Kirsty McHenry | Life in the big city as an international student
Columnist Kirsty McHenry moved from a tiny village in Ireland, where everyone knows her name, to Amsterdam. It took some time to settle in, to say the least. “Without the reassuring network of enforced proximity to fall back on, I had to rely on my personality alone to make friends.”
Hands on hips, I surveyed the piles of overloaded boxes that surround the apartment I just moved into with two close friends. As I ferried a small building’s worth of stuff which I’ve accumulated over my years in Amsterdam to its new home piece-by-piece via metro, I tried to recollect how I’d gotten here.
Hailing from a tiny town where everyone not only knows your name but also your entire family lineage did not equip me with the steely independence required in the “Big City”. Without that comforting net of forced proximity to fall back on, I had to rely solely on my personality to win friends; a challenge to say the least. As night after night was spent involuntarily on my own in my room I was forced to study out of desperation and the hopes that my political science textbooks would offer some comfort – they did not. But, before I could contemplate my social shortcomings too deeply, I finally managed to make some actual friends.
Friends have brought a sense of stability to my life as an international student. Moreover, as my group of friends grows, the city itself has inevitably started to seem more like the village that Amsterdammers jokingly compare it to. I often think back to the day I was fresh off the bus from Schiphol with bags in hand staring up at the lights of de Brug like I was in Times Square. Since then, I’ve moved in with people whom I care about and feel that, at long last, I have a home and – corny as it sounds – a family in Amsterdam. My new roommates don’t yet know I’ve cast them in this role but thankfully, just like a real family, they don’t have much choice in the matter.
Kirsty McHenry is studying Political Science at the UvA.
