Double Dutch
Marisa Ortiz, the daughter of Gretchen and Baltazar Ortiz of Seven Fields, was 16 when she left in August 2016 for a two-year stint at the United World College campus in Maastricht in the Netherlands. She returned in early June.
She was one of 180 people from around the world attending the college. She lived with three other people in a room in a boarding house/dorm, a three-story structure with 24 students to floor.
Ortiz said, “There were people from across the world attending the college. It was in the south corner of the Netherlands. It was closer to Belgium and Germany than it was to Amsterdam or any other large city in the Netherlands.
“It is in the middle of Europe. Maastricht has a population of 300,000, so its relatively small. It's a typical Dutch town. It doesn't have canals, but it has cobblestone streets and outdoor cafes,” she said.
“I was looking forward to my junior and senior years in high school. I wasn't interested in leaving the United States. I was very content at Seneca Valley,” she said.
But with prodding from her support teacher Patti Griest, she sent in a written application and took part in a Skype interview with the United World College selection committee. She kept going further in the process until she learned she had been awarded a two-year study abroad scholarship with the United World College.
Ortiz said, “It's not really an exchange program. The college has two students from every country. The founder was frustrated by the world and wanted people to interact without worrying about national or political differences.”
“The academics are really great, and I thought it would be a great learning atmosphere.” she said.
Plus, she was able to interact with students from around the world, especially since she was sharing a room with three other students in a boarding house dorm setting.
“I think the best part was the community,” she said of her school experience.
“You got to know the names and faces of the students, something I couldn't say at Seneca Valley. It was a really, really active community.”
She was able to return to the United States for three weeks each Christmas and for a month during the summers, but said she almost doesn't count them as returns home because there were always assignments due at the end of the breaks.
In the end, Ortiz said she earned an International Baccalaureate diploma for taking a range of classes that were roughly equivalent to advanced placement classes at an American high school.“We were encouraged to concentrate. I took a lot of biology and chemistry. My roommate took a lot of history and English. We were encouraged to become bilingual. I took Spanish,” she said.She had the time, she said, because she didn't need to learn any Dutch.“Maastricht has a lot of immigrants and students, and the Netherlands has one of the highest concentrations of English speakers in Europe, so it really wasn't an issue, ”she said.“The Dutch are fairly friendly for the most part,” she said. “But the region I was in was a bit more impoverished by Dutch standards. The south is looked down upon as less educated.“But the streets are very clean and the people are well off. It's just a wholly different standard,” Ortiz said.In the climate, Maastricht seemed a lot like Western Pennsylvania, Ortiz said.“It's more or less like Pennsylvania. They don't get any snow. They had one day of snow when I was there,” she said.And since the terrain wasn't like Western Pennsylvania in that it was relatively flat, Ortiz said she got a bicycle which was one of the easiest ways to get around.She found the food “very basic” with two exceptions.“There's a lot of waffles. There's a lot of different forms of waffles. The Belgium waffle, you might have been told it they come from Belgium, they don't. It's Dutch.”She grew fond of the stroopwafel a waffle made from two thin layers of baked dough with a caramel syrup filling in the middle.“You put the stroopwafel on top of your coffee cup and the heat melts the caramel,” she said.“And there's lots of chocolate, lots of famous brands of chocolate,” Marisa said. “The day-to-day food is pretty bland, but the desserts are famous around Europe at least.”
Marisa said she liked the fact the college celebrated the Holi festival in March, the Indian festival of colors.Tradition calls for celebrants to mark the end of the event by dousing each other with water and pelting each other with colored powdersShe said, “Everybody wears white while a lot of water and chalk dust is thrown.”And she said, the students were encouraged to travel around Europe during breaks in the classes.“In the past year, I've been to Spain, Copenhagen (Denmark) and India. My roommate, Rhea Aggarwal, is from India and took me when she visited home,” said Ortiz.The previous year, she said, she had traveled to Greece, Morocco and the Czech Republic.“In general, the plane fares are really, really cheap in Europe,” she said. “I think it cost $30 to travel one-way to Greece. And you are staying with families, so all you are really paying for is food.”She rated her trip to Morocco as the favorite of her side excursions.She said, “It was the first time I left Europe, that was very cool.“I have never been to a country where the majorority of the people were Muslim. So it was a real culture shock. It was really cool to experience it,” Ortiz said.And her foreign travels aren't over yet.While she plans to take it easy for the summer since “the last two years have been so chaotic,” in the fall Marisa said she plans to attend the University of British Columbia in the fall.“I think international relations is the major I am looking at,” she said. “I would like to be a diplomat or an ambassador, but I might want to get into journalism.”
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