The new international students were officially welcomed on September 11th during a festive ceremony that was made possible by the department of student affairs in the auditorium, followed by a typical Dutch dinner hosted by ESN. Rector magnificus Henk Schmidt highlights that with these new students, Erasmus University now hosts over 3000 international students in its academic programs.
Humorous history lesson on Erasmus
The ceremony opened with a lighthearted introduction to the history of Erasmus by a comical performance between a fully green painted living statue of Desiderius Erasmus and a public transport conductor who found ‘this green man’ on the underground reading his book. The living statue of Erasmus apologized that nobody knew the ‘green man’, “I am sorry, I am not on Facebook” he said.
Finding your true love
In addition to the added value of an international experience, Erasmus University and the uniqueness of Rotterdam, rector magnificus Henk Schmidt explained that there are serious chances that you will find your partner for life here. In response to laughter from the students he replied “you can laugh, but this is based on solid statistics.”
Recognizing internationals by umbrellas
Philip Hans Franses, the dean of Erasmus School of Economics, highlights the qualities of Erasmus University, such as that it is research driven but also, explains how the Dutch students will recognize the international students. The key is umbrellas. Internationals will be the ones using them. After a funny imitation of walking with a shaky umbrella, he simply states that in the Netherlands an umbrella is useless because the rain has a tendency to go horizontally rather than vertically due to the wind. So, Dutch students know that walking with an umbrella hopeless.
Dutch cuisine
After the official opening, internationals were introduced to typical Dutch meals such as stamppot, pannenkoeken and haring. Ana Makismovic (26) a medicine PhD student from Serbia “I especially like poffertjes, because they are small, tasty and easy to be eaten.” NdB
