Photoblog: Ohio in 17 pictures
Jun. 16th, 2007 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarzI don't have all the pictures sorted out yet, but I did cast a critical eye over mine and tried to sort them by interest. I think I've got a few of the best lined up to show you a bit of the atmosphere of Athens, Ohio.
This is me! Hey, lookit, I'm working on the grass. This was shot in the first week and is one of the few pictures I'm actually in. I got myself a nice cup of Perks coffee, dragged my laptop to the park, and sat in the sun to do some work. It worked fine of course.
Athens is a beautiful town. Americans are weird. Wherever possible, they mow the grass, even next to highways! They make wonderful parks with paths and water and squirrels (I guess you just can't keep them out), but there's streets breaking up underneath your feet.
This is the Baker Center (officially called the John Joseph Baker Calhoun Meeting Center or something similar), as seen from the Ping side of the park. We'd walk through this little park to get to the Ping each time we went there. The place is crawling with squirrels and there are even some wombats camping out in it.
The entrance to Bromley! This is the steep street we had to climb each day. In the basement we would have our course, and in the hall itself we would sleep and eat. Note the angle of the pavement - it wasn't fun walking there for us Dutchies. Also note the building across the street. My room looked out on that.
Here it is again. I've no idea what this building was for exactly, except that it was pretty and it was the view from our spartan dorm room.
Also, this picture must look pretty weird. Us Dutch are used to having the traffic light before the crossing. US traffic lights are on the other side of the crossing.
The Risk Room, as Sogeti27 (the group that went before us) called it. This is the central meeting room in the Bromley Basement. This picture was taken during laptop hand-out. To the right is the coffee machine and on top of those cupboards is the webcam you guys could sneak a peek at. The door in the back leads to the exit and the smaller meeting rooms the team used extensively during the time there.
It is called the Risk Room because your ideas can be