The second week of Radboud Summer School brought more people from all over the world to Nijmegen. Yesterday, their classes started. And after a long day, the students climbed into a plastic bubble to knock each other over and try to kick a ball during Bubble Football.

Zihao ‘call me Hans’ He (20), Nottingham University
Here for: Courses Citizenship & Migration and Reading Mystical Texts

‘My summer holiday is over three months this year, I just thought it was too long. Lately, I have been very interested in theology and the course on mystical texts is supposed to be very good here. Today was the first day, but last week I took a different course, Citizenship & Migration. I had never been to the Netherlands before, and wanted to see the windmills. When there’s some free time, I try to do a lot of travelling and sightseeing. Nijmegen is a 2000-year-old city, right? Because of its history, I went to the museum and around town. Unfortunately, a lot of the information is in Dutch.

‘This sport is funny, I had never done it before. Back at home in China, I play badminton. This is a nice change. During the rest of the week, I will do some more social activities. It would be nice to make a French friend. For my study programme, it is required to learn an extra language. So I am learning French now. It’s a beautiful language, but it’s really hard! So I need someone to practice with.’

Annelies van Hoesel (32), research analyst at Rijksmuseum
Here for: Chemometrics, Introduction to Advanced Data Analysis course

‘Some former colleagues of mine took this course and told me it is very useful. The simplest way to explain the topic is ‘statistics for chemistry’. I work with museum objects, we measure them, try to get objective data. This can result in extra information for art historians, for example on where and when they were made. This was the first day, but I already know it is good to be here. It was very interesting, and we get to practice a lot with data sets. There might even be time to work with our own data later this week.

‘From Amstelveen, where I live, it is quite far to travel back and forth every day. It’s also nice to meet all these people and have some time to engage in the social programme. This game is bizarre, but fun. It’s like being in a tropical, sticky, warm microclimate. But it is nice to be able to just run and not get hurt. It might be a good thing to have when you are on a bike in Amsterdam. I am not very good at football. So if I see somebody from the other team run to the ball, I just try to bump them, so that someone else from my team can kick it.’

Nina Suknovic (30), University of Belgrade
Here for: Perfecting your academic writing skills course

‘A couple of years ago, I saw people playing this game, but I never tried it. It is fun, and it is a legitimate way to knock people over. It is a nice addition to the course programme to do some sports in the evening. Today was our first day, and it was great. The lecturer was really laidback but still very informative.

‘At my faculty, the PhD centre offers a list of summer courses for staff. I work there as a teacher in Contemporary English. On the list, there were two courses that I really liked. It would have also been great to take the Citizenship & Migration course. In Serbia, I am involved in a literacy project which deals with the same topics. We enrol immigrant children in Serbian schools. But the dates for that course were hard for me, so I decided to come this week and work on my academic writing skills. It is my first time in the Netherlands, so I will go to Amsterdam after this, and maybe another city if I have the time.’