Posted in February 2016

Hi y’all,

It is starting to get cold in Madison! And with the cold come the most beautiful season in the Midwest, the Fall! The trees slowly start changing colour until there is an astonishing mix of yellow, red and brown. This creates a fairy tail like scenario which is ideal to hike and be outside before the real cold arrives. One of the must do’s during this season is go to the zoo! There is an awesome zoo in Madison which has all kinds of interesting animals like tigers, lions and even polar bears. And the best part is, its free! So the zoo also became one of my favourite running routes.

During the month of November there is only one thing in everyone’s mind. That is how long until Thanksgiving. This is the holiday where the whole family gets together, eats as much turkey as possible and watches American Football. As I mentioned before, I have family living in Chicago so I spent Thanksgiving with them. There were two things that amazed me about this holiday. First of all is the amount of food there is. It is exactly as in the movies. The second one was the warmth and cosines everywhere. I found it very similar to the Christmas feeling in the Netherlands.

After Thanksgiving eve, which is always on a Thursday, some friends and I rented a nice apartment in the Loop (centre of Chicago) and spent the weekend there. The city is very lively and has beautiful architecture. It is amazing to just walk around and see what’s going on. On one of those walks we went into a musical theatre to see what was playing and ended up going to an incredible Sherlock Holmes show.

The weeks after Thanksgiving are really busy. I was trying to enjoy the last part of my stay as much as possible while finals were getting closer. So the balance between fun and studying was leaning more and more towards studying. However, that is the same for everyone else so it isn’t that bad.

That’s all for now folks!

Cheers

Hi again,

Since I got in Madison I have been very busy! On the first weeks there are many introductory activities and events for the new students. This is a great opportunity to get to know what the university has to offer next to academics. I joined the Hoofers Sailing Club and became an instructor there. They have the biggest college fleet with over 100 hulls! The club organizes socials every Friday in an ideal setting to meet interesting people. Being an instructor is very fun and was an ideal student job due to its flexibility.

One of the activities that I enjoyed very much were camping trips. I went camping several times. There are many nice camping spots near Madison. The only downside is that they can only be reached by car. The most special camping trip I did was to Nicolet National Forrest, which is a four hour drive to the north. We stayed at a camping spot near Anvil Lake. During this trip we visited a small town festival in Phelps. This was one of the most American experiences I had so far!

Another fun thing that I got to be part of is Rush. This is the period where fraternities and sororities organize many nice activities to attract their new students. The activities vary from group studying with pizza to parties and from sport day’s to film night’s. It was like being in one of those American college movies!

Madison has a very good athletic program. As many of you may know, American Football is a very important part of college life in the US! Almost every university has its own team and are very proud of it. Wisconsin has the Badgers, which is an excellent team! I watched the first game on the TV, and did not understand why everyone was so excited about it. The game was kind of boring, with only 13 minutes of actual football during three and a half hours. The rest is mostly commercials and discussing scores of other games that did not interest me.

However, after watching a game at Camp Randall (their football stadium) I finally got it! The energy in the stadium is hard to describe, but even not being a football fan it is hard not to get intoxicated by it! When there is football going on, everyone is completely focused on and supporting the players. The marching band and cheerleaders provide the necessary entertainment while there is no actual football going on. So there is a constant flow of cheering, singing and dancing. I recommend going to as many games as possible!

Of course that even with such a busy agenda there still is serious studying going on. The courses here are not necessarily harder than at the TU Delft, but they have more compulsory parts. Most of the courses I attend have a weekly homework assignment that amounts from 15 to 25 percent of the final grade, and some courses even have participation counting for 10 percent. Therefore, it is important to stay on top of the studies and be sure to participate during lectures and office hours.

That’s all for now folks!

Cheers

Hi everyone!

I am an Offshore and Dredging Engineering student at the Delft University of Technology. In addition to my regular studies I am participating in the Honours Programme Master. This fall I will be doing an exchange semester at the University of Wisconsin-Madison through the GlobalE3 programme. I chose this university because in addition to being well ranked, I believed it would provide me with the real American experience. The cheapest way to arrive in Madison is to fly to Chicago and take a bus from there to Madison (this safes you up to 500$!!). Because I had family in Chicago, this was even more ideal. After spending a long weekend in Chi Town my uncle drove me up to Madison. This was a very pleasant two-hour drive.

Before coming to the US I thoroughly researched the housing possibilities. The most common ones are living at dorms (which is really expensive) and living on apartments which are usually off campus. Because I was interested in the most American possible experience, I decided to live in a fraternity house. I really recommend this as I got to know many interesting people very quickly!

Upon arrival at the Frat all my housemates were very surprised with the amount of stuff I had with me. They were expecting many boxes and furniture, so one suitcase was a lot less than usual. My housemates were very welcoming and fun, and my roommate (it is very common to share a room in the US) was a cool American guy. They were all very interested in me and being the only foreigner at the house I got a lot of attention.

The first day my roommate and some housemates gave me a tour of the campus. It is huge and located on the beautiful lake Mendota! There are several supermarkets, museums, café’s, restaurants, sport centers, a football stadium with capacity for 80 thousand people, medical centers and much more. So there is almost no reason to leave the campus.

That’s all for now folks!

Cheers