Monday August 13

Today, I started my day off by having some pancakes fresh from the stove...just kidding. I actually wanted as much sleep as possible. These 9:30am lectures are killer. Actually, they're not, but it's fun to joke about it. Anyways, so like usual, I walked down the stairs of my dorm and up the stairs of the Summer Institute of the University of Amsterdam.

We had a very nice lecture with Leon Deben, who is a professor at University of Amsterdam. It was quite interesting talking about the topic of public space versus private space. We talked about such issues as surveillance cameras, and making benches uncomfortable to discourage sleep. We also walked a neat video of such topics as the Houston tunnel system and the surveillance camera system, big brother, in the UK. I was talking to a student in the master's program for UvA from the UK. She said that in some places there are actual speakers. So if someone littered, the voice may say to pick it up. What a scary world.

After lecture, we had lunch as usual. The menu was chicken sandwich or Greek salad sandwich, greens, fruit, and cookies. Oh...and there's orange juice for everyone as well. I found out that Clifford usually eats about 7 cookies every lunch....interesting. I wonder if he'll read this.

So, after lunch we went with Leon Deben on an excursion to Bijlmer. It's a big neighborhood that's been a huge social development focus. In the center of Amsterdam you have the shops and housing mixed. But in Bijlmer, everything is separated. We visited the housing areas, went to the community center, and had a final stop at a cafe. I had a Chocomel, which is the best chocolate milk in the world. It's like drinking a good chocolate bar.

Videos:

Due to some technical difficulties, I was not able to get the videos that I took into the slideshow. So there are many short videos to enjoy. Enjoy


Here's a photo slideshow:



Some footage of various parts of the journey:







Note: I also had some videos of Shirley and Alex, but I don't want to put those up without their permission.

I'm glad it was sunny yesterday because there's a thunderstorm going on right now!
Doei!