Day of the International Student gets rave reviews
04 Apr 2011
Talking to visitors at the Day of the International Student, it was difficult to find anyone who had anything less than positive to say about what was on offer.
And it’s no wonder, with 65 Nuffic volunteers and the staff of World Forum working hard to pull the event off without a hitch.
‘It’s fantastic. You could spend all day dancing here if you wanted to’, enthused Hilal and Usama from Oman, who attended the DIS dressed in the national costumes of their home country. Both are enrolled in a master’s programme in Shipping Management in Rotterdam. When they first arrived in the Netherlands they were pleasantly surprised to find so many people of Arabic descent living in its largest port city.
‘You can speak Arabic everywhere.’
No regrets
Pana from Iran, Jolia and Flores from the Philippines, Sara from Uganda, Fatama from Tanzania and Anggrani from Indonesia – all students at Saxion University of Applied Sciences in Deventer – were all quick to agree and had no regrets about making the long train trip from the eastern Netherlands to come here.
‘It’s a great experience’, said Jolia, ‘and you get to meet fellow students from everywhere’.
‘We international students all speak the same language, you know’, Fatama explained.
Anggrani added that in one of their class discussions on European countries, everyone agreed that Dutch people are friendlier than the French or Germans.
Even so, only two of this international group of girlfriends – Pana and Anggrani – actually want to stay in the Netherlands. The Indonesian Anggrani hopes to go on to do a PhD on an environmental topic after completing her master’s.
