Going Dutch Blog

(Emily Naff) As I prepare for the upcoming Fall semester, I find myself reflecting on my summer adventures.   I am sure that fellow faculty members and students will be curious about my experience teaching photography in The Netherlands.   So, I spent a little time looking over student work and selecting what I thought were some of the best photographs taken by my students this summer.  The students photographed a wide variety of subjects for their various assignments. Assignments included architecture, shadows, reflections, graphic elements, the power of color and sense of place. Work by all students is included in this slideshow: Ryan Farmer, Trinity Falter, Matthew Zingg, Dylan Kahn and Lindsey Overhalser.  To see work by each individual student follow the link to the NING Website.

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“All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered….”
— Paul Fussell

(Todd Duren) We’ve been home over two weeks now, and it’s good to be back. Karen is happy to have me home, and I see my daughters every morning, not just via Skype or The World’s Worst Cell Phone Connection. Home is where the heart is.

Home also means comfort. Our screen porch in the morning, the din of birdsongs, coffee steaming in the porch swing. My roomier shower. My free wi-fi. My air conditioning, my car, and my flip flops. By now I’ve unpacked, filled in the rest of my journal, tallied receipts, told stories, and shown pictures to friends. Things are back to normal. Almost.

This morning after coffee I found myself posting to my Facebook page that I’m “heartsick for Holland.” Wow. I wasn’t expecting this. Our Going Dutch trip was a great experience—one that I’ve been planning for a year. Why then am I surprised to miss it so much?
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(Emily Naff) Students have turned in their final projects and portfolios for both classes and are now free to enjoy their last day in The Netherlands without homework looming over their heads. See posts and photos below from the photography students to see some of the images they created during their time in The Netherlands

(Trinity Falter) We had a rough beginning, with planes, trains and trams. After finally getting our rooms, going to dinner and crashing for the night, it was all blue skies from then on out. The first couple of days in Amsterdam we had beautiful weather (we were spoiled). The first week was full of sightseeing and snapshots. It took some time adjusting to the craziness of just crossing the street. Unless you wanted to get hit by a various number of things, you needed to look in about five different directions. It was difficult to get from point A to point B when half of the time the people with the map had no sense of direction, lol. It only took about a week to know where most things were.

—Trinity Falter Read the rest of this entry »

(Matthew Zing) I think that this is the most interesting, or at least the most difficult aspect of Europe to understand and relate to: the fact that not but sixty years ago, World War Two was raging on here in Holland. How could we possibly know what that must feel like, us being from such a inexperienced country, relatively speaking? How could we know what it is like to have grandparents, or mothers and fathers, that realized and survived the Nazi occupation of their country, the carpet bombing of their city? I think that I never thought about the proximity of the war to our own generation for precisely the fact that the United States, save Hawaii, were unaffected by it, never touched by a holocaust or an invasion by a foreign army. But here, there is the very house Anne Frank hid for her life (I almost cried), German bunkers, scorched clock towers and completely rebuilt cities. What do we have at home that could remind us of such a past besides vague stories from veterans, stories that seem to come from an alien world, a time detached? In the states, the war comes off as legendary, almost mythological, and I certainly don’t mean in a entirely positive sense. But there is a deafening truth behind these stories that we might never be able to understand. They are not stories but actualities that define the lives of millions. I feel lucky, as if I’ve grown up among various advantages. Yet guilty as well, as if my life might be incomplete, and it scares me to think, that to be whole, I need horror, trauma and death. But these are the things, that without, our lives would lack in beauty. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear everyone,

This was an amazing experience. Being immersed in another country has given me a better understanding of the world we live in. It is so surreal to be here so far from home. I am so thankful for the eclectic mix of personalities and how well we all mended together. This was quite a bonding experience. Everyone got along so well and we could all go out as one group. Everyone here was so easy to talk to. The instructors were flexible and catered to our needs. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is half of my final!! I hope you enjoy it! —Trinity Falter
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So as our summer session comes to a close, we have learned many things on this trip as we have discovered and experienced what the Netherlands is all about. There have been many challenges on this trip, but I feel the biggest one is budgeting finances. It’s easy to feel like the Euro is play money because it is so different from our United States currency, but it has been imperative that we all control our spending as well as possible. In an attempt to prove that I could do it, I have budgeted 450 Euros for this trip: E200,00 for the first two weeks in Amsterdam, and E250,00 for the second two weeks in Rotterdam. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey world. This is my very boring research paper in pdf format. It contains the ins and outs of the Dutch Art Nouveau movement, Nieuwe Kunst. Enjoy!

— Andy

Yesterday I finally got a chance to rent a bike in Rotterdam and pedal around. Cycling is a great way to see the city or the country, as long as you can ride well enough to stay in a bike lane and can get used to the traffic light system. I dropped off my laundry across town, then pedaled around a lake north of the city. I saw some nice windmills, sailboats, and motorboats. On the way back into town I got lost, and stopped into this cafe to ask directions—after having a beer, of course. These guys were passing the time of day in a place that looked like it hadn’t changed in years. It had stained glass windows, faded wallpaper, and ancient beer signs. Later I stumbled on yet another windmill—amazing dinosaurs in the urban landscape.

—Todd Duren