Tortilla

We had a brunch with the ultimate squad this weekend and while I was looking for recipes, I kept being drawn to frittatas. The one I wanted to make called for goat cheese, but the grocery store I visited did not have any, so I changed course mid-shop and decided to make a tortilla (the Spanish variety).  This is a thick, dense potato and onion omelet that is served at all hours in Spain.

It's been about a year since I left Madrid and this seemed like a fitting marker of that milestone. After consulting several recipes and Alberto, my Spanish course-mate, this is what I came up with:

After adding the mixture of egg, fried potatoes and onions to the pan. 

After the flip. It was not very graceful.

Finished product. Super oily.

I ended up not taking it to brunch (I opted for scrambling eggs and baking some spare peanut butter chocolate chip cookie dough). It tasted fine and had the right consistency, but it was just sort of underwhelming. Like it's hearty, substantial and nice, but wasn't really impressive. It also took a really long time to chop all the veggies and cook through, so I don't know that I'll make it very often, but I'm really glad that I tried. I have been snacking on it all weekend and will continue to enjoy it with lunch this week.

Taste of Sweden

It has been snowing steadily all day and the ice cream truck still runs! I heard the song playing and thought it was some sort of residence complex-wide alarm!

Swedes are prodigious ice cream consumers and I had heard of this phenomenon, but this was the first time I have ever seen a truck here (even in the summer).

 I chased it down. It wasn't a typical ice cream truck, they sell mostly bulk bars/cups (+frozen pizza), but I was able to buy an ice cream sandwich!

Bangladesh

I'm in Bangladesh now doing research for my Master's Thesis, which is about the different business models being used to deliver energy services in rural communities (I'm also looking at water a little bit). The food is very tasty and the family that I am staying with couldn't be more helpful or nice.

The girls who  I live with.

Construction next door

So far, I've had mostly long days of field interviews, with a few days in Dhaka for meetings with other stakholders like Grameen Shakti (part of Grameen Bank) and BRAC, both major development players in Bangladesh (and the world).

A very happy (no, really) poultry farmer and his digester.

The collectors and sorters/operators at a MRF/digester. Yes, their shirts are adorned with both the Toronto Maple Leaf' and Armani logos.

View from the 19th floor of the Grameen Bank Building. You can see the national cricket stadium.

Yummy snack with puffed rice, spices, oil, some orange things, and onions.

If you are a brick manufacturer and are not operating in Bangladesh, you are probably missing out. These guys are all over the place. Construction everywhere!

Stockholm

I've been in Stockholm for a little more than two weeks now and it's pretty great! It's nice to be back in a city with ogle-able bikes and a well thought-out public transportation system.

I live on the island of Kungsholmen, which is really cool. There is a 9 km waterfront promenade along the perimeter, which is additionally buffered by big green parks/greenspaces for most of the way. It's so pretty, like makes me actually want to  go for a run; however, I've yet to take my phone to capture the great views. During the weekends everyone is crusin' around on their boats playing fun music and there are lots of balloons- it's like a parade! 

Rålambshovsparken is on the island and is super cool. When I first arrived, there were outdoor movie showings and picnics. Under an overpass that goes thought the park, they've built basketball courts, track straightaways and a skate(and scooter)park, since the area would have been concrete anyways. Last week I went kayaking around Kungsholmen and some of the other islands with some classmates. The red building in the background is the city hall and on the right you can see the main part of Stockholm and maybe even make out the central station.

It's an easy comute to school and close to the center. Plus, I live in an (sort of) actual apartment building (instead of a dorm) and my studio has a full kitchen (read: oven) that came stocked with cutlery and accouterments. My room still isn't "together" - I need a bookshelf or another set of drawers and have been checking the basement room for abandoned items regularly. Magents and postcards cover my fridge and the room came with a swedish flag, but the rest of my posters/art will be going up this weekend, if I don't take a trip.  I've been riding the metro, but will take more advantage of my subscription to the city's bike sharing program. The metro rides have given me lots of time to read on my new ereader, but I want to have a better grasp of the city.

The weather has been (surprisingly) quite nice, albeit a little schitzo. Shorts and dresses are still occasionally appropriate!

I've been practicing with the local ultimate team, the Stockholm Syndromes and I am way way way way-er out of form than I expected, but they are nice people and it's good to be running around again. The first practice was really weird, I did great during the drills part, successfully laying out twice during the hucking drill, but when it came to the scrimmage, I dropped every single disc. I also got skyed and a blackeye for the trouble (it's finally gone!). Playing-wise it has gotten substantially better since then, but I've been cupping and popping, so it's still unnatural and awkward. Nationals is in two weeks in Jönköping, I probably won't play that much, but it will still be fun to check out the scene and a different part of Sweden! They won silver last year, and from what I've gleaned they seem a little bit bitter about it, so we are totally gunning for the gold!

