Wageningen Week 8 Sam

Through talking with many students from Wageningen as well as our supervisor, Rene, I have noticed many common day to day differences in the cultures between the U.S. and the Dutch. Most of these differences are small, but were fairly amusing to me.

Students from our course invited us to a dinner they made for us. It was a common Dutch meal and this was the first significant difference we have noticed. It is very common for students to have other students over for dinner and typically, you return the favor later on. This is not something Allison or I see much of in the States. I think it’s very nice and enjoyed it very much. We got to chatting about daily routines and I mentioned how the long days were a bit hard for us, since we college students typically take a nap during our school day. They were shocked, what do you mean you take a nap? Hah so we explained that it varies for each student, but it can be anywhere from 20 min to hours, in any place, your apartment, dorm, the quad, the Union, etc. They again were really surprised. This topic also came up when Rene had us over for dinner and again, everyone was surprised! End rule, students don’t nap here! How strange as that seems to be the basis for college life in the U.S.

This leads me to our next point difference. We have noticed that students here typically only work on school work during the week, through the typical 9-5 work day Mon-Fri. This was strange for us, as most students I know get quite a bit of work done in the late hours of the evening and throughout the weekend. The Dutch students end their day around 5 typically, some a bit longer and head home for the weekends, forgetting all about school. They were shocked to hear we stay at the library past 2am and take exams from 7-9 at night.

Also concerning school, work ethic and integrity. We have found that for most students, it is perfectly acceptable to aim to just ‘get by with a passing grade.’ There is no competition scale here constantly comparing your GPA and formulating a class rank. We discussed this also with Rene. We talked about our differing societies and what they deem as acceptable. Allison and I agreed that is often unfortunate in our own society that it is often hard to find mediocrity as acceptable or respectable. I was always raised to respect all people, of all jobs, because we need all types of people to make our world function. Yet unfortunately, much of our society does not share my same view and looks down on much of our working class. It is really unfortunate. That does not seem to be the case as much here since the general aim is satisfied with average.

You also decide which career path you will take at about 13 years of age. In ways I think this is good because you are not bothered with courses that you will never need, rather you continue on in an academic direction related to your career. Yet at the same time, it’s hard to imagine that most kids actually know what they want so young. So many of my friends have switched their majors halfway through college, which is shocking for most people here to hear.

Vacations/Holidays! Another very interesting difference! It seems as though most Europeans I’ve met from several countries take what we consider LONG holidays, as in 21 days straight, at a time. Heading off to Greece or Italy for 3 weeks is very common for a holiday! Allison and I are not familiar with taking family vacations for more than a week at most, because our parents would never think of leaving their jobs for longer. Many Americans do have more vacation time than that, but we take it in different chunks I suppose, breaking it up. I also explained that many will work through their holiday and get paid time and a half or save their days in case of an emergency or to be paid for them later in retirement.

In the theme of work, Rene pointed out something very interesting. They have too many jobs, not enough people here in the Netherlands. So they are cutting back weekly hours to 36-38 hrs/wk to accommodate more people. Not nearly the case in the U.S. as we have far too many people, not nearly enough jobs.

Food! I have recently discovered something interesting trends while at our last dinner at Rene’s. First, they do not eat doughnuts for breakfast, ever! Allison and I were so confused, we asked, well when do you eat them? As a dessert of course… apparently. We explained that doughnuts are a fairly common to-go breakfast food, amongst many others. It all started when we brought a pie for dessert and even that was ‘a bit much.’ A typical dessert is maybe some of their delicious yogurt with fruit and granola. So we again asked, well when do you eat pie then? Later, with coffee or at celebrations. We laughed and they got a bit of our culture as well by having pie as dessert.

We also got to talking about another Dutch tradition, which is eating a herring whole, to the tail. My face was shocked and horrified when they first were explaining this, because they assumed I knew that the fish had been cleaned out and that the head was chopped off. I imagined big eyes staring you down and was still disturbed that they ate it raw, I commented that it sounded like feeding the penguins I work with at Sea World, seeing as though that is just how they eat it. Rene even pulled out some pickled herring, his favorite evening snack. No thanks, especially when I have the particular food beyond associated with the animals I work with.

