A little about my trip...
I leave for Europe on Sunday, January 25th. I fly out of Denver to Houston, where I will meet the rest of the group from Baylor, about 40 students and a professor (as well as his family). We fly to Amsterdam and then take a bus to Maastricht where we will spend two days learning our way around the town and having orientation for our classes.
Maastricht is a city with a population of about 120,000. It lies on the Meuse River near the Belgium border. To clear up, the common misconception that The Netherlands is interchangeable with "Holland", The Netherlands is the country while Holland is a province in The Netherlands. Holland is the most widely known province because it is home to the city of Amsterdam. Limburg is another province in The Netherlands. Maastricht is located in Limburg. Amsterdam is about a two hour train ride away.
After orientation in Maastricht, the entire group will take a trip to London for a long weekend. The following Monday, we begin classes at the CES, Center of European Studies at the University of Maastricht. I will be taking one class from Professor Maxey Parrish, a Baylor journalism professor. The class I will be taking with him is Writing for Media Markets. I will also be taking two classes with CES professors and a political science independent study course. The CES classes are Dutch Art History and Intercultural Philosophy and Communication . I'm really looking forward to the Dutch Art History class because Amsterdam is home to the Van Gogh museum and Rembrandt is from The Netherlands as well.
Classes will last for 8 weeks. We get long weekends each weekend to travel, as well as a few days off for Carnaval, which is apparently quite the experience in Maastricht. See the picture.
Amsterdam, Paris, London, Brussels, and Cologne are all within a 5 hour train ride from Maastricht.
We finish with classes the last week of March and then have a month to travel wherever we'd like. We get a Eurorail pass which means free transportation to almost everywhere in Europe. Then April 24th, we all meet back up in Maastricht and depart from Amsterdam back to the U.S.
I'm extremely excited for this trip! This will be my first time to Europe and hope to use this blog as a way to keep in touch with friends and family and share all my adventures overseas.
I will also be able to check my email, so email me at taylor_zimmerman@baylor.edu and I'll have Skype as well (this has instant messaging, voice, and video messaging for free..so sign up!) I'll try to post some photos on here, and probably lots on facebook as well!
