Denmark: Two Days Gone, One Remains...

[Composed 8/20]

It's Wednesday night, about 10:30 now, and I'm too wiped to write separate posts about the last two days. So, I'll combine in summary about what's been happening here lately on Jutland.

First of all, the weather here puts Colorado's strangeness to the test. It rained seven different times today, and in between each short storm were bright sunshine and rolling, low-hanging clouds. It's been like this most of the time I've been here. Denmark is wet wet wet.

The last few nights have been filled with raging football games in the gym. The Spanish kids and the Finnish guy are the best players, oh, and the Russian too, he has a kick that bruises bones (with the ball). He's like Chuck Norris, only shorter, with less expression, and smokes cigarettes like a chimney. Despite the overwhelming talent in comparison to my elementary skills, I had a lot of fun being the silly American. Actually, there were three of us dumb Yanks playing, and we didn't too all that bad in the end (I assisted one goal). The stuff these guys do with their feet and body weight; it looks like dancing. Yeah, so those matches are great workouts and by the end, we're all sweaty and tired.

I notice when I go to wetter climes I sweat a LOT more when I work out then when I'm in Colorado or a drier environment. I wonder if my body is adapted to a dry climate, so when I go somewhere wetter, I pump out more perspiration as a habit; as if my body actually has some sort of adaptive powers...weird! Maybe that's not the reason, but there's got be some reason why I perspire so much more in wetter environments. Maybe evaporation is restricted by the amount of water in the air? But, I notice the Danish, Spanish, and other students who come from similarly wet environments aren't as sweaty. Hmmmmm.....

Well, enough talk of sweaty guys, the wind program is winding down. Yesterday we spent all the daylight hours touring Siemens Wind Power factories, hearing lectures on wind power grid connections, eating lunch in their canteen, and busing over to Dong Energy (Denmark's largest power company) for more lectures, tours, and bad food. The Danish have an obsession with the sandwich. The other students noticed this fact too: the Danes have dozens of different sandwich types, maybe even hundreds. Most of them involve either eggs or fish of some variety. Apparently the ones we had while at Dong weren't very good, because about half our group (so I heard) got a little sick later that night. Not me, so I guess I'm lucky. After a 2+ hour bus ride back to Fuglsøcentret, a bunch of us played more football, going until almost 11pm (starting around 9). I tried to crash around midnight, but two of the Italians, Alessandro and Francesca, roped me into a couple of pool games with the Malay student, Yeow. I hit my pillow hard at around 1:30am.

Today was packed with work, more than usual. Several representatives from Siemens, Vestas, and the Engineering College at Århus were present in the main event hall to supervise us while we worked in our groups on the case study project. Our task: find a way to improve the cost effectiveness of a certain turbine design. The turbine in question was designed about 10 years ago, but, due to high production costs, the design was abandoned and only a few of them are in use across the country. The project has been a real challenge for several reasons. 1) I'm the only native English speaker in my group, so a lot of my ideas require circumlocutional explanations. 2) It's a very very open-ended task, with no clear answer, just like real life! 3) The company reps are expecting a professional solution in a timely manner. 4) I'm totally new to nearly all the science behind this technology (Mechanical and Electrical Engineering are the fields here). Facing all of this, I'm having a great time. I think my team will have a good solution by tomorrow evening, when our poster's due. The only drawback is my flight home is before the poster session on Friday morning. I feel bad, but chaning my flights would cost me more than the original price for them, in extra fees. Bottom line, we're going to work our butts off tomorrow to get this project hammered out--we have some good conceptual ideas and our main task tomorrow is to get real numbers to back them up.

I'm off to play pool and commune with the other students. Enjoy your Wednesday afternoons, your Thursday mornings, and your non-Danish weather my friends! Until next post, afskend!