Those are the main recent differences that come to mind at the moment. I have a few must have tips for the handbook! For the Netherlands, bring a rain coat, it’s a must must must have! It has rained all day, for a majority of the days we’ve been here. With that, an umbrella is also great to have! You never really know what to expect with the weather! While it has been blistering hot in the states, we’ve barely been about to reach 60 here! So bring many variations in clothes, maybe a few more warmer things than you would think you will need for summer!

I cannot believe I only have a few days left here. I am finishing up working in the Aquaculture hatchery and then I am off to Interlaken, Switzerland to experience some extreme sports! I am quite excited! Beware girls, the culture shock of the U.S. has been harder for me each time I return from studying abroad, its amazing to realize how much a different culture can impact you.

Jess-Viborg

So yesterday finished up my last week of work here! I cannot believe it is over. I was actually sad to leave yesterday. I took a cake to share with everyone at the 9am coffee hour and it was really nice to see everyone one last time.

I am really going to miss Foulum and all of the nice people that work there. It is a really unique place and I hope that I am lucky enough to be able to own or work in a practice someday that has the same warm feeling and good will that can be found at Foulum.

Yesterday we said our final good byes and left work around 11am to go to Landsskuet with Winnie. Landsskuet is the National Show for all of Denmark. All of the best livestock from around the country go there to compete. It is similar to our state fairs I would say.

I had a great time taking pictures of all of the different breeds of cattle, horses, sheep, goats, chickens, and even rabbits. A lot of the breeds there were exactly the same as the breeds at home, however I found that the confirmation, frame size, and muscling on the beef cattle differed quite greatly from the beef cattle in the U.S.

After we went to Landsskuet, Winnie invited us to have dinner with she and her husband and brother at her home in Oby! It was wonderful! I think both Alanna and I had a great time with Winnie and it was the perfect ending to a perfect working trip while here!

We are going to CPH this Monday until Thursday. It should be great time as well!! I cannot wait to see the Little Mermaid and maybe even the royal jewels as well. Everyone has said that Copenhagen is a wonderful city and that we will surely like it there, but it is very different than Jutland.

I am still not quite ready to go home yet, but I am sure once I have seen Copenhagen I will feel better about going home. We may go to the west coast after we get home next week, but that is all dependent on the inconsistant Denmark weather. It has been raining here everyday at least a little bit for the past three weeks! The sun refuses to come out and shine. So we do not really want to go to the west coast and the beaches if it is just going to be raining.

I will be sure to write again just before leaving and right after returning home to relay what jumps out and grabs my attention when experience the American culture shock!

Viborg Week 7 Alanna

It has finally hit me that this is the last week of work. After taking numerous blood samples, pipetting hoards of plasma, analyzing and preparing data, and completing a paper I finally have the time to truly explore all the facilities that Foulum has to offer.

Last week I went out to the swine research facility with Birthe, a veterinarian whom I have been working with, to watch an experiment pertaining to piglets and their response to E. coli. This was a great experience for me because it allowed me to see first hand what a research veterinarian does and how they juggle the responsibilities of research.

Every Wednesday Birthe, Jens (a scientist involved with milk studies), Lene (a lab technician), and myself go out to the cattle research center to take blood samples and liver biopsies. It wasn't until last week that I found out Birthe was a veterinarian. The only way I found out was because I noticed that Birthe was the only one doing the liver biopsies. After a few weeks had past I asked her if you needed a special certification to handle biopsies and she told me that usually the veterinarians take it even though many senior scientist have the skills necessary to do it. I only bring this story up because I think there is certainly a level of modesty here compared to the U.S.

On a side note, that is the one thing that I find incredibly interesting. It seems that people in Denmark are not so interested in their titles. Everyone responds and introduces themselves using their first name only. No Mr., Mrs., Ms., or Dr. is ever used. There were several instances in which I did not know how to address my colleagues and I found that odd. It's nice that no one is so caught up in themselves here that they loose sight of their overall purpose.