Sweden seems to run on cards. Metro card, temporary student card (photoless - just to get the reduced metro price, but also surprisingly valid for claiming the student discount at fancy, yummy, vegetarian buffets), bike card, bank card, cafeteria card, library card, insurance card, old student card for when temporary one fails, residency card, computer-room card, american driver's license for when residency card is not accepted, and my german blood donor card (just because it has my blood type incase I'm in an accident). Fortunately the change-purse that I bought in Morocco to give as a gift (and forgot to) is perfect for carrying them + some krona (and the wallet that I had planned to buy at home this summer, but forgot to, would have been horrible). The krona is sort of an annoying currency and not just because everything is expensive: the coins are relatively large. A small coffee at the non-student price is like two and quarter dollars, a cheap beer at a bar is about seven and a half. All of the citrus looks really sad to be here. That said, there is definitely a greater diversity of food available here than in Madrid or Nantes.

 

My Grandma has suggested that I update more frequently with shorter posts, so I may try that and see how it works out!

Here you can buy (light) fun

End of Semester

The end of the semester was really hectic. One morning there were 5 exams, some of which were open book. My testing seat looked like this:

The tests were generally frustrating; they covered half day seminars from the beginning of the semester and wrong answers were negative points. So the tests were short, but being exam ready on five different topics was rough.

That afternoon we went to an incinerator. It was pretty cool. Below you can see the giant claw that moves the garbage from the intake area to sorting belts. At residences recyclables are put into yellow bags and other stuff into blue bags, then they are optically sorted at the facility. I wanted to see the optical sorter in action (I had learned about a similar facility while at NCSU), but it wasn't running the day we went. We did get to look at the flame in the incinerator, although it didn't resemble anything we had learned about in our combustion couse. The loose trash, which doesn't get sorted is moved around using a giant claw (see video)... worst arcade game/prize ever?

bags to be sorted

optical sorters

It wasn't all work! People cooked for me! Anto made a delicious Indonesian meal and Caitlin made me a half-birthday fruit salad.

 


I biked with my mustachioed coursemates down to the new carrousel in Nantes to watch the Bastille Day fireworks, which were the most graceful I've ever seen. They were syced to delicate techno.

After the final IEP presentation (it went ok... I was poorly prepared) and a final night celebrating in Nantes (most of my friends went to an old shipbuilding warehouse that has been transformed into Crepetown), I took a train to Lyon where I met my cousin, her old exchange-sister, and Emily in Lyon.

Hipsterized fountain horse

We took naps at a roman amphitheater. The cathedral was beautiful and at the top of one of the huge hills. It was also a double decker: below the main level, which was full of mosaics, was another that was dedicated to Mary and was painted in pastels: blues, purple, green. So pretty!

Floor of the top level of the cathedral

We also visited some nearby beaujolais vineyards. The area isn't very touristy, so our actions were mainly dictated by our quest for food. We saw a church steeple and walked towards it, thinking there would be something there. There was a restaurant (closed), bakery (closed, but they deliver!), and a pharmacy, where the nice lady understood my poor french and let us know that there might be something in the next town over-- 5 km away. So we hiked there through the grape fields and there were two restaurants! One was closed and the other was open, but just for drinks. The kind men there informed us that there was a supermarket not too far away. It was next to a park, so we had a nice little picnic.

pretty house

little cousin in search of food

After the girls left for Paris, I met Max, a French intern that I worked with in Germany, for a hike near his grandparents house at the start of the alps, in the Massif de la Chartreuse. Aside from the hut with dozens of boar's feet, the views were stunning. After the hike, his parents took us to the lake that you can see from the mountain.

  

View of the lake from the summit

View of the summit from the lake

I flew to boston via Munich the next day. During the layover, I picked up a copy of my favorite newspaper and did a complicated interview/Fragebogen (survey) in german, which boosted my german-speaking confidence, which was sort of low after the trip to Baden-Baden. 

Thesis Presentations + IEP

Last week at school was pretty chill. We had some conferences to attend Friday, but most of the week was free to attend the thesis presentations of the cohort before us. There were some really great/interesting presentations/internships. It gave me a lot to think about with regard to what I want to do for my thesis. It is interesting to note that one of the presentations that everyone said was the best and "inspiring, even" did not get an A (I missed it), whereas good, but not fantastic ones that I saw did. I noted what questions were asked so that I can be ready to stun the jury this time next year. Several of the projects were in or required travel to Africa or Latin America, which could be fun.
At the first presentation, I took a full page of notes. At the rest of the presentations on the first two days I jotted down a few lines on each. By the third day,  I had pretty much taken to practicing my handwriting and taking down great quotations.

I don't yet know what I want to do for my thesis. We have so much freedom. I think it is more difficult to present, if you do a more business-focused project, rather than a research based-thesis; however, the evaluating juries consist of one faculty member from each consortium school, which means that the audience is really diverse and somewhat non-technical and purely technical report will be lost on them. Additionally, the engineering professors ask trying technical questions (as they should - it's your thesis defense), while the businessy guys propose horrible alternatives to your work. One management professor suggested transmitting hydro-produced electricity from southern-central Africa to Europe, nevermind the fact that you'd be building transmission lines trough countries with 2% electrification rates or that similar renewables programs in northern Africa are having trouble... Europe's demand for non-fossil derived fuels is more important.

