Putting the "L" in DCL

Today was our first day of the language and seminar classes part of our summer course. Starting off the morning with a language intensive was fun, but a bit taxing. The Dutch language is similar to english, but some of the sounds are a lot more guttural and difficult to emulate. Despite the Dutch and english alphabets being identical, the pronunciations of most letters is almost unrecognizably different from what I'm used to. Though my first taste of Dutch was a bit disheartening, my writing and listening homework wasn't as hard as expected.

Following our language class, we had Pr. Maurits for a seminar about Dutch politics. The political system here is remarkably different from the US, utilizing a similar form of representative constitutional democracy, but with a coalition form of government rather than a two-party system. To add to the differences, the popular "freedom party" is a exclusionary anti-immigrant, anti-muslim party similar to the populists in the US at the turn of the 20th century. There also happens to be a party whose platform is exclusively about animal rights.

After a short break full of manneken pis (literally "little man pee" after the Belgian statue) a delicious Dutch French fry chain, we returned to class for our second seminar. The topic was Dutch ethics, and the lecture discussed the legality of euthanasia, abortion, and prostitution, especially focusing on drugs. As is turns out, even soft drugs are illegal in the Netherlands, but due to Dutch pragmatism, victimless crimes, such as marijuana ingestion, aren't policed. Instead, the Dutch prefer to regulate marijuana through the use of "coffee houses" to prevent exposure to hard drugs and limit the radius of potential harm from the soft ones. The lecture was one of the best I've ever heard.

When the lecture came to a close, we were once again given a small break during which I finally bought a bicycle. I cannot tell you how great it feels to ride a bike again. Though my time with my new friend was cut short because of the need to return to the final part of the days course work, watching the Dutch movie, Simon, the movie turned out to be worth the time apart from my bike.

With another successful day in the books, I'm looking forward to a nice rest before it starts all over again.