Today I went to the mink farm with Birthe. We looked through the mink that had died in the past few days. She had to make a proper diagnosis for each mink's death. The dissection is really exciting because you never know what you are going to find inside. Most of the minks that we saw today had died from an enlarged cyst. Many of them had enlarged organs, discolorations, and/or some kind of blockage in their system. During the months of May, June, and July mink mortality is very high because the mother often dies of either complications before, during, or after, they give birth to their young, which takes place in May.

Aside from my happenings at Foulum hopefully after next week I will be able to talk more about our travels. Due to weather restrictions and lack of time we've only made a few day trips to cities around Denmark that have been mentioned earlier in our blogs.

Wageningen Week 7 Sam

I cannot believe my time here in Wageningen has gone by so quickly and that the end is so near. We finished up the Animal Behavior and Environment course last week with our 10 minute presentations of the reports of our data that we analyzed and wrote in the span on 3 days beforehand. The presentations went really well, it was very interesting to see how the research turned out for each group in our class. Our presentation was voted to be one of the best by the students, we were quite pleased that they enjoyed it. The experience overall was very positive, I believe I learned a lot, not only in terms of course material but also about group work, research analysis methods as well as all about several international students.

There were several specific instances in the course that I found really interesting. For example, the day after we finished our observations, we were sitting in lecture to learn about the expectations of our reports. After our professor, Paul Koene, explained that the report was expected to be at least 10 pages in length, without the references or appendices, a girl raised her hand and said, “10 pages in 3 days, that’s impossible, I cannot do that.” Allison and I just kind of looked at each other in awe and in shock. Neither of us could ever imagine speaking out in that way to a professor. We think of it in terms of if a professor says jump, you jump, never do you question something like that. The professor answered in a very well mannered way, explaining that we did indeed have several pages complete already from all of the pre-observation reports we completed and that much of this space includes graphs and charts. It really wasn’t that much to expect, even for us. We mentioned this Rene later in the week and he felt it was something worthwhile and interesting to mention here.

Another point concerns plagiarism. I believe we mentioned before about how the topic was fairly lightly touched on at the beginning of the course, yet I still could not believe people really would do that. Yet the professor did mention that there were a few groups he needed to speak with about it before handing in our reports. We also noticed that even in the presentations we gave earlier in the course, there was only 1 other group that cited all of their information in the presentation. Again, very surprising for us. This topic came up once more when we were helping edit a Polish friend of ours thesis paper, mainly for grammar and word choice at times. I was discussing it with her, not that she had at it, yet she said it really does not matter at all in Poland. I found this all strange since the topic has been beyond enforced to me since I learned to write.

Allison did mention that this course was very different from a typical course here at Wageningen, which is very true from speaking with other students. Yet I believe it is really important that these opportunities are offered. I communicated further with the professor after we finished the course about what the purpose of our particular program is. He was curious if it was to help input a similar course at UIUC. I explained that we do not have the resource of a zoo within 2 hours of campus, but that I hope the ideals of the course structure are influential on professors approaches to their courses. I know this past Spring we (students from ANSC 199, the course where you reflect on your abroad experience) completed an international study campus wide teaching retreat where we were able to speak with professors as well as other influences from campus about our experiences. I know this helped many people that attended and also helped complete our goal of spreading and expanding international experience.

I have I think evidently found how valuable studying abroad can be, which is why it has become a slight addiction that I enjoy so much. I am very pleased to see that the other students are also gaining so much from this experience. I have never known someone to come back from studying abroad and have a negative overall experience. Sure you will face challenges as you are immersed in a different culture, yet I believe we all emerge as different and better people at that.

There were several objectives and aims that I have interpreted for the program. They include; experiencing a different educational system, learning from the differences and differentiating them from our own system, meeting international students and learning about their experiences as well as learning some new material. The intent of completing the objectives and aims listed above fall in sync with the ultimate goal and hope to further internationalize our own Animal Sciences program. Through taking the course and helping with research, we have all been able to easily recognize how beneficial applied learning can be. We have also noticed there is much more group work with a cooperative effort, which helped Allison and I not only learn the material more thoroughly, but much more about ourselves. We do not do much group work at all in most of our courses, therefore we honestly found it very difficult in the beginning to collaborate our ideas. Ultimately, I do not feel my experience here could have been more complete in filling those aims and goals, along with so much more.

