place I have lived. I spent one day walking around on my own after class and ended up going to FOAM — the Amsterdam Photography Museum. Afterward, I sat on the second floor of a McDonald's in a touristy area and watched people on the street out of the window for at least an hour. It was incredibly fun to differentiate the tourists and the locals in this chaotic intersection full of bikes, trams, cars, and pedestrians. I enjoyed getting the chance to wander and do whatever I felt like doing at the moment. I also felt extra grateful to be here while walking down the aesthetic streets along the canals.

Photos from my time exploring alone and at FOAM.

A clip of the busy intersection I watched from the window of a McDonald’s.

The Hague (Again):

On Saturday, most students from outside the EU needed to pick up their residence permits in The Hague. Luc and I both needed to take the hour-long train ride there to get ours, so our friends decided to join us and make a day out of it. We picked up the residence permits as soon as we arrived. To our surprise, these were ID cards with holographic photos that made us feel like spies. We stopped at a Turkish restaurant for lunch and then headed to the Mauritshuis museum. Every room in this museum was beautiful, and this is where we got to see the famous Girl With a Pearl Earring painting. We also ran into our Australian buddy Tom and his friend who we then invited to join us for the rest of our day trip.

I had seen a TikTok about “fun things to do in the Netherlands this weekend,” and one of the activities was an international kite festival in The Hague. Since we didn’t really have a plan, we hopped on a tram and headed to the beach to see if this festival was there. As soon as we could see the ocean, we saw a sky full of massive marine creatures flying through the air. We got closer and watched the whales, octopi, and fish swim above us in awe.

After I took some photos here, we walked up to the pier and got some waffles, drinks, and dinner — in that order. After the sun went down, we didn’t feel like going home yet, so we grabbed ice cream and sat at a beach bar fire pit for a few hours. It was a full but relaxing day with friends that I thoroughly enjoyed. I’m glad that I had a few ideas about what to do that day, but I also loved how flexible everything was. Even though I like structure, going with the flow and simply making the best out of a situation typically leads to a very good day.