First Day of Class

Today I had Europe-Hollywood-Europe and Dutch. The professor for the first class seems nice but she's a bit soft-spoken. Also she over-pronounces her "u"s which doesn't hinder her English, just makes it a joy to hear her say "update." We saw three French avant-garde films from the 20s in class--intense, I have no idea what their deal was. Something about sex....I think, and probably death. Grammatically speaking Dutch is fairly simple--it has like 3 tenses and it's the only language I've ever heard where something is "100%" true all of the time. BUT what it lacks in difficulty on the grammatical end it makes up for with pronunciation. Guttural "r"s and "g"s, letters that sound the same...Not exactly the warmest sounding of the European tongues. After class I went to dinner with a couple of friends. It came out to about 12 Euros with drinks included, which isn't even $15. I'm pretty impressed with the prices here, course I haven't actually shopped for clothes or more expensive things. But I love the service here. They take your orders quickly and then you're free to stay for as long as you want basically. The wait staff doesn't hassle you and everyone seems pleased to help you. We asked a man sitting at the bar to recommend a beer and gave a suggestion for each of us. By the way, the drinking here seems to never end! Though to be fair, never in excess--at least not on weekdays. A social glass of wine/beer is very standard. In fact, they have these event's called "borrels" which are weekly gatherings for whatever group or organizations where you drink beer or wine and mingle. Tomorrow is my department's (ISHSS) borrel and afterwards is my ISN group's borrel. Christ.