It's been 4 days after we arrived at the Netherlands. Everything is so far so good. We got adapted with the life in Deflt very quickly. The Netherlands is quite different from the US. Everybody uses bike here to commute everyday. We've seen thousands of bikes on the street. Dutch people look so happy when they bike. We saw a lot of beautiful Dutch ladies singing (it seems like church songs to me :D ) while they are biking. This is we never have a chance to see in the US or at least I've never seen that in Tampa.
We stay in Mina which is about 20-25min walk to Unesco-IHE. It seems fun to walk here. You don't have to worry much about the traffic or accident because there are always pavements which are designed for walkers. However, walking takes quite a bit of time, especially if we want to go shopping or explore the city. So we decided to buy bicycles. We asked around IHE students to see if anywhere we can get bikes which are cheap and good :D. I hasn't mentioned that right after we arrived at Unesco- IHE, we have met a lot of IHE staffs, students. They are all very nice, friendly and always willing to help us on doing research (i.e. lab, IHE) ( I will mention about the research in next blog) and on getting used to with life in Delft. So a day after we arrived at Delft, we went to a bike shop which was recommended buy an IHE student (Saul). All the bikes were in quite good condition and quite expensive price :D ( around 85-120 Euro). So Caryssa and I decided to do research a little bit before buying it. But the other fours decided to get one from the shop. Anton, my roomate, got the most expensive bike which is 115 Euro and also a lock from the seller which brought him the anxious feeling for few days ("->). The reason is because we heard from people here in IHE that " never buy a lock from the one who sells you the bike". So yeah, Anton couldn't sleep for few day because he's worried about that his bike can be stolen anytime :)).
Anton looks so happy with his fiets
Anyway, he was still so much happy with his fiets (bicycle in Dutch). The next day, I got my fiets from a student at IHE with a quite cheap price compared to the regular price for bike here. Even my fiets costs only 30 Euro which is much lower than Anton's bike but for most of us ( maybe except Anton, sorry Anton) we agreed that my fiet is the fanciest among of ours. And there is a rumor around the Mina that if I leave my bike outside the building , nobody wants to take it (T.T, poor my fiets) (>.<). Caryssa was the last one in our group to own a fiets. She was introduced to a Canadian student who wanted to sell her fiets before coming back to Canada. However , the student said she could only give Caryssa her bike on the next day which was right before she got to the train to the airport and she took 25 Euro from Caryssa for deposit (the bike costs 50 Euro). So we made a joke that, she would go to the airport with Caryssa's 25 euro and without leaving the bike to Caryssa (-____-). The joke made Caryssa worry quite a bit though ;)) ( sorry Caryssa). Caryssa was getting more nervous because she didn't see the Canadian girl at the appointment time. However, finally, luckily, 10 minutes later, the girl showed up. What a relief for Caryssa. ( :)) ). Anyway, we all owned fietsen just 4 day after arriving at the Netherlands which is great. We are ready to conquer the Netherlands and other European Countries by our fietsen.
Anh
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