You'll soon find out that when you are in a country of which you do not yet speak the language, it will be really difficult to find a (side) job. I studied in Sweden, and I tried to find a job with just as much effort as I would make in my home country. I soon discovered that even for delivering the newspaper I was asked to know Swedish. In the end I didn't get a job and I regret t

Image by the jabberwock via Flickr

hat a lot, because the people who did find a job spoke Swedish once they got home, while I could barely remember how to count to ten. So here are some tips for all of you who need a job next to your studies.

1. Find a job in virtual reality
Communities like Second Life, Lineage and EVE Online are like second worlds where everyone speaks English. You can make stuff, earn stuff (like levels or weapons) and sell or trade them trough forums. This idea cam from a documentary I watched on Dutch tv yesterday; 'Another Perfect World'.

2. Sell 'typical' productcs online

Image by deep.ed via Flickr

This will work especially if you are in China or Taiwan or some country of this kind. Buy products that are tyipcal for the country you are in, or just produced really cheaply in your neighbourhood. Now sell them online to your home country. An easy way to do this is trough Ebay-stores. Make sure to be legal though.

3. Teach your native language to others
At some universities, beleive it or not, they are looking for Dutch teaching assistants. This may very well be the case in your university too. Nuffic is a very good contact for Dutch students abroad. Also an idea is to put up a note at the supermarket, who knows; there might be people in your neighbourhood looking for a French speaking nanny.

4. Become a correspondent
Blogging is like corresponding in a way, and there are people who can make money from blogging. You would have to write interesting and specific things, and you might succeed. Find good idea's here. Another idea is to write to newspapers and magazines in your home country and suggest you'd become a correspondent for them.

5. Find a Hard Rock Cafe

If you are more of the outgoing type of person it might be an idea to find a Hard Rock Cafe or an Irish Pub in your neighbourhood. They don't mind if you only speak English. Tip: first learn how to poor a decent beer.

6. Digital job databases
To conclude; I found this website for digital nomads lookg for a job. There is also one especially for bloggers. How wonderful..

These are my ideas, hope they are of some use to you. If you have more ideas, let me know.

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After the news last week that soldiers in the Dutch army where offered a 'treatment' against being gay, the proud soldiers take their fate in their own hands. They will join the Gay Pride this Saturday in the city of 'Cheese, tulips and tolerance', Amsterdam. Last week one of the organisers of the Gay Pride was attacked by youth in the centre of Amsterdam. So tulips and cheese may be all we have left for the moment. That is why the Gay Pride should take place and should be extra loud and proud.

The Gay Pride Amsterdam is about people who are proud of who they are. I applaud the soldiers coming to the pride. What is more, they will be wearing their army costumes uniforms.

Also joining in the parade will be the mayor of Amsterdam, Mr. Cohen (who closed the first gay marriage in the world by-the-way), who will close new mariages live. The minister of Education, Olympic sportsmen and women, Surinam gays, gay singers, artists, and a lot of straight supporters. I like people who are proud to be different then the rest.

Image by James May Stock via Flickr

Diversity is enrichment of society.

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The Shoot Nations competition is an international creative competition with a soon deadline. Make sure you enter your photo/design/drawing before july 31st and win Olympus camera's, subscriptions to National Geographic and future maps which are nothing more than maps should be according to me. These maps represent countries and continents at their real size.

Anyway, what to do? Shoot a pic with the theme 'because I am a girl/boy' or 'What will I become?' and send it in before the 31st. Good luck!‏

It is not in any way about exchange students or about news or anything.. just to lighten up your day! That's what you get when you put your cat in the bath tub. More wet cats at cuteoverload.

There are multiple ways to travel Europe. Last Sunday I saw a performance of Rob Sawyer and his band at a small music festival in small town, The Netherlands. Next to his band there is a crew travelling with him, all Aussies except for one German girl. They're doing fine and their next stops are in Amsterdam, the UK and France. Check out their tour schedule at MySpace.

Isn't that a nice way to travel around Europe? The band has a sponsor called 'Ongetemd', which is a brand with a quite unusual website full of parties and surfing and no clothes. The band has sleeping places everywhere at fellow musicians places, like at Jeroen from Jaya the Cat, and they play like they are too much influenced by alcohol and other things.

