The catastrophal earthquake at Haiti caused UNESCO to call upon all universities to take in Haitian students. Not only is the university in Port-au-Prince destroyed, staff-members, professors and students are dead. According to UNESCO, education will be at the start of rebuilding Haiti. In the Netherlands you can donate for Haiti through Giro 555.

By @Tjarkovanderpol

Nice to see! These are the entries of the International Student video contest I posted earlier. www.internationalstudent.com

Image via Wikipedia

Oh wow, a new message to my blog! Well, I have a new job and therefore very little time to spend on writing. At the same time this job is very very cool because I work with American exchange Students. And the things I learn from them are pretty cool. So I decided to write about it anyway.

The most memorable activity up to now is bringing them to a game of Ajax Amsterdam (soccer). And that is because I tried to explain the Amsterdam soccer supporter culture. With Ajax, there are a lot of supporters-songs about Jews. In the subway, which we had to take to the game, we where introduced to the supporters singing "If you do not jump you are not a Jew" (subway moving), "Where does the superjew live" and simply shouting "Jews, Jews". Now I knew that Ajax supporters do that, but I could not imagine a explanation that I could offer to the American students. My explanation was that Ajax-players are considered to be sons of God. While, as far as I know, Ajax was a Greec God who did something in the Trojan war and wears a helmet.

Anyway, it was all very confusing. And anytime one of my students asked me; 'Anna, what do they say now?', I felt a bit confused. How it is possible that Dutch people consider it normal to shout "Jews" to football players? And next to that, the football players are clearly all kinds of nationalities, wouldn't they feel insulted?

Image via Wikipedia

Wikipedia offered me some peace of mind. It is not known why Jews is a nickname for Ajax players (and Ajax-fans by the way, because apparantly, if you do not jump you are not Jewish and therefore not a good Ajax-fan). I always choose to not jump, which makes me a non-Jew, a hooker and sometimes gay. But once you have to explain the traditions, you will have to face your own culture.

My next challenge in explaining Dutch culture will be Black Pete.. my childhood hero.

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Ryan runs from Amsterdam to Athens. Everyday he runs about 30 km. And he is almost there. Today is his last day in Italy and tomorrow he will arrive in Greece. His blog rules! He is a real adventurer, although he has a lot of shitty places to sleep like busstops, backseats of cars or 'the beach'. This is the map of his adventures and RyanRunsEurope is the name of his blog.