ERASMUS experience

 I didn’t hesitate any minute and applied for this program immediately. My university offered me many option where to travel for my studies in upcoming year. From whole range of offers I have chosen the Netherlands as my next study destination. The main reason I chose this country is the high level of internationality and the amount of possible experiences you can get here. Applying process was not that hard so, I got easily accepted and I started the administrational communication with the university in The Hague.

Scheveningen Beach

My journey started in the end of August 2013 when I came to Holland for the first time in my life. I came two weeks earlier to be able to set everything up and to be relaxed, when the school starts. I was very lucky to find one Dutch family that provided me room for free. To ‘pay back’ I was supposed to do au-pair servis to their children. The work was following: preparing breakfast, picking up younger son from school, be home during the afternoon and send him to his extracurricular activities, cooking dinner three times a week for whole family and as last the cleaning of kitchen or plying washed clothes. It wasn’t much, but in the end combining it with school and my other activities and plans I found it not easy at all. Because of all that sometimes I missed the program organized for us as exchange students. So, after two months, we agreed on me moving to my own flat or place where I could live. Leaving the family meant loosing the housing for free and other advantages with that. However, living by myself now is giving me more freedom and time to study properly. Suddenly, I appeared in the situation of finding place to live for cheap price which is not that easy especially here in Den Haag. After week of desperately looking for a cheap room I was lucky and found a place to live for very good deal and where I am very happy so far.

Prinsjesdag! - 2nd Tuesday in September

The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS) is the university I study since September 2013. It is one of the best institutes having different colleges with special bearings. The positive fact is that those subjects I assigned for based on my Learning Agreement are quite similar to subject I would have at my university back in Czech Republic. However, not all of them I could have here. So, the rest I will need to finish in the year as I come back to Unicorn College. THUAS is a huge school with more than 22000 students. Majority of them are international students from different countries all around the world. You will find big percentage of students from Asian countries, but also lot of people from Slovakian Republic. On the other hand, I haven’t met anybody from Czech Republic studying here.

Not even third of my university :)

Netherlands is country full of activities. Every day you easily find something that is possible to realize and do. It can be regarding sport, art, nightlife or gastronomy. Sometimes it is so tempting you just can’t resist. I could say the same also about the city Den Haag itself where I am going to live till the next July – end of this academic year. The thing I like the most about this country/city that everybody speaks English. There is no problem to communicate with everyone although you are not speaking Dutch fluently. The Dutch language is very interesting, however very hard language to learn. The pronunciation and the grammar are something very interesting and mysterious. I know that it is nothing compare to Asian languages, but I can say that Dutch is a mixture of three languages at least – English, German and French.

Evaculation of whole school  -  it takes arend half an hour to evaculate more than 22000 students

The Netherlands has very good geographical position in Europe. It seems that everything is very close to here. Lot of Erasmus students are traveling all around different places abroad. The same we could say about Czech Republic as well, but hen being there it never came up on my mind this way.

Visiting Paris

As I mention, I’m going to stay here in the Netherlands until the next July. I believe that I will find this Erasmus experience very profitable for me and my future studies or businesses.