Fit for the King

Every country's schools has a selling point- their students are the hardest workers, have come the farthest, or are the smartest. The Dutch (constantly) told me their students were the happiest. I had an incredibly busy and rewarding time in Dutch schools. I'll spare you the full rundown, but I'm guessing that at least a bit of the reason those students are so happy is because they seem to never actually be in class. They're out in the field, in crazy open classrooms that actually seem to work, or on vacation. My biggest surprise was how early and intensely the Dutch track their students. They make the roughly equal decision of what type of college to attend (if at all) and what their major will be at age 12. With some students, this might work. With a few of the arts high school students I talked to, it was fantastic. However, I also have talked to a few students who this really hurt. Still, if I was to send my children to school in a country of my choice I think it would be the Netherlands.

I was very thankful my research there was so fruitful, in part because it was an incredibly expensive portion of my journey. When I first looked up hostels a bed in a 24 room dorm was over $60. Why? Well, in accordance with my nack of going to countries during festivals I managed to end up in Amsterdam during the biggest day of them all, King's Day. It's basically a day of day drinking expensive beer, dancing poorly and hanging out in large crowds while wearing orange. Instead, I opted to hang out in the empty apartment I had a room in and use my day cooking and watching Netfix. Before you think I skipped the excitement entirely, I did go out Kings Night. My airbnb host showed up at my door at about 6 informing me that he was taking me out with his friends. The friends never did appear, but after I convinced him that hanging out on the street would be much better than going to a dance club, I had a great time. Dutch sounds hilarious when being sung and there were many free concerts that I could go to to enjoy. After finding out you could return glasses for 1 euro I took some time to collect glasses, until my host got a bit annoyed. (I made 16 euro in maybe 10 minutes.) Altogether, a nice night.