Aside from the Netherlands, we did take a lovely trip to Berlin, which I really enjoyed. I feel Allison really accurately described how we both felt about the city, so much history within such a big city. It was nothing like any city I have ever visited and the tours we went on gave us the opportunity to really meet and spend the day with so many different people. The trip also really made me think, as much as we know it all happened, it really hits you that it was not that long ago at all, when you see so many recent pictures. You also constantly think how terrible it all was, how could people ever actually go along with that happening? Yet it made me realize, we are doing nearly the exact same thing, only its happening in Darfur. Yes, in a smaller scale than the Holocaust, but many similarities exist. The sad part is when it is not thrown right in our faces, we fail to realize how big the problem is or was. It’s just hard to process, that no matter how much you feel you know or try to do, there’s always more to be done, more people that need to be helped. I think those were some of the most important realizations I grasped from the weekend.

Wageningen Allison Day 41-48

It has been too long since I last posted, but we have been very busy since the beginning of last week.

After many hours in the computer labs, we were able to complete our analysis work for the course. I was pleased with the results we extracted from our data. It showed that the infant we were monitoring was spending more than half the time with its mother. Also, even after only 5 days of observation, I really felt that we were able to assess the situation and make positive recommendations for the zoo.

On Wednesday, we presented our work to the class as well as to the professors and zoo staff. Our presentation was ten minutes long, and in that time we had to squeeze in everything we discovered about our macaques as well as all the analysis from our data. We both know we speak too fast, so toning it down was difficult. People seemed to like our presentation, however, because they voted us in the top three. We didn't want that to happen though because we know this class was more important to other people. We did make some friends in the class, and it was nice to be able to hear their perspective on things. I realize that the class we took was not stereotypical of classes here, but I am glad we did it.

This weekend, we decided to go to Berlin. I am so glad we did because the trip was very spur of the moment. Berlin was absolutely phenomenal. The city is so rich with history, and we met amazing people from all over the world. My mother was worried about me traveling to Germany after the G8 riots, but honestly, I can say that I felt safer there than I do in New York or Chicago sometimes.

What I thought was most interesting about Berlin is that it is such a mixture of old and new. Because of all the bombings and such, Berlin has been rebuilt over and over again. Even the buildings that look old most of the time have been rebuilt.

We took several walking tours put on by the New Berlin Tours company. They really do a wonderful job, and I don't feel as if we would have gotten as much out of what we did if we had just walked around by ourselves all the time. We took their tour into a nearby town to visit the concentration camp there. It was really incredible the difference it makes actually seeing it. You read about it in text books, but standing in the middle of it can not be replaced. Sure, it wasn't the happiest tour, but I am very glad we took the time out to do that.

We met great people traveling Europe as well. Most of those individuals were very free thinkers, so it didn't matter to them that we were American. We only had a couple cases where we felt Anti-Americanism, but after talking with those people for awhile, I feel that they also realized that people are people. We may not have changed their opinions of America, but maybe they have a better understanding from our side.

Overall, I would say that Berlin is one of the most interesting cities I have ever visited. I would love to go back someday.

This week, Sam and I are back in the labs. I start tomorrow helping with assays. Only a week and a half until we are done with the program. It has really been a worthwhile experience, and I have noticed changes in myself that I know may not have come otherwise.

Jess-Viborg

This Monday starts my last week of work at Foulum. Time has really flown by here! I feel like I am just getting into the usual momentum of work, if there is such a thing, and I think it will be very hard for me to leave it all behind. I am still very interested in what the analyzers will tell us about the diets that the pigs were on and how that information can help people too. Peter has promised to keep me informed, so that makes me feel a little bit better!

I must admit that before I came here I knew that I just wanted to work with animals. I was perfectly happy with the idea that I would do something with some species of animal each day at Foulum and that would be sufficient. But, I am really happy that Peter and everyone else here has taken the time and made a huge effort to include me in every single aspect of their project. And most importantly, they have made the effort to allow me to choose what role I would like to play in their work. I think that takes a lot of trust and true dedication to science on their part.

