Arrival in Leiden

     On Saturday morning at 10 a.m., I left Memphis on a flight to Amsterdam. With the hopes of trying to sleep the entire flight, I did not sleep the night before. I'm not sure my friends would not have let me sleep if I wanted to anyways.

     I arrived in Amsterdam Schiphol airport at 6 a.m. on Sunday, and caught my train to Leiden, the first location for grad school. When I arrived, I quickly threw my bags down in my room and began to wander around. I was too excited to try and sleep. I walked around Leiden for an hour or two, and was fascinated at how laid-back the city (more like town) was. The weather is perfect, with highs around 65-70 F. It has been mostly overcast, but little rain. So far so good, but I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.

     Leiden is a college town, with roughly 118,000 inhabitants. Leiden is home to the Netherlands' oldest university, Leiden U., with about 20,000 students. It is also the birthplace of the artist Rembrandt. What may be even more historical, Leiden was a location in which many Protestants fled to in order to avoid persecution. Here, many people, along with John Robinson, met regularly in a church before setting sail for America aboard the Mayflower. Pretty historical, right? I'm surprised I had never heard of Leiden.

     The city is conveniently located between The Hague (10 minutes) and Amsterdam (35 minutes). In fact, one of my courses, Marketing, will be in the Amsterdam World Trade Center. Being near the coast, Leiden is full of canals, arguably just as beautiful as Venice. There are also lovely old-style dutch windmills all over the Netherlands, and Leiden has two of its own.

     My program consists of 14 members of the Global MBA cohort. Everyone seems very friendly and well-educated. There are 7 guys and 7 girls, ranging from ages 21 to 30. We all seem to have a passion for traveling, and everyone has specific places they are trying to see. We will have class on Mondays (6-10 p.m.) and Wednesdays (1-5 p.m.). Outside of class, the teachers are expecting us to do quite a bit of reading and writing. However, as long as we do it (fingers crossed), we should be able to work while traveling.

     My goals for the near future are to attend class, form travel plans for the next few weeks, and buy a used bicycle to ride around the Netherlands. Hopefully the next post will be a little less informative and, perhaps, contain some stories of our settling in.