NDSU student experiences Dutch culture
After considering all the possible countries to study abroad at, Teri Martin, a senior majoring in mass communication, decided to travel to the Netherlands last spring.
“I knew ever since I was in high school that I wanted to go to school overseas somewhere,” Martin said. “My friend Rebecca and I met with an advisor and decided we wanted to go to a place where we could speak English.”
Martin said that she met with Sara Johnson, study abroad advisor for the Office of International Studies, looked over a couple brochures and decided on the spot to go to the Netherlands.
“Most of the people spoke fluent English and we really wanted to see a lot of Europe,” Martin said.
Martin moved to Maastricht, Netherlands for four and a half months and attended Teikyo College where she lived in a dorm-like setting similar to NDSU.
Martin said the program was called the Maastricht Center for Transatlantic Studies.
There were about 33 students in the program, Martin said, who were from the United States, Hungry, Poland and Mexico.
Martin said she took mostly political science and history classes, and one communication class.
“One history class was focused on WWII, which was neat because we got to go to different WWII sites around Europe,” Martin said.
Some of the major destinations that Martin said their group saw while traveling were Pisa, Florence, Rome, Venice, Prague, Paris, Czech Republic and Brussels.
“We didn’t have class on Friday, so we had to a lot of three day weekends to travel around,” Martin said. “Traveling over there is really cheap - a round trip to Berlin only cost about 44 Euros.”
Martin said one of the major differences she saw was how fashionable people dressed in the Netherlands.
“They were very fashionable,” Martin said. “All the people were very metro sexual, and they all dressed really nice. We had to get out of our sweatshirts.”
Another aspect that Martin said she found really hard to adjust to was the price differences in different locations.
“Beer was cheaper than water in some places,” Martin said. “In Prague, water was expensive. A little glass of water or soda was like 3 euros, and they charge you to go to the bathroom in some areas.”
Martin said that although all the trips were amazing, the best part was getting to know the 33 people she lived in Maastricht with.
“I thought I was going to have culture shock over there, but I actually had reverse culture shock. I had to get use to not seeing all these people,” Martin said. “It was the greatest experience of my life, and I don’t think ill ever have as much fun as I did over there.”