CW Chu College The Chinese University of Hong Kong eNewsletter

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LAM Wing Tung Christie (Psychology/ Year 3)

Destination: Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

I am a year 3 psychology major in CUHK. Always curious about life elsewhere, I applied for an exchange programme in the Netherlands, to get a taste of a different culture and lifestyle.

At Utrecht University, I took three psychology courses: Adolescent Development, The Voice of Youth and Doing Qualitative Research.

Though there were only around 5 hours of class each week, the workload was not as light as I had imagined. Because one block only consists of roughly two months, the learning schedule was packed. We have assignments to do or work to catch up every week.

Nevertheless, students still manage to find time to relax outside the classroom. There is a small park just outside the hostel, where students would just chat, barbecue, drink and play volleyball after school. The casual relaxation, on school days, was a pleasant surprise, contrasting with tightly packed school days at CUHK. Despite their workload, students in Utrecht know how to relax and deal with stress.

Most courses here require group work, through which I met many nice people, international or Dutch. In the course Adolescent Development, I partnered with a Dutch and a Singaporean student for the group project. The Dutch student was not entirely familiar with statistics because the university seldom offered courses for it. We helped her step by step, and she would tell us about Dutch culture (our topic is related to Dutch students' culture). We worked really well together and received good grades.

I made many new friends from different countries. I joined some university and ESN (Erasmus) orientation events, and met a lot of great people there.

On May 1, it was supposed to be a Finland ‘student holiday’ called Vappu. Finnish students would usually picnic, drink and dance on that day. The Finnish students in Utrecht invited some of us to have a taste of the Finnish student holiday, with a picnic in a huge sunlit meadow. There were around ten of us and each brought some salad, snacks and drinks to share. We even created a public playlist, and we each added party songs from our own countries. It was really interesting to listen to so many different songs in various languages. It was a very memorable evening full of laughter and sunshine.

I lived in student housing, with four sweet and lovely flatmates from Ireland, Portugal, Canada and Italy. Even without a roster, we managed to take turns cleaning, taking out the trash and restocking toiletries; we made a great team and maintained a nice place to live. We once did a cosy pizza night, chatting about everything over pizza and beer. In daily and casual encounters, we would share stories and recipes, also bikes, pots and pans, cooking ingredients and even mattresses. I was so lucky to have them as my flatmates.

One of the most memorable activities I had joined was Cantus, a traditional event in countries like Finland and the Netherlands. Many students would gather around long tables in a club, to drink beer and to sing, with a book of lyrics in one hand and a mug of beer in the other. After each song, the host would (in loud Dutch), command how much we should drink: a sip, the whole mug or as much as you want. Anyone violating the protocol would be ‘punished’ on stage.

I also travelled around the Netherlands: Rotterdam is so modern, Amsterdam more touristy; the Hague has a very nice beach and Maastricht is more historic. During Spring break, I went to Lisbon, Portugal with some friends I met during this exchange programme.