Lucky for me, they only played 2 songs at the music festival I was at. I can however imagine that they could sound quite well when sober. And I would go again if I knew they played, because it was just lots of fun! Maybe a little trip to the South of France ;)?

Bands that played as well and better I may add:

JJ and the Fatcats

Dillemmia

Picture: Rob Sawyer & band thanks to ongetemd website.

I found the public consultation I wrote about earlier thanks to Patrick of ESN. The EU asks its citizens to help and share ideas on how to get more students to go on exchange.

What did I find? Great websites! Look at this, I ordered them on 'usefullness':
Ploteus
A very very usefull website about going abroad. It shows you all you need to know about a country, about funding, about educational systems, and so on!
Eurodesk
Amazingly usefull if you are organising an event, or if you want to know what Europe can do for your specific case. If only I would have known this website last year when I was organising the Annual General Meeting for the Erasmus Student Network..
Euraxess
This one is for European Researches and shows vacancies, researcher's rights and so on. It's usefull and vacancies are actually posted there!
European Youth Portal
Nice because it offers you all kinds of possibilities next to going on exchange like European Voluntary Service, Summer Schools, The Lions Club, Youth for Peace and so on.
Study in Europe
More a portal that shows you other sites, for non-Europeans who want to study in Europe.
Eures
European Job Mobility Portal: Useful! If you're looking for a job in Europe..
Erasmus for Young Entrepeneurs
Looks promising! But.. 'There is currently no local contact point in this country. If you wish to participate, please try to address to a local contact point in another country.'
Your Europe
It has a lot of information, also on studying in other countries, but it is not attractive and a bit boring. This info should be on another website..
Euroguidance
This is like an advisory agancy for Europens wanting to work elsewhere in Europe. Wouldn't know if they do anything usefull.
EU support for training and mobility for SMEs
Not really clear if this is an actual portal.. or just a page that provides (usefull) links.

So what is the main problem according to me?
That we don't know these websites!
Please share your thoughts on the questionaire or right here!

----
Why! Do! They! Think! We! Are! Not! Interested!

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Then I didn't fill it and pressed 'send'.
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TED, the inspirational conference of inspiring people :D, has launched local programs! TED stands for Technology Entertainment and Design and their famous TED conference takes place annually in California. But now, they not only spread their talks online trough ted.com, but they are coming to the newly renovated Hermitage Amsterdam to get in contact with the community.

Following the TED slogan; 'Ideas worth spreading' I would totally recommend you to go see the TED-talks, especially the new top 10 talks. They inspire you to get trough the day, to set new goals and give me new courage. I would also recommend you to go see the Amsterdam website of TED and subscribe! You never know, we might just get invited!

You might think getting in trouble is fairly easy. But there are people, young people, who show us the most complicated and unlikely ways of getting intro trouble.

So, if you wanna avoid getting in trouble and nearly die, DO NOT lock yourself in in a locker at a train station. A 20-year old guy from Germany (I'm not saying anything about Germans in general, just that this guy is from there), locked himself in in one of the lugage lockers at the train station. His friends laughed, tried to open the locker again, and of course, it didn't.

So the police had to come and was nearly on time before the boy would have suffocated! They had to break the locker open. The guy was not feeling particularry well. Let's hope he hadn't booked a ticket to Holland.

Because that would have been expensive too.

Italy's decided to overcome the financial crisis by giving more tickets for traffic violations. In itself that's better than cutting costs on healtcare or education, which is no doubt also happening. Or on the rebuilt of L'aquilla for that matter.

But let me share with you this 'Italian way' of tickiting. First of, tourists get a higher fine than Italians. Now do they mean tourists or foreigners? Moreover, the reason couldn't be that tourist understand the Italian traffic signs much better then the Italians theirselves. The traffic signs concerned in this matter say: 'Zona Traffico Limitato' or 'ZTL'. Now, if you see a sign saying 'ZTL'! Would you stop and not go in there? It means that traffic is limited and only accessible for cars with a permit. And once you go in there, you'll get photographed and receive a ticket.

I remember something about EU law and discrimination? But then I also remember some things on Italy not really obeying (EU) law. Foreigners, or tourists, get a fine of 101E and Italians pay 80E they say.

