Have you ever wondered who those people are that study Dutch econometrics or where the international econometrics students come from? This year the Eerstejaarscommissie and the Freshmen Committee joined forces to organise the very first Eerstejaars Freshmen Integration (EFI) weekend! It was a weekend during which first year students from both studies were able to get to know each other a little better.
The weekend started on Friday the 20th November with everybody meeting up on campus to get the bus and go to Runsfoort in Brabant. Because the boat party had been the day before, a lot of people still had a little bit of a hangover and slept in the bus. After 1 hour and 30 min on the bus we finally got there, and as a lot of people said when we got there, we could already smell that we were in Brabant. As the place we were staying in was close to a forest, on Friday we had a kind of a ghost hunt, for which we were divided in groups of 6 and each group was sent into the forest separately. As a member of the last group I can assure you walking in the forest at 11 o’clock at night can be scary, especially if someone says "I think there is someone behind us" and he starts running and scaring the rest of the group like Don did. And it only turned out to be Niels in a white dress, with a long black wig and make-up, trying to scare the groups. Actually, there was a full-blown ghost hunt, with Duco as a scary clown, who was able to frighten even the EFI organisers.
The second day we started with a stroll in the woods, with the idea to relax and wake up a little. When we got in the forest with a group of 20 people, Luc and Michaela told us what was actually the purpose of the stroll, namely to find Luc’s OV and debit card, which he had lost the night before (how did he ever become president?). After 2 hours of wandering through the woods, we finally found them. In the afternoon we had a lot of group games, in which we had to guess an animal, celebrity or movie. As the day went on, the karaoke got busier, and we listened to Duco singing a lot of ABBA songs, the board singing together and a lot of people singing 'Hello' from Adele at the top of their voice. After that much singing, the EC and FC made cocktails for us, so we could relieve our throats, which were already dry from singing. The cocktails where margaritas, pina coladas, caipirinhas and apple mojitos. I can say that especially the caipirinhas made me very happy. As people talked and enjoyed the weekend, time passed by till it was Sunday morning and we already had to leave again for Rotterdam. The weekend was really good, we met new people, sang until our voice was gone and talked a lot.