Tag Archives: Dutch

Week 7: Blog upgrade!

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Saturday, gameday, we have a homegame against Tennessee and the outrageous amount of commuters already started moving two days ago. Since the game starts at noon, tailgating started for some at 7 in the morning. Something that I cannot do so they can start without me. The game was not all too interesting to watch (it ended being 34-3 for UF), and it was very hot that day, so we decided to skip the last quarter😅. To cool down after it was a good idea to get some froyo, it’s time to make froyo a regular thing (I might come back as fat as a beached whale when I get back in The Netherlands).

UF vs Tennessee

The next day, I had to pay a visit to the UF Bookstore, I had been there before with a problem about not getting my philosophy textbook and they told me it was almost ready. That was fine by me, until I got a surprise quiz with open book (something which I only had on high school), and a third of the grade was literally copying a sentence from the book, which was put in there to compensate for the difficult questions that followed. So I went back to the bookstore and they told me that apparently my billing information was not from the US, and that they were sorry for not telling me that it was a problem, for more than a month😣.

To be fair, I chose two of my courses (entrepreneurship and innovation) to be a bit more easy. This would give me more time to focus on exploring Florida and taking on projects. However, as I said previous week, not all things I had to do there seemed a useful dedication of my time. Once I started making graphs about stakeholders in a puppy from adoption/breeding program matter, while staring at cute puppy pictures in shelters for an hour, and my brain with zero activity, I realized that I also could have taken another course for this…

I joined the programming club, and decided to participate in creating ClubFinity, an app that will be able to connect UF clubs with their users. For this I had an informal interview, to decide what I would be working on with the app. Truth be told, I am bringing literally nothing to the table, since my Java programming experience is only from the Java course I am currently following. However, I am willing to work on this and take online videos to learn more, so we will see how this turns out. The plan is to let UF support this app, which would mean that a lot of people would be using this in the future.

On Tuesday, a friend invited me to join for kickball. The name sounds a bit ridiculous to me, but I should at least try it. This was a young life (club) event and they used a giant ball instead of a normal one, just for funsies. Apparently kickball is like baseball but kicking the ball, and it can not be played normally if more than 20 people are on each team (the catchers in the field and the kickers on the side).

Wednesday, of course, we went to Grogs.

The day after, special MasterChef Dennis (the other Biking Dutchman) gave us the opportunity to have a taste of his culinary specialty: Gnocchi. However, I have noticed that I do not conform myself anymore to eating at certain periods, and eat whenever I’m hungry, so I only got to taste one bite of the superb gnocchi.

Masterchef Dennis at work

I have been working hard on getting giving this blog an upgrade! I bought a domain (danielblog.eu) and signed up for own hosting, which would remove the annoying wordpress ads. Besides that, I let my creativity run free and made my custom design for the blog. I can humbly say it turned out very beautiful!

With the Navigators, there is a trip coming up to Howl-O-Scream, in Tampa. This could be a fun experience to get scared to shits from haunted houses and whatever other plans they have. Maybe I should go…?

Tips for upcoming exchange students to Florida

Tips for incoming exchange students, , , , , ,

In case someone might search for student exchange stories about UF, and stumble upon this site, I’ll prove a list of tips to help you.

  • Always go for on-campus residence, it will be less luxurious than off-campus and you will probably share a room, meaning less privacy. But off-campus (international Weaver Hall for us, try to apply ASAP), means that you won’t be on a convenient location (having to take the bus etc.) And you won’t be with other Internationals (that generally have the same mentality of taking a less serious, and more outgoing approach for the semester.)
  • Sign up for the NAVIGATORS (the international association, not the Christian one), this will make it very easy to make a lot of American friends since you’ll be paired with an American. This is the reason you don’t need to be off-campus (where you’d meet other Americans)
  • On the first days you can get in the Weaver Hall (almost a week before the start of classes), you can find a donation center in the basement. This will have really useful kitchen utensils/clothing hangers/bedlinnen/lamps/mini-fridges(!!). The earlier you get here, the better the stuff that you can get here.
  • DONT take a meal plan. Unless you are extremely lazy at cooking and want to pay an overpriced meal plan that you’re gonna complain about after several weeks. You can still go to the dining hall and pay for your food separately if you really want to go. The options here are either fast food or extremely not appealing (so I’ve been told.)
  • Take transferwise as a debitcard, it has the same features (or even more) than most banks, and a low conversion rate. It uses Mastercard which means it’s a credit card from USA’s perspective. (The only thing you can’t pay with this is the ONE.UF bursar (for on-campus rent).
  • If you don’t need a lot of data, you can take RedPocket as a phone service plan, it has the cheapest plan with 3-4G available, you’ll have good wifi on campus and several pubs. (Having a different billing address than the shipment address is only possible if you contact them directly.)
  • Apply early for Gator Gears, it’s a bike rental service for 40 bucks a month, it’s super safe to bike on campus and if you’re careful/good biker you can take it to nearby supercenters as well.
  • Sign up for the six month Amazon Prime trial, as a student you are eligible for one.

Week 6: St. Augustine and froyo!

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On Saturday, we went on a trip with the Navigators to St. Augustine, a very beautiful place as you will see in the pictures. Since it is/was a harbor, we also made use of the beach at the ocean (for me the first time since I’ve been in Florida). It was fun to meet other people from the Navigators and we visited little shops in St. Augustine.

Fun facts

  • Amount of guys I’ve seen with a tank-top: 5 per week en moyenne (I expected this to be a lot higher)
  • Amount of people that have complimented my Puma shoes: 9 so far
  • Amount of times I had to resort to Pepsi because Coca-Cola is almost never served at bars/campus 😥 : 19
  • Amount of times my semi-fake-mentor Kristen has quoted “The Office”: too many to count 😅😅

Another thing I love about UF, how lively everything is at night (since it is such a nice climate at night still). Wednesday we were asked by a tattooed guy with a hat if we wanted to do magic tricks with cards. The first trick I saw, but the rest of them really left me flabbergasted…

For Engineering Innovation, I had to come up with a need statement, for something that could be improved in society. For this I chose the fact that too many dogs are being bred instead of adopted from shelters. However, this meant that I had to put up questionnaires and interview people about this matter, I have to do something for which I hated other people in the past..

Finally, I got to try something that I really always wanted to do since I’d seen it on the amazing show: “The Good Place” (here they interpreted heaven as a place that also has a FROYO(!!) on every corner. Really, it’s amazing). For the first time in my life I tried frozen yoghurt, and it was setup in a such a way that you can choose your own flavors.

Frozen yoghurt at Menchie’s

On Friday we first went to GatorNights (if you go to almost all of them, you’ll get a prize). The highlight of this night was the Oxygen bar, something which apparently was also in the Netherlands. However, just as with froyo and goat yoga, I didn’t know we had this in my own country. The oxygen bar was a sketchy experience and a bit of a let down, but fun nonetheless. Talking about goat yoga, I might sign up for a class since they offer it at campus as well (as long as the goats decide not to shit on me, that is.)

Oxybar outside of Reitz on GatorNights