Heisse, Heisse, Heisse!

It has been tropically hot here in the Netherlands. I am staying with family for my 3 week "holiday" from school. Nannying 3 kids is hard work so it was nice to relax this weekend. The girls were with grandma so I got to enjoy the sunshine. Work in the new house has progressed this week so my work is bringing great results. I also had my friends visit one night and we experienced an earthquake! 

Here are some pictures of the past week:

Jan-Omke and Annemieke's wedding day

Petra's new garden

Petra's new garden

Rosalie making crafts at the camp ground

Jolein making crafts at the camp ground

Danique making crafts at the camp ground

Jolein and Taco at the campground

Danique at the playground in Ten Boer

Danique at the playground in Ten Boer

Oma Huijzer painting for the new house

Today's temperature was supposed to beat records from 1944 so the male cousins and I went on a cool adventure of our own. We drove around in a vintage jeep dressed like army people. It was a great time!

Picking me up by the Wietsma's

Lunch: Patatje Oorlog ( :D) at the Hoornse Plas (ps, ps)

Mhmm

Beer. Enough said

On Wednesday was our excursion to Amsterdam to visit the Heneken Experience. This is the old factory that has been turned into a museum. It was very interactive and took us well over 2 hours to walk through. It included everything from the company history, to how to make beer to interactive games and tasting!

The four components to making beer- we got to taste each one

big kettles for roasting the grain

Horses were used back then

And the best part of course! Everyone got 2 free beers with their entry ticket

Beer wall

Testing my tapping skills- i\m not very good.

After the tour, we walked through the streets of Amsterdam for a bit and then went back to Utrecht on the bus to work on our assignments. I was so tired that night that I don't remember when I went to bed but I woke up the next morning with my clothes still on! 
We've been doing really well in the marketing simulation game. We were in first place for a long time but then reconfigured one of our products so we went to second place. Hopefully my group will be able to bring us back up today. They have to give a final presentation and input numbers for one more quarter today.
Overall, it was a good course because I could finally put my 3 years of learning into practice. The bad part was that the other students did not know much about business so I could have got more out of it. At least they tested my basic business skills and I was able to explain to them why things were the way they were.

Yesterday was the day to pack up our rooms again and clean up the apartment. Surprisingly, everything fit into my suitcase after throwing away a bit of stuff. It's nice that I don't have to worry about the weight because I am not flying anywhere. It just sucks to haul these heavy suitcases through the streets and in and out of trains.

Today was the day to say goodbye and leave the Utrecht Summerschool. I woke up early because class started at 9:15 and I needed to give my key to Madlen to hand in for me. Everything was going smoothly. I made it to the bus right on time and jumped in the train as it was about to leave. Unfortunately, it said in the train that I was going to Leeuwarden and not Groningen. I did some research using the free wifi on the train and saw that I could get out in Zwolle and get into the Groningen train. I asked the conductor and he pointed me to the "right" train. This one was just leaving as well so I jumped in again- Unfortunately again, I should have jumped into one cart further because I was once again in the train to Leeuwarden while the front half of the train left to Groningen :( This is not my day. But now I will get to see Friesland and I am just taking a touristic route back to Loppersum. It should only add to my travel time by 1 hour so I hope I don't make any more travel mistakes today.

Tonight is the big wedding I have been looking forward to for a long time!

Last Summer Course

Once again, it's been a while since I posted on here but I have been very busy.

Friday was our wrap up of Doing Business in Europe. We had to do final presentations in the afternoon. The whole program was a competition so the combined scores were added up and the winning group won the "Golden Certificate"! Surprisingly, our teacher loved our final presentation and we did really well throughout the course so we won first place and got the highest mark in the class! It was an awesome achievement but it was not fun to see others being jealous of us...

Friday to Sunday night was spent with my family. It was really night to get away and enjoy a couple days of summer holidays. 

