Here sre some photos of the birthday cake that I made for my birthday, my room in the dorm, and of my office at work.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Photos
Here sre some photos of the birthday cake that I made for my birthday, my room in the dorm, and of my office at work.
This weekend is IAESTE Krakow weekend!
This weekend we are all going to Krakow, Poland! I am so excited! Magda, my room mate,
is from Krakow and she is going to show us all around. It is an IAESTE event weekend so
there will be IAESTE trainees coming from all over Europe and there will be events
planned the whole weekend. We are leaving late on Thursday night, taking
the train, and should be arriving there early in the morning. On Friday we
will be visiting Auschwitz! On Saturday there will be more site seeing and
a mascarade party in the evening. On Sunday we will be visiting a castle. We will be
taking another night train on Sunday night and arriving back in Kosice early on
Monday morning. The trip is ending up to be a bit more expensive than what I expected
but I think it will definitely be worth it. I dont plan on going on any more of
these big trips while I am here so I think that one is ok.
A little about work
I am also doing a little bit of work. Right now most of the University is
on summer holiday so I think that the work that the job description said
isnt available because the lab is closed. They have been asking me what I
would like to do here. Of course I wasnt prepared for this so I didnt know
what to say. They suggested learning some computer programs and of course I
am interested in that. I have been working on learning Microstation and
ANSYS. Microstation is somewhat like AutoCAD but all of the tools seem to
be different. ANSYS is an analysis program that my boss and co-workers use
for modeling steel structures, doing nonlinear analysis, and dynamic
analysis. I think I will be doing some analysis of a joint in a truss
system that my boss was working on before the summer holidays.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Student Card
Most of this morning was spent trying to get a student card and transportation card. Everything is more complicated because it is summer and there are a lot of people at the Technical University on vacation. It is also complicated because the local IAESTE president, Pali, only speaks Slovak and German. This morning there were four of us walking all over campus trying to figure things out, Pali, Martin, Stephen, and me. Stephen is also from the U.S. and is working in the Mechanical Engineering department. Martin is from Austria and speaks German and English so he was translating for Pali. So communication had to go from Slovak to German to English!
Anyways, Martin and I were able to get student cards that say that we are students at the Technical University of Kosice. These cards will allow us to buy lunch at the cantines on campus for half of the price. One of the problems that we had after getting the cards was that the person to activate this feature of the cards is on vacation. I think we will have to wait until next week to get them to work in this way. Another thing is that the cards can be used as transportation passes if we pay for one month of bus and tram use. Pali went to the office where this can be done this afternoon but for some reason was not able to get them running. I will find out tonight what happened and what we need to do next.
At the moment we are buying 30 minute transportation tickets at the little newspaper stands near the tram and bus stops. Hopefully we wont have to do this much longer.
Anyways, Martin and I were able to get student cards that say that we are students at the Technical University of Kosice. These cards will allow us to buy lunch at the cantines on campus for half of the price. One of the problems that we had after getting the cards was that the person to activate this feature of the cards is on vacation. I think we will have to wait until next week to get them to work in this way. Another thing is that the cards can be used as transportation passes if we pay for one month of bus and tram use. Pali went to the office where this can be done this afternoon but for some reason was not able to get them running. I will find out tonight what happened and what we need to do next.
At the moment we are buying 30 minute transportation tickets at the little newspaper stands near the tram and bus stops. Hopefully we wont have to do this much longer.
Camping and Climbing in the Low Tatras
This weekend I went with other IAESTE trainees and leaders of the local IAESTE Kosice committee camping and climbing in the Low Tatras. The weekend was awesome! We were invited by another organization to join their group. There was about 50 to 100 people all sleeping in tents at the location in the mountains. There was a big stage set up with lights, DJ, Band, and music late into the night on both Friday and Saturday night. On Saturday night there was also a Catholic Mass, huge Bonfire, and all you could eat Gulas! The first night was very cold so the second night we decided to squish 5 people into our tent instead of 3 and we were much warmer. During the day on Saturday we took a bus to the tallest mountain in the Low Tatras and climbed to the top of the mountain. On the way we stopped at a chalet and had some really good bean and potatoe soup. After reaching the top and taking lots of pictures we continued on the path that we thought would take us back down. It ended up taking us to the the top of a another couple of peaks and to another chalet. At this chalet we had the largest cup of tea that I have ever had. It was a nice sweet fruit tea. It was already getting late after this stop so we tried to hurry down the sky slopes. They were, however, black diamonds and went almost straight down so this was not as easy as it sounds. Once we reached the bottom with our legs and knees aching the bus took us back to the camp site for the evening.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Going Camping
This evening I leave to go camping in the Low Tatras. The Tatras are a mountain range in Slovakia. There are many hiking and biking trails in the mountains and I think that this weekend I will get a chance to use some of them. A couple of other IAESTE students and I will be traveling there by bus. I think that it takes a couple of hours to get there. We will be sleeping in tents and sleeping bags that are provided. On Saturday we will be hiking, having Hungarian Gulas, and a bonfire. We will probably be back on Sunday morning.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Arrival in Kosice, Slovakia
Hello from Kosice, Slovakia. First of all I have learned how to pronounce the name of the town, Kosice. It sounds like this Ko-sh-it-s-e- The last e sounds like the e in bet.
