Making my way to the Dutch Summer School

The day has come. The start of the Dutch Summer School. I have signed up for the 2-week course quite some times ago and was really looking forward to it. After all, I will be moving to the Netherlands in a few weeks, so I better get my Dutch to a decent level!

The day started early, at 4am, as my flight was leaving at 7. Two hours later and I was in Eindhoven. I picked Drenthe as the location of my course, so I had to travel across big part of the Netherlands to reach my destination. I had some time to kill in Zwolle so I set to find some tradition Dutch snacks. I was in luck - I found some delicious fries with creamy mayo. How good were there! I then bought a couple of oliebollen, the Dutch version of the donut. And gosh - they were AMAZING. So, so good!

With my belly filled with Dutch goodness, I boarded a train which took me to a tiny town of Beilen. 8 km further lays a holiday resort called The Timmerholt. This is where the Dutch Summer School take place each year. It seems like a perfect place to study - peaceful, very quiet and a little bit boring. You can just focus on learning without being tempted to go out and play all the time.

I checked in at the reception and set to find my room. It turned out I would be sharing a room with a lovely Brazilian girl and also have Mexican and Columbian girls for housemates. Half of the Latin America under one roof!

With the lessons starting the next day, that afternoon was dedicated to meeting other participants. What a better way to get to know each other than a barbecue? It's a really international crowd. There is Brazil, USA, Wales, Iran, Izrael, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, India, Mexico and many other nationalities. Everyone with a different reason to learn. Some because of love, others for work or studies, some purely out of interest. But we are all united in our quest to become better at Dutch. Can't wait for the first lesson!





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