Maastricht

Hello everybody,

I trust you are all well.

It has been a month of two halves for me. The person I originally contacted about my stay in Maastricht subsequently resigned from their post at the school which meant I wasn’t able to make arrangements before time. I therefore spent the first couple of weeks commuting every few days whilst staying in a hostel or a bed & breakfast (I stayed in a boat once, I could barely stand in the room).

I spent any time I had to myself looking for a room, but with a population of over 22,000 students in the city, I had some competition (some of which I became acquainted with in the hostels). After averaging 120km a week on foot, I finally got a break through a website I was consulting regularly. I had been turned down several times because of my gender and the short duration of my stay; this time, the landlord was willing to take me on since the person whose room it had been was in breach of contract and his policy was to try to strike a balance in the ratio of boys to girls in the 10 room house I am currently writing from. He is a no nonsense contractor and I think it helped that we immediately saw eye-to-eye. I asked him if he could help me furnish the room and he provided almost everything in it, even a pink bed.

All my roommates are Dutch with the exception of one German. I don’t see them all that much since I am relatively busy.

The school reminds me of the other Dutch schools I have visited over the course of my secondary education through various exchange programmes. The atmosphere is far more laid back and unpretentious than in most Belgian schools I know. The pupils typically don’t take things personally and there is no detectable animosity towards the establishment or the teacher even when they are being rowdy.

My tasks as a language assistant, of which there are many in the school, are to help all the ‘bovenbouw’ (cycle supérieur) students to prepare for their examinations. My first assignment was to the 4^th year HAVO. They will have a written test about a literature project I helped them with on the first of March. I am now working with a 6^th-year-VWO class and several 5^th-year-HAVO classes to prepare their oral examinations.

So far, I have got on very well with the students. I must acknowledge that I am teaching in near ideal conditions. Nevertheless, their vastly superior level of English undoubtedly facilitates the exchange. The two teachers which I have been assisting up to this point are very kind to me too. One of their colleagues has even suggested I try to get the school to provide a grant for a master’s thesis because they are in dire need of Anglophones for their immersion programme (TTO); it appears to be on a much grander scale than ours. Suffice to say I am being taken care of.

On that note, I will sign off by wishing you all the best in what should be the last time you will be experiencing the drudgery of writing papers abroad.

Sauce,

Alex