Another summer in the Woo

I am back in Worcester for the summer again. This time I have an internship about an hour away so I won't be here all the time, but I happy about my situation. Here are the reasons.

1. I have a number of friends here. First of all there are a bunch of other WPI people who are here for the summer and that is nice. That includes my Turkish friends who are endless fun. Secondly, the local Ecuadorians all hang out together on the weekends and I like to join them. They call me Jeremias and we share a lot of laughs. Every Sunday they get together to play soccer and I joined them yesterday. It was fairly informal but the rule was that the team that wins stays and plays the next team. The problem was that the team I was on kept winning. So I played like 5 games in a row, each lasting roughly half an hour. Now I am sore, but it feels good. This leads in to reason 2.


2. Football. The real one (you know where you use your FEET to hit the BALL). I love playing this game because it is intense, aerobic, and lots of fun. Some days I do great, some days not so great. So I love the exercise but I also like the fact that I meet a lot of people, I get outside, and I have something to look forward to on the weekends. Also I should mention that watching football is so much fun. Right now the UEFA Euro 2008 is happening and I have been hardcore rooting for Turkey. What an amazing run of games they have had! down 1-0 against Switzerland they came back and won 2-1 to eliminate them. Down 2-0 against Czech Republic, they came back in the final minutes to win 3-2 (if you're unfamiliar with the sport this is totally unheard of). Then, get this, they played Croatia in the quarterfinal and were tied 0-0 the whole game. It went into extra time and with one minute left in the game Croatia scored a goal. I was devastated. But then! On the last play of the game, in the final seconds Turkey got a miraculous goal to even the score. The game went to penalties and Turkey won. It was absolutely epic. Now they are going to play Germany and I am hopeful, but Turkey has lost a lot of players to injury and suspension so it is not looking too good. We'll see. The game is Wednesday. Ok, I am not here to blog about sports but what a great Euro this has been. Onto the next reason why I like Worcester in the summer.

3. I have a car and I am mostly centrally located. My sister and one of my best friends are about a 2 hour drive to the west. Mom is a 30 minute drive to the north. Dad is about 5 hours to the northeast. My brother is a few hours south. My job is an hour east. That leads me to reason 4.

4. I just got a summer job! It's with a Dutch company called Kema. They do consulting and feasibility studies and stuff like that. That starts in a few days, and I am very excited. I drove to their offices this morning in the pouring rain, had the interview (went really well) and then drove home. The commute is long and will probably get annoying soon so I am looking into some options for staying a little closer by a few days out of the week.

Anyway I included a picture here of one of my close Turkish friends, Merve. She lives in a nice apartment that has a pool. I really enjoyed the chance to swim (as you can see above).

I will try to keep up with this blog and upload pictures form time to time to show the friends I hang out with and the different aspects of my summer. Feel free to leave comments or ask me questions. And if you are in the Woo this summer too, or just passing through, give me call.

Denmark, Sweden, and Turkey

There is much to tell but I will tell you only most of it.

First, the project. It went really well. We had our presentation in a beautiful room within an old Danish general store at the museum. People asked tough but good questions at the end. When it was over, we went out with our sponsors to a cafe in the town nearby. The weather was perfect which only made me feel even more awesome about everything being over. We left the museum with an outline of a scaled-down prototype teambuilding game for businesses. We had tested the setup on a couple of occasions and gotten a very positive response to it. The game makes good use of the history that the museum contains as well as the location-based information delivery technology that they have. The game combines the virtual experience of being guided with a live map showing where you and the other teams are, with the physical experience of recreating aspects of Danish life 200 years ago. The people at the museum were beaming with joy at what we had done and felt they could not thank us enough. Although I must say that there continuous praise and enthusiasm for our project was more than enough thanks.

Now I will give a brief-ish account of the time spent after our project was over and then I will tell you where I am now. On the eve of our project completion there was much anticipation of making celebration. Two other groups from WPI had presented their projects that day and were also totally finished. Just before going out with those people, however, I decided to give a call over to one of my good friends in Denmark: Stig. He told me that he and his friends were going to play football (soccer) and have a barbeque in the park. I could not resist. Twenty minutes later I was there. I felt bad having ditched the other group but as I would discover later, they would have little success at finding fun.

The next day, everyone else finished giving their presentations. I went with Peter back to the Open Air Museum to say goodbye to all the nice people there and to see the grounds one more time. Two sheep had been born just 2 days earlier and so we saw them as well. The weather was perfect and it was so nice to be at the museum again. It was also a little sad to say goodbye to everyone. It really is amazing how quickly the term went by. That evening, we all went out to dinner with Peder Petersen, the program director, and Mogens our orientation leader. It was of course a great time. After that, I walked with Prof. Pedersen, two other students, P.C. to a scenic part of the city. Even though it was 9 o'clock, it was still quite light out.

I woke up on Wednesday with a hurried feeling. My flight was not until 1 am the next morning but that only gave me maybe 14 hours to do all the things I had neglected to do in Denmark. The biggest of these was to go to Sweden. With the city of Malmö just a 35 minute train ride away it was sort of incredible that I had not been yet. In fact my friend Nolan hadn't been there either and so we went together. When we were at the last train stop before Malmö, a woman got on the train and sat next to us. She heard us speaking and asked us where we were from. We talked for a bit. When we got off the train she asked us what our plans were and we told here that we had no plans. She offered to take us around the city. However, as we embarked on our exploration of the city, we started to notice that everywhere we went something strange happened. At the money exchange booth the lady behind the desk was talking excitedly with our tour guide. When we got on the bus, our friend told the bus driver that we were her friends and asked how much would it cost for us to ride the bus. The driver said we could ride for free. From our friend's conversation and these other clues we discovered that she is one of the most famous people in Sweden.