The trip here was quite an adventure. Everything went as planned up until I arrived in Kosice. The plane flights went smoothly. I met a number of people along the way including a group of soccer players going to Italy for a tournament and a group of people from a church going on a mission trip to Hungary. On the last flight I met a young lady named Addy who is studying archeology at a University in Wyoming. She was on her way to a dig in Romania and was going to meet a group of students there and would be camping there. Also on that flight I met a professor that worked in the Electrical Engineering department at the Technical University in Budapest. He was very nice and called a cab for Addy and me to share to get to my hostel. After checking in at the hostel Addy and I went to the train station where I got my ticket for Slovakia. It was so much cheaper to buy it there than to buy it online. Then we went to dinner at KFC because she really wanted American food. Afterward she waited for the train and I went back to the hotel to go to bed.
The train to Kosice was early in the morning. On the train a met a guy from Mexico who was studying in Spain. He was also on his way to Kosice. He was going there for a friends wedding. In Kosice, there was supposed to be someone from IAESTE coming to meet me at the train station, however, when I arrived there was no one there. I waited for an hour and tried to use the phone but the number I had didnt work. I asked for directions to an internet cafe so that I could check my email, contact the IAESTE receptionist, and get the address for the dorms. When I got into the center part of the town I found out that the shops are all closed on Sundays and the internet cafe wasnt going to open until 3pm. I wandered around for a while trying to figure out what to do. I found the DoubleTree Hilton Hotel where they had a receptionist who spoke English. They let me use the business computers and I emailed the receptionist telling him where I was. I waited for a while. I was getting really hungry so I told the receptionist where I was going to eat and left for lunch. When I got back the IAESTE person still wasnt there so I showed the receptionist his number again. She said that I was probably dialing it wrong so she dialed it. The IAESTE guy, by the way his name is Vladomir, picked up right away and said he would be there in 5 minutes. He came and took me to the dorms and checked me in there. The rest of the afternoon I had to myself to unpack and nap. What an adventurous first day in Kosice!
The trip here was quite an adventure. Everything went as planned up until I arrived in Kosice. The plane flights went smoothly. I met a number of people along the way including a group of soccer players going to Italy for a tournament and a group of people from a church going on a mission trip to Hungary. On the last flight I met a young lady named Addy who is studying archeology at a University in Wyoming. She was on her way to a dig in Romania and was going to meet a group of students there and would be camping there. Also on that flight I met a professor that worked in the Electrical Engineering department at the Technical University in Budapest. He was very nice and called a cab for Addy and me to share to get to my hostel. After checking in at the hostel Addy and I went to the train station where I got my ticket for Slovakia. It was so much cheaper to buy it there than to buy it online. Then we went to dinner at KFC because she really wanted American food. Afterward she waited for the train and I went back to the hotel to go to bed.
The train to Kosice was early in the morning. On the train a met a guy from Mexico who was studying in Spain. He was also on his way to Kosice. He was going there for a friends wedding. In Kosice, there was supposed to be someone from IAESTE coming to meet me at the train station, however, when I arrived there was no one there. I waited for an hour and tried to use the phone but the number I had didnt work. I asked for directions to an internet cafe so that I could check my email, contact the IAESTE receptionist, and get the address for the dorms. When I got into the center part of the town I found out that the shops are all closed on Sundays and the internet cafe wasnt going to open until 3pm. I wandered around for a while trying to figure out what to do. I found the DoubleTree Hilton Hotel where they had a receptionist who spoke English. They let me use the business computers and I emailed the receptionist telling him where I was. I waited for a while. I was getting really hungry so I told the receptionist where I was going to eat and left for lunch. When I got back the IAESTE person still wasnt there so I showed the receptionist his number again. She said that I was probably dialing it wrong so she dialed it. The IAESTE guy, by the way his name is Vladomir, picked up right away and said he would be there in 5 minutes. He came and took me to the dorms and checked me in there. The rest of the afternoon I had to myself to unpack and nap. What an adventurous first day in Kosice!
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