There is a solution to this, if you are on the way to a hotel or parking garage, you are allowed to pass the sign. But your hotel or the garage should call the police and tell them your licence plate number. Thanks to this very informative blog on slow travel I found a plan on how to do this:

Step 1. Ask the reception desk to forward your licence plate number to the police

Step 2. When you come back, ask the reception desk if they did it.

Step 3. Save your receipt of the hotel or parking garage.

Step 4. Hope nothing comes.

Let's say you're looking for a parking spot or a specific address and you drive by the sign twice. This means that you will get two tickets. Funny eh?

I think Italy is way cool. But it is always better to have an Italian driving (and cooking) for you.

Did you know that you can miss flights to make money? I found this idea at a lonelyplanet blog where they offer more ideas on how to make money while travelling. It's called voluntary bumping. thanks to overbooking of (American) flights, it is possible to volunteer to take a later flight. In return you could receive cash, flight vouchers, food and a night at a hotel.

Find info on these websites:

flyertalk.com

bumptracker.com

picture trough NY Times

Great websites! I ordered them on 'usefullness':

Ploteus
A very very usefull website about going abroad. It shows you all you need to know about a country, about funding, about educational systems, and so on!

Eurodesk
Amazingly usefull if you are organising an event, or if you want to know what Europe can do for your specific case. If only I would have known this website last year when I was organising the Annual General Meeting for the Erasmus Student Network..

ESN Galaxy
Very nice interactive website that show's you just what's on in Europe!

Euraxess
This one is for European Researches and shows vacancies, researcher's rights and so on. It's usefull and vacancies are actually posted there!

European Youth Portal
Nice because it offers you all kinds of possibilities next to going on exchange like European Voluntary Service, Summer Schools, The Lions Club, Youth for Peace and so on.

Erasmus Student Network
The Student Network for Exchange students and International students.

Study in Europe
More a portal that shows you other sites, for non-Europeans who want to study in Europe.

Eures
European Job Mobility Portal: Useful! If you're looking for a job in Europe..

Erasmus for Young Entrepeneurs
Looks promising! But.. 'There is currently no local contact point in this country. If you wish to participate, please try to address to a local contact point in another country.'

Your Europe
It has a lot of information, also on studying in other countries, but it is not attractive and a bit boring. This info should be on another website..

Dreams don't have to be a thing to wake up from. All of us who have been on exchange or have travelled for a longer period of time know this. So why can't we use our dreams as an inspiration to take action!

The problem seems to be that once I confess in public that 'this is my dream', or a 'dream job' or a 'dream come true' it sounds corny and exaggerated. Also, my audience rarely believes me.

Plus, to me, the word 'dream' adds an emphasis that makes me feel absolutely miserable if my mission does not succeed. If you confess your dreams and wishes it makes others more likely to destroy your dreams just because you told them. If they would have refused you your dream without knowing that it was, they would just have refused, and not destroyed.

Another note. Being destroyed once in a while is good too. Pain is better than doubt about an action not taken. Real pain makes you feel real happiness. Just like only real effort makes you accomplish great things. How cliché!

I want to write something personal and I end up with these cliché notes! That's why I need a real job next to this stupid blog idea.

Today I have a job interview for a dream job. And I should say it! At least to myself. Wish me luck!

The European Commission is going to hold a public consultation on how to get more students to study abroad.

Warning! Official EU language!
How can we convince more young people to go abroad for learning? What obstacles there are at present? How can we get a wide range of players - the Commission, Member States, regions, education and training institutions, NGOs – to join forces in a new partnership for learning mobility?

Good good! Public consultations are good! Now where can we fill it out! We have lots of ideas!

Find the press release here.

Improved version of this How to..!

I am making this blog thinking of international students, but how do you ever become an international student??

There are 2 types of international students;
'The degree-seeking student' and 'The exchange student'.

It is relatively easy to become a degree-seeking student. Basically you look for a university and program anywhere in the world you want to study, you subscribe, you go there.. done. (strongly simplified version).

The how to.. of today however is about exchange students.

Step 1
Go to the international offiice of your home university. This implies that you should be subscribed at a university somewhere already. Preferably you are subscribed to a program where you get credits for going on exchange. However, this is not absolutely necessary.

This is the link to the international office of my university, generally you just type in 'International Office' in the 'search'-field. My uni has a cool overview with destinations I can choose from.

Step 2

Image by Global Game Jam via Flickr

Find out about the opening times of your international office, which will probably be too early, too late and on days you do not have to be in the uni.

