Having gone through all these helpful messages the people put on here, I think it's time for me to share my experience with you guys
To be perfectly honest, what the author wrote appeared to be biased somehow. I' ve never been to Rotterdam before, not even the country. However, as far as I am aware, it can't be that bad. According to my friends and my Dutch colleague, most Dutch people are friendly and willing to help you at any time, and it's said that living in Holland should be pleasant!
Let me just make a few points here, you may or may not agree with me, just bear with me while you are reading this message, feel free to leave any comments at the end:
1. Tuition fees - I admit that it's unfair for us overseas students to pay such a high amount of fees comparing to those paid by the European students. This has been a long debate between the overseas parties and local governments, as far as I am concerned, they are not going to get much out of it. I know it's unfair, but at the end of day this is the real world, you would have to pay if you want to stay there and continue with your studies. This is life, since you can't change it, then you'll have to take it!
2. Housing - there are possible answers for this, and one of them is the conveniece that you are gonna get when you are living in the student hall. Dutch people might be noisy, as they are young, and go out to pubs or clubs a lot. When they return, you can't expect them to be absolute quiet, can you? What you can do is to talk to them, tell them try to keep the volume down, once you talk to them, I am sure the situation will definitely get better. Nevertheless, if you continuously suffering from such noise, report it to the residential office. Not all Dutch people are noisy, some of them may be very quiet and they want to complain about you being the noisy person.
3. Police - Well, this is a general fact that they have to follow a long listing procedures and therefore decreases the efficiency of their work. 8 months is not a short time, and basically I can understand the pain of it. I have once lived without my passport for 4 months in England due to those bloody procedures, how annoying. But this kind of things are not applicable to everyone, maybe we were just so unlucky to have been picked, but even if we did complain to some authorities, they wouldn't be help us anyway.
4. According to the author, dirty streets = streets with blacks or middle-east people, that's blatantly prejudice or race discrimination. When you are having such ideas, have you taken into account that those people might have taken the same point of view on you, you'll never know.
5. There isn't any free lunch! TV, Internet, drinks are all have to be paid for! Can you have them for free in China? I doubt it! No social or no leisure is all because of your stubbornness. If nobody wants to talk to you, then it's your problem! Because you didn't like them, you didn't want to talk to you, all resulted in your lonelyness.
6. You are asking for too much here mate! What you expect when you are findind a job, it's tough enough to gain a place already. If you want to enjoy, want to relax, then why bother to work?
7. Nobody would expect to find a job easily after their graduation, it applied to everywhere, even in China, nothing is easy in this world.
When people are considering studying abroad, bear in mind, you are gonna get some levels of discrimination as you are not their original residence. Think about the tough period that you are going to experience, get yourselves well prepared, and I am sure you will have a great time abroad with handful of experience.
I must say, if the author did want to share her experience, then she should be happy to answer people's queries via emails or messages, however, the way she behaved doesn't seem to be helpful or responsible. I urge people who ever read through this message not to believe it 100%, it may be true, but to some extent, she took everything too personally and therefore, there bound to be some inevitable prejudice. |
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