 Each evening we had to stand beside the poster we had created for our Integrated Engineering Project (IEP) for two hours. This was poorly organized. No on knew who was evaluating us or how many profs were grading. On the last day, there were 17 posters and 1 professor who had to evaluate everyone's spiel, no one else was in the building, but we still had to stand attentively beside the poster on the off chance that someone walked by. We presented ours 2.5 hours into the session and there were several more to go after us. No one should have had to wait around for that long... my feet hurt so much, that I couldn't go out for the 4th of July.

Nevertheless, our project is pretty cool, we looked at a landfill in Mexico to see what the solid waste management practices were and what we could do about it. The results: barely existent and not much, but we have designed a fairly elegant solution. I'm just a little worried that we have expanded the scope too much and won't have a consistent level of quality in all of the aspects.

The most frequent question was "Why is it green?"

Some of my classmates organized an international dinner for the presenters and the jury members. It was fun to hang out with the older cohort after they were done presenting and soooo delicious. The first dish to disappear was the two Spanish tortillas (due to the large presence of professors from UPM?) followed closely by the homemade Mexican tortilla. Luckily the Mexican tortilla filling last much longer and I was able to create a baguette-taco. I made sweet potato-pecan couscous, an assortment of peanut butter and jelly/banana/honey sandwiches, and (eggless) chocolate chip cookie dough truffles. I stole the following photos form other social media sites:

Before

After

Dessert! Chocolate Cheese Cake, pineapple cups, apple crumble...

Concert and Dancing. (and lots of leftover baguettes)

I'm headed into a week with 8-16h classes every day + 5 exams and a field trip on one day! Yay Wednesday! Then the next week we have one more exam (that we know of, so far) and the final deadline for IEP with the paper, documentation and presentation of the semester long project due.  Then I'm (probably) off to the south of France for a few days before heading back to the States for 3ish+ weeks!

Baden-Württemberg + Paris

Hi. So, I haven't updated in a while because I was mostly just doing school work on campus. Leaving campus to go to the grocery store was a rare and extremely exciting event... I didn't think my musings on whether to buy bio applesauce or to spring for the pear-apple mix would be that interesting. My trusty readership has asked me for updates and I finally went on a little trip, so here ya go:

Last weekend I met up with a friend from highschool in Baden-Baden, Germany. This old resort town is known for its hot mineral springs with healing powers. We hiked part of the Panoramweg up to some cool castle ruins then back down through the city where we tasted the hot springs. 68C and very salty. I didn't really have any aliments that needed healing, but I (surprisingly) did not feel sore the next day.

First time in Deutschland as pork eater. 

Sunday, we headed to Freiburg where we checked out the cathedral, the Schlossberg park and its Aussichtsturm, and an organic  brewery. One thing that I really enjoy about crazy views like the one from the tower is that you get an idea of the energy situation of the area. We could see wind turbines, solar panels, and a biogas storage bubble.

Get out your 3D goggles- this was taken with the 3D panoramic setting on my camera... I don't think it worked. 

Afterwards, I  headed to Stuttgart to catch the night train to Paris. I spent my layover watching the England-Italy game and the Italian's celebration afterward was quite impressive. Driving around, waving flags and honking for over an hour. I can't imagine what their celebration was like when they defeated Germany a few days later. My favorite participant was the guy who just drove his Ferrari around: not honking or flag waving.

An uncomfortable train ride later, I woke up in Paris -- 3 hours after I expected to arrive. (There was one routing option where I could have changed trains in Metz and arrived at 7:30, but for some reason I opted to just stay on the same train). I got some breakfast, journeyed to the domestic train station to stash my stuff, and set off on foot to explore. I got a little disoriented (there is the Arc de Triomph and a smaller model of it in some park and my phone sent me to the miniature) and walking took much longer than I expected. I ate a a fancyish picnic lunch and took care of some business at the Swedish embassy (they have surprisingly little security).

Strawberry, mint, pepper ice cream.

I spent the rest of the afternoon chasing down the actual Arc, but didn't want to wait in a two hour line for a free ticket (I'll book online before I go next time) and catching random glances of la Tour Eiffel. I also hit up a grocery store with an american section and scored some bagels and soft baked cookies.

 

The trip reminded me just how awesome Germany is/can be (or maybe I was just glad to be outside of Nantes for a change). The jury is still out on Paris....

Just three weeks left in my semester and oh so much work left to be done. I'm giving a poster presentation on our semester-long project on Monday: "Analysis of a Municipal Solid Waste Landfill in Jalisco,

Mexico and Mitigation Strategies." (Yes, the title is a bit grammatically unsound, but our tutor insisted). I also need to arrange for my travel back to the US and around Europe for the summer. 

A+, cj

(that's short for à plus tard -- until later)