Settling In

Well I have now been in Amsterdam for five days, and though there is still lots of adjusting ahead, I already have come to love this city! Orientation for CIEE was a blur of overwhelming information and first impressions of the city and of the people on my program. There are around 64 of us CIEEers here, including four people from last semester. Now that orientation is over it's quite a relief not to be navigating the narrow streets of Amsterdam is such numbers. During orientation I was set up with a bike from a rental company in Amsterdam. I think I have to get it checked out though, because I have to peddle more times in a minute then other people.... and no this is not an opportunity for some people to make a crack about being in or out of shape! At first I was incredibly nervous about biking around the city, especially after hearing the horror stories of bike wheels getting stuck in tram tracks, etc. However, biking is really the best way to get around the city and believe it or not safer then walking sometimes. As a pedestrian you really are at the bottom of the food chain because you have to watch out for cars, trams, buses, AND bikes. Believe it or not bikes can be the most threatening.
I live at Prins Hendrikkade which is on one of the bigger streets close to the Central Station. Amsterdam is comprised of streets and canals that run in sequential half circles and expand as you move further and further out of the center of the city. My street is at the top of this half circle, a five minute bike ride from the very center of the city. I feel very lucky to be living in the center of Amsterdam, as most students, let alone residents, find it very difficult to find housing at all and at a reasonable price. My building is right next to the ISHSS building, which is the home of the International School for Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. Two of my four classes are here, which means that I can sleep 20 or 30 minutes longer than many of my fellow students. For this I am eternally grateful. My room/flat is on the fourth floor of this beautiful old building, which made dragging my one hundred pound suitcase to the top very challenging. My flatmate Jasmine, is from Germany and is here studying for her masters in Argumentation theory. She is incredibly sweet and we get along fabulously. We often eat dinner and breakfast together if we're both home and have discovered that we both love the show "House" and like to watch an episode together in the evening. It was nice to come into an apartment that already had toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and some pots and pans. Past residents of the flat have left many kitchen utensils behind, so I don't have to run out and stock an entire kitchen. Our bathroom is small and cold, as there is no heat in either the bathroom or the kitchen, but has everything we need. It is a true Dutch bathroom, which means that there is no separate shower, but instead a shower head and a curtain that runs across half the room including the sink. Like everything in the Netherlands, the small room was designed to to save space.
The Netherlands is something like the thirteenth most densely populated country in the world, so everywhere you go things are small and compact to allow as many people and things to fit into the country as possible. Despite, the cramped quarters, the center of Amsterdam is one of the most beautiful and picturesque places I've seen. True to many of it's stereotypes, the city is filled with narrow cobblestone streets, a little harder to bike on, canals, bridges, and rows of narrow but tall Dutch houses. I have yet to take pictures in the hubbub of orientation and adjusting, which I regret because the first five days here were sunny which never happens during winter in the Netherlands. Instead you shall all see Amsterdam in it's traditional environment - rainy and gray.