We followed her to the theater where she was to perform the final night of a musical. Though it was sold out she said she could get us tickets. And why not, she played the lead role. She then took us to the Turning Torso, a freaky looking building near the water. We got ice cream at an Italian place and then sat in a skate park and watched the people.


Nolan and I eventually left that part of the city and wished our new friend a good performance. We walked the streets of Malmö and enjoyed the glorious weather. When we returned to Copenhagen, the time was about 6 pm. We were the only ones left besides our advisor and his wife. They invited us over to help finish their food. Stig came by to visit one more time and ate with us. I finished packing, watched a football match on tv, said goodbye to my Turkish friends at the pizza place across the street, and then waited at the bus stop. Stig was there as well and we had a nice chat before I left.

I am going skip telling you about the bus ride where I was the only one on the bus, the train ride, the other train ride, and the plane ride with all the Turkish people who stayed up all night congregating and conversing in different parts of the cabin. I woke up to a light tap on the shoulder. "Affedersiniz.....(turkish, turkish, turkish)....". I guessed that she wanted me to return my chair from the reclined position. I was right. I looked out the window and watched the plane fall slowly toward the ground as the Sun rose above it. For the first time in years I was on a plane where one walked from it on to the ground rather than directly into the terminal. So for a few moments I stood next to the plane and turned around, taking in the sunrise in İstanbul. It was comfort and joy. I met up with my dearest friend Pınar, and we went out for breakfast by the sea.

Later in the afternoon Pınar and I found ourselves on the other side of the city and decided to take a creative way back home. We took the Sea Boat. It was magical to see İstanbul from the water. I took a few pictures. As it turns out we only got most of the way home before getting lost. It was expected to happen at some point. However, we were able to get a cab for the last part of the trip.

Being back in Turkey, I still remember my life in Denmark very clearly. As exciting and relaxing as life is here, I still miss playing football in the park with my friends and eating the most amazing pastries the world has ever known. I miss the train rides to the museum and the exchange of smiles at its front desk each morning. My relationship with Denmark has only begun, and I will certainly return many times. For now, I will enjoy İstanbul and all it has to offer.

A Friend and a Birthday

Last week was a bit different than all of the others. As I mentioned before, my friend Pınar came to visit. My project work continued as usual, but in the afternoons, I went around Copenhagen with her and re-explored much of the city.

First I took her to the museum where I work. We saw the week-old sheep.

And visited some old buildings

Said hello to the goats

Caught a nice view from the Round Tower

Rode a boat

Visited the grave of Niels Bohr

Played soccer at the park nearby

Went for plenty of walks around town

Other than that, the only real news this week is that it was my birthday. On the eve of my birthday, there was a Turkish/Danish art festival sort of thing called The Triangle Project. Actually it had been going all week but this was the last day. Pınar and I went to one of the artsy events which was a discussion and show-and-tell by artists and musicians both local and from far away. After that we walked around for a while and then went to the last Triangle Project event for Copenhagen. It was an after-work party of sorts in the lobby/bar of a really cool hotel. Of course the place was decorated in a very artsy way. I met some nice people at this gathering, one of whom I will be joining next weekend to go to a soccer match. Anyway, we had a little birthday celebration there. It was a very cozy atmosphere and a memorable time.

A full week

My project partners and I were busy with our project this past week, but of course that didn't prevent us from exploring the city more. Peter and I went to a gigantic cemetary that contains the graves of Soren Kirkegaard, Hans Christian Andersen, and Niels Bohr. While we were there it was sunny, it rained, and it hailed and then repeated that sequence. The cemetary itself is more like a park. It is vast but not overcrowded, and some of the grave sites are just beautiful. I included here a picture of Hans Christian Andersen's resting place.

Saturday was our big reunion/fieldtrip. Even though we (the people here from WPI) all live near each other, we don't necessarily see each other that often. So there was scheduled a big field trip so that we could all get together again. It was led by Mogens who was our Danish instructor and guide during orientation week. It was a treat to hang out with him again. We went to Roskilde to see a cathedral and the viking museum. It was neat to think about the Danish history in these places. One thing that we are missing in the United States is an old history. To think that were were standing before the coffins of kings and queens long passed and in the harbour of an old viking stronghold.

We went for lunch at a place called Viking Pizza. Actually Peter and I had brought our own lunch. The weather was nice so we sat outside. For lunch we had packed open sandwiches consisting of tomato, cucumber, and two types of cheese on some bakery-baked bread. It was really really good. We did a lot of walking afterward and felt reasonably tired at the end of the day. I recall almost everyone staying in that Saturday evening and going to bed early.

Sunday, a bunch of us went to an FC Kobenhavn soccer match at nearby Parken stadium. FCK lost 0-2, but I thought it was still an awesome game.

A bunch of people in the group here have become major fans of FCK and were of course disappointed with the outcome of Sunday's game.

So that was that. The most exciting thing for me this week is that my dear friend, Pınar, and her mom came to Copenhagen on Monday from İstanbul to visit. So this week will be a healthy mix of my project and visiting with them. Happily, their visit coincides with my birthday which is on Thursday, so we are starting to think of how to celebrate that. I like my birthday not so much because of anything to do with me but for the excuse to gather all my friends together and laugh and have fun. I will certainly let you know how all that goes.