Today I start language classes, in about 6 hours. Jan drove us to my bus stop near the university on Saturday, so I would recognize the stop when I got close to it. We also walked from the bus stop to the building with my class, since it's a bit of a windy path through a residential neighborhood. Most of it is alongside a canal on one side, and back yards on the other side of the path. Nice and scenic, with lots of ducks - we even saw one albino duck!
The part of campus the building is on is "only" about 100 years old. The university itself has been around since 695 A.D. As an American, the concept of buildings and institutions that old is a bit overwhelming. We just don't have the context for it back in the US. There's newer buildings too, but most of them do an acceptable job of mimicking the style of the building from 1912. For some reason there's a huge square in the middle of the buildings filled with gravel. A little weird, but Jan thinks it might be used for riding horses.
On the way home from our exploratory outing, we stopped at Blokker (a local for small home items) and bought a reusable water bottle. I should probably find something I can take for a snack, since I'll be out of the house for 6.5 hours or so. Jan has class tonight as well, lasting til 9 or so, so I'll take the bus home instead of getting a ride with him after he gets off work.
Looking forward to meeting people! It sounds like the people taking classes at the James Boswell Institute are the more educated type, with less educated folks getting classes at the local ROCs (community colleges). People posting in foreigner forums had indicated that both the students and the teachers in the ROCs are typically lacking motivation to learn or teach Dutch, and those classes make slow progress. So I guess it's lucky for me they have separate classes for the more educated, but it's disappointing that motivated but uneducated students get stuck in those ROC classes.
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