Step 3
Talk to the lady and ask for scholarships and deadlines. In the Netherlands we have complete guideboks for scholarships. This could be scholarships for exchange within Europe (called Erasmus), but also scholarships for 'girls of german/indonesian desent who are not taller than 1.69'. Why do these scholarships exist? Because people said in their will their money should be used for the purpose of helping specific kinds of young people to go on exchange. And we speak of the dead no evil.


Usefull links for scholarships:

Fullbright scholarships for Dutch who want to study in the States or for Americans who want to study in The Netherlands
Erasmus scholarships can be requested at your own international office. The Erasmus scholarship is 250€ per month for Dutch students, but differs per nationality.
Huygens Scholarship for talented students and researchers

Step 4
Take 4 weeks to fill out all the forms. In general it is better to stay at the housing provided for you by the university because you will stay with all the other exchange students which is a wonderful experience. On the other hand it may be cheaper to get a room yourself. We'll leave that up to you.

Step 5
Hand in the fo

Image via Wikipedia

rms, book the ticket, take the travel insurance.

Usefull links:
Cheaptickets.com
AON insurances
Lippmann insurances

Normally you would have enough insurance with your own travel insurance, though some uni's require you to take a special ensurance sucgh as the ones mentioned here.

Step 6
Take a break and organise a goodbye party for you will never be the same again.

Step 7
GO! Enjoy! Keep me updated!

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Happy quatorze juillet everyone. If you're in France at this day, you will have a national holiday and probably a party. As you know, today is the memorial day for the stroming of the Bastille-prison in 1789. This is the start (?) of the French revolution. Normally you should prepare for a parade, jokes and the garden Party of Sarko.

But this year, like last year, cars are burning in the banlieu. Are the French prepairing for another uprising? Sarko has invited the Indian army this year for the quatorze juillet parade. I hope he won't need them.

Picture of the storming of the Bastille trough this website.

Being a big fan of sleeping, I would recommend you to sleep for a good cause trough amnestybookings.org. This is a cooperation between Booking.com and Amnesty International and it doesn't cost you one cent extra! For every reservation through this site, Amnesty International receives half of the commission from BOOKINGS. This initiative is way cool.

The navigation is still a bit quirky, but let's hope that will improve soon.

Picture trough Booking.com

As it turns out I am not a travel writer. On my trip last week I encountered lots of practical problems such as empty laptop batteries on a campsite, no internet connection available, and preffering sleeping over writing.

So, back to what I do better; information and news for internationals.

Image via Wikipedia

Some notes. The city is full of tourists and we did not find the ‘real Prague’ yet. On the other hand, we have just been here for one day. Secondly, I use the Lonely Planet as my guide.. (how are you going to avoid tourists with that as your guidebook…

The best thing to do is always to ask Czechs themselves.. Which I did.. And they are so proud of their capital city that they just point us to the must see’s. Which is fine, it is beautiful here. We will come back some other time.

We’re here at a campingplatz in Wolfsburg, Germany. Wolfsburg has autocity, the home of VW and the VW factory is the only reason for the town being erected. So, in times of crisis in the automotive industry, why are we here? Because the town has only been built after the VW factory, that is 20’s or 30’s if I’m correct. This indicates that the town solely exists of modern architecture. My travel company is an architect, and that’s that. Some famous buildings we’ll see tomorrow are by Zaha Hadid and Alvar Aalto (again, if I’m correct).

Next to that the camping is next to a nice lake with bars and beaches and the town is full of rabbits. Yes, real life rabbits, no joke. They are everywhere. And these reasons are enough for me to like it too. (and Italienisches Eis).

I have been ill the last 2 days, that's why I missed 2 days. A weird sort of sickness that included a major headache and sneezing. (why?)

Next week I'll be travelling through Europe with destination Prague. So in order to keep you updated I'll turn this blog into a traveller's blog. Speaking of which, The Nerdy

Image by andystoll via Flickr

Nomad has posted her 24 favorite travellers blogs. The article includes people who went by bike, donkey, unicycle, around the world and had great adventures. A great read to get inspired and to discover more about the country and place that you are now.

For example, I discovered that none of those 24 travellers have posted something about the Netherlands. Seems to be a nice task for me! You'll here from me soon!

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