Universiteit Leiden

Mostly in Amsterdam but soemof the best social events we went to were those parties and events organised by the Student Network.

The housing at the univeristy was in itself. In comparison to the London prices that I paid at home I found the price reasonable and good value for money, although this wasn;t the case for other students who had would pay less at the home univeristy. However, the main problem was the organisation of allocating housing and enabling students to address any problems. Students would apply for housing through the univeristy's international office but was allocated by another body, SLS. If there were any problems, which I had at the beginning when I was only given accommodation two days before my arrival (and for some friends they didn't even have accommodation after they arrived), I was thrown between the two bodies who were fairly disprganised. For the first semester I was given accommodation at the Hooigracht which was undergoing renovations and so our rent was reduced as a result. Although the accommodation was not particularly nice it was fine because I wa spaying low rent. however the major problems happened was when we had to move to new accommodation, although we ended up the new Hugo De grootstraat, which turned out to be for our benefit, we still ahd to pay admin fees and wait a long time to be allocated rooms. This was despite the fact that we had to move because of SLS and the renovations going on at the Hooi. Overall the housing itself was fine and being in student accommodation with other inetrnational students made my experience all the better. it was ojly the organisation of it that made my arrival a little stressful.

The dutch are extremely good at english. In addition to this, given that my lessons were taught in english, I did not really have any incentive to learn more Dutch.

By the Korting card for trains.

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