We landed in the Netherlands around 8 am local time today. The first thing I noticed when I got off the plane was that much of the signage was in both English and Dutch. I wondered if this was a phenomenon isolated to the airport which presumable had many foreign English speakers pass through it each day. As we continued exploring the city though, I noticed that many things were written in both English and Dutch. In addition, all the Dutch natives I interacted with spoke English well. When I visited Italy last summer, many of the locals spoke some English but often only select phrases that seemed catered to aiding tourists. Here, it feels as if the citizens are well versed in both their country’s language and English. Our tour guide Sophia agreed that it is possible to get by only on English but we did learn a few important Dutch terms today. While walking around tonight, I tried to make use of them to help myself interact with the new culture to a greater degree. I found the word Dankjewel, which means thank you, and the phrase fijne dag, have a good day, extremely helpful when purchasing items at the grocery store and an ice cream shop.

While exploring the city, I found the architecture beautiful and really enjoyed the abundance of water in the canals and inlets. I appreciated the fact that there were sidewalks giving access to all parts of the city, making it totally possible for people to walk places instead of driving. In fact, it felt like getting around on bikes and by walking was engrained in Dutch culture and I wish this was true of more American cities. I was surprised, however, by the difficulty the abundance of bikes posed to being a pedestrian. Multiple times I found myself forgetting to check for bikes in addition to cars and almost got hit. Overall, I really like this greener and healthier approach to transportation and wish more places would adopt it.

While we did not visit any sites today, I am excited to meet Karel Bockstael tomorrow to learn more about how the Netherlands meets its high sustainability standards. During visits by professionals such as Mr. Bockstael and our future site visits, I wish to make sure I ask questions to keep myself engaged and get the most out of this experience. For example, tomorrow I am curious about how Mr. Bockstael expects alternative fules to impact the future of aviation.

Finally, today’s word of the day is oost, which means east in Dutch. The park near our hostel is called oosterpark because it is the park in the east district of Amsterdam.