Today we had another visit to Inholland, this time to its campus in Rotterdam. This visit started with a small walking tour of the city, going over it’s recent development and factors that affected it. Because a lot of the city was destroyed, this has enabled the building of many more modern looking buildings. Through this we learned about the concept of placing making, literally how places like cities are planned and made. One of the factors that must be considered one making places is the risk of Gentrification, as this can lead to less well off people being displaced from their communities. Another factor is balancing the needs of the community with those of potential tourists, as tourists can bring in additional income for the city, it is important to not forget those who live there. This ties back to one of the parts of sustainability that we talked about during our pre-departure meetings, that being equity. It makes no sense to make a community more environmentally friendly if it means getting rid of the people already living there, as they would likely have to move to areas that are themselves less environmentally friendly. So, we must be careful to design cities that are friendly both to the environment and it’s residents. It was also interesting to hear some of the staff’s complaints about choices the city has made, such as trying to build a beach area as well as a line of skyscrapers right next to each other. It shows that even among experts there can be wildly different views on what’s the best solution to a problem, so each view must be considered carefully. After this short tour we had lunch and a presentation about Inholland. This university has 7 (soon to be 6 due to a merger of two close campuses) campuses, all of which are international campuses. This has got me to think more about potentially doing a full semester abroad in the future, as I have gotten to experience a taste of the study abroad experience through this program. I feel like I still want to do a full semester abroad, but that I will have to prepare myself for that experience mentally. For example, being so far from home has isolated me from most of my loved ones both due to distance and difference in time zone, so I would need to deal with that for a full semester. There’s many more things I’ll have to consider, like which university would suit me best, but that’s something I can look into after this program. We finished this visit with a quiz game about Dutch culture. We were able to put our knowledge from the past week or two into use, and I feel like most people did an alright job. After this visit many of us decided to visit The Hague, as it was only a short ride away from Rotterdam. I found the city nice, though something I noticed (both there and throughout the rest of this trip) was the presence of American restaurants throughout the city. This shows how much influence America has had on Dutch culture, as if you wanted to buy a Big Mac or stop by a subway you would have plenty of places to go in each city. I feel like this influence is a bit of a double edged sword. On one hand, this influence makes both cultures more able to understand each other better due to this contact, but on the other hand it may lead to some of the Netherlands’ culture being lost in the process. I feel like having influence from other cultures is a good, and the Netherlands is no stranger to this, but I hope that the Dutch can keep most of their culture intact. After all, if we all had the same culture, the world would be pretty boring.