Groeten Van Maastricht!

Hello friends!
   I'm finally here in this beautiful place, the Netherlands! Everything is so surreal at this point. In fact, when I tried to sign in to this blog, all of the directions and google site were in Dutch! It took me a while to figure out which Dutch word meant "post new blog."
    I left DFW airport Friday morning and flew to Houston to meet the other half of the Baylor students there. We then departed for Amsterdam from Houston. We left there at 3 p.m. and arrived in the Netherlands 10 hours later- at 8 a.m. here... 1a.m. Texas time.
   I didn't sleep but one hour on the plane, so I was exhausted when we arrived. After we went through customs, we went straight to board a coach bus waiting outside the airport. Everyone was incredibly groggy on the bus. We stopped halfway to eat our very first meal at a little Dutch buffet.
   It was interesting..obviously, none of us speak Dutch, so everyone ordered blindly and just pointed to things that looked familiar. We also had some good laughs as girls from our group had their first experience with "paying for the potty"... 50 euros to use the bathroom.... then they give you a little voucher coupon in return! Haha
   After lunch we loaded back on the bus and were in Maastricht 45 minutes later. Upon arrival, we went straight to the Maastricht train station to get our Eurail passes validated before our London trip tomorrow.
   We then went to the University of Maastricht, our new home for the next three months! We took our things to our dorm rooms and headed to a nearby market shopping center to get our money exchanged to euros and buy a few groceries. One thing I found interesting was that you have to bring your own bags for groceries and bag everything yourself. Otherwise, you have to pay for your grocery bags. Luckily, one of the hostessses showing us around the city told us this ahead of time, so we grabbed some plastic bags from our luggage.
   The market turned out to be really fun! It was cool just being able to TRY to act like a local (though none of us succeeded). I bought some shampoo, conditioner and soap.... which to my surprise, cost me about $18.00! I had no idea things were going to be so expensive here!
   We walked back to the university, and then we were finally allowed to crash for a short power nap before supper. At six we all went to the cafeteria, and the meal was actually quite good! We had chicken, green beans, and fried potatoes.
   My roommate, Kristen and I, have been in the room unpacking for the past couple hours and are finally feeling situated. The last thing to do tonight is take a much-wanted shower, and re-pack our backpacks for our group trip to London tomorrow!
   I still can't believe that I am actually living and studying abroad for the next three months. This semester is going to be unlike anything I have ever experienced before. I can't wait to start embarking on all of our adventures!