I will surely miss catching the bus each morning and seeing the same faces saying, "Gut morn" regardless of the weather, the time, or their general mood!! Denmark is a wonderful place that I will be sure to visit again!

This week I will be working as usually, but on Wednesday Peter will be treating me to a special 4th of July! He is planning on taking me to his farm and meeting his family to celebrate the 4th of July with a strong Danish influence! I do not know exactly what he has planned for the day, but it will surely be memorable!

Another event that I am looking forward to this week is attending the National Show here in Denmark. Helle, from work, has very generously offered to include me with her family for a trip to what would be our version of a state fair! She showed me a show bill or sort of itinerary for the day which includes horse shows, rabbit races, tractors, cattle, and anything else having to do with agriculture in Denmark. I am really excited to see how this may compare to our county or state fairs in the U.S. and to just get back to seeing people being proud of their agricultural background!

Next Monday I plan to travel to Copenhagen for about three days. I have a good friend who lives in Malmo, Sweden who plans to meet me in Copenhagen and show me around. I may stay with her in Malmo after visiting Copenhagen, but at this point that is all dependent on her work schedule. Some things are always universal among college students! She said we can visit the beach and see the Little Mermaid!! I can't wait!

I plan to return to Viborg on or before Monday before we leave to fly home Thursday.
I don't know that I will be able to see Peter or Helle after this week. I think they are both taking holiday, so this week will really be strange because I will be thinking I won't be seeing either of them for a long time. Winnie plans on driving us to the airport when we leave so I am grateful that I will get to see her one more time before jumping on the big, white, bird.

It is amazing to me that this trip is already coming to a close. I have to say that one of the most important lessons I have learned is to be true to yourself even if others around you are changing. I know that I have changed while I have been here, but I know that it has only been for the better. I feel much more confident in my basic daily activities and I really know now that friendship and family are truly important to me no matter what else is going on in my life.

Of course I have learned invaluable lessons about science. I would say that I have learned more about how science works as whole than minute scientific details though. I was always under the impression that I loved science because there is always a right and wrong answer to everything! But I have learned that I could not have been more wrong. I still love science, but I have become so much more aware of the variables that are still present in science no matter how much you calculate, aniticipate, and repeat your experiments.

I think this has been a wonderful trip and I consider myself extremely lucky to have been able to take part in such an amazing life ride. I will be sure to write again before I leave, but I am sure that my overall feelings will not change a bit!

Viborg Week 6 Alanna

This has been a very fulfilling week academically and socially. This past weekend Jess and I attended Viborg's summer solstice festival. The Danes celebrate the longest day of the year by lighting a witch on fire. I thought that was the funniest thing when I first heard about it. Every year a witch made out of cloth and wood is put on a raft and sent into the middle of north lake in Viborg. The raft is then lit on fire and the people of the town celebrate. A long march through town opens the celebration and concerts and the witch burning end the celebration. This event comes from a pagan tradition that was celebrated hundreds of years ago. It has modified itself and has turned into a celebration that hundreds of people partake in. It's like Halloween in the middle of summer.

Work has been challenging this week. I am in the final stages of writing my research paper and gathering my thoughts for the final two weeks to come. It seems that one can never be truly satisfied with their own writing. After weeks of working on and editing my paper I still have much to revise. Although this process is very grueling I have learned a few things. This paper has given me the chance to learn how to write like a scientist. After years of writing essays and papers for my humanity classes I found it very hard to transition over to scientific writing. According to Jens writing a research paper is like a "march." You have to write in precise steps which are to the point and methodical. I'm still struggling to write like a scientist and I would love to learn how to integrate the science mentality with the smoothness of humanity writing. Some scientists have done it but it's an art. Hopefully I can bring back the skills of scientific writing back to school with me.

As the weeks come closer to an end Jess and I have been anticipating our travels to Copenhagen. After hearing such wonderful things about the capital I am excited to see what it has to offer. Hopefully we won't run into any troubles purchasing tickets and getting around. If all our plans come through I hope to share what we've seen when we come back!