Waiting for the waterbus

famous street in Rotterdam

Church dad was baptised in

Kinderdijk

Bert's garden

Sanne's dog- Nouk

 It was back to work on Monday. This week is my Marketing simulation game. We were put into groups and have just taken over a company. We have a huge binder with figures and financial statements and now we have to keep the company going. On Monday, we did one quarter (4 months) and today we did another 2 quarters. After each quarter, we can see how we did: if our sales increased, if our market share improved, where we are among competitors, etc.It is a great way to practice our skills but my group is not easy. I am with a italian engineer, a german real estate person and a french guy which speaks for itself. I am the CEO of the company (naturally!) and I make most of the decisions. The first question the french guy asked is what are assets? It was frustrating because I really want to learn from this and my team members don't know basic  business skills...

So happy! I finally found the shoes I have been looking for. I've been walking on my toms everyday which is not good. These are a great replacement. That's what you get when you go in 15 minutes before closing time and have a goal on your mind!

Tomorrow, we are doing another quarter and then visiting the Heineken factory in Amsterdam!

Venlo- Floriade 2012

Today was our trip to Venlo to the Floriade 2012. We left early in the morning at 8am but only half of the class showed up. It was a 2 hour drive with lots of rain along the way. The paid for a tourguide to show us around the grounds and give us some more background information. Unfortunately, the tourguide was an old man who did not speak english and did not really tell us anything. We were only waiting for 80% of the time for the group to get back together. After about 30 minutes, Laura and I separated from the group and explored on our own. It was a huge place in the forest and they focus on sustainability. There were lots of gardens to see and places with horticulture information. After a couple hours and kilometers of walking in the hot sun, we laid on the grass and just had a nap in the afternoon. Also, the main people that walked around here were 50+. On the way back, we all slept like babies and we were home around 6.

I had to run to the bank since Thursday is the only day the bank is open when I am not in school. I finally got my bank card sorted out and it should work now!

We then had to put the finishing touches on our paper and presentation for tomorrow and then celebrate my friends' last night in Utrecht! 

Here are some pictures of the day!

The kitchen of the future

Love this table and especially the lamps

Cool structures

Zen garden

On the gondola

Supper, I was so hungry!

Ermelo- Van Drie Groep

Today was a normal lecture in the morning. Even though this 3 week course is supposed to be about european business skills, this week is a refresher of marketing. It is frustrating to be in a class with people of all different levels. I have taken 3 years of marketing classes where others don't know what marketing is. So to play it fair, the professor started at the beginning to explain marketing... This sucks because I have heard it all before and I am paying for a class where I am not learning anything new. All the models he introduces to us are all familiar to me as well. Good thing I brought my sudoku book and the girl in front of me was watching the olympics so I didn't fall asleep. 

After a quick lunch break, we went on another company visit. I really enjoy our main lecturer, Bart Touring because he introduces us to many practical applications of the things we have learned in class. He believes in throwing us into a situation and making us work our way out of it which I really like. We drove to Ermelo in the beautiful veluwe (forest) of Holland. Here we visited one location of the Van Drie Group- the biggest producer of Veal in the world. The plant we visited made milk replacer but we got a great explanation about the company as a whole and the supply chain of veal.

Many students were not very intersted in this but I had my eyes and ears wide open!

Navobi- Milk replacer plant

Big silos with raw materials. "It sinks!", well I only smelled milk replacer which is not that smelly....

Storage of the bags

One interesting thing is that their whole production process is just-in-time, meaning that they order and sell ingredients when they need to. They do not store much at their plant because storage costs MONEY! 


After a Q&A session, a presentation and a tour, we went back to Utrecht. Unfortunately, today was a beautiful sunny summer day with lots of sun and hot weather but I was stuck inside the school and a bus all day. 
When I got home, I had to work on my assignment so there was not time to enjoy this rare weather. We have to do a final group project about a company and an industry. To avoid what happened in our previous presentation where we had the exact same speech as another group, I suggested that we talk about the dairy industry in Holland and FrieslandCampina as a company! I also chose it because our professor, Bart, comes from a dairy farm, is interested in the agricultural businesses and grew up in Friesland. I am going to collect a lot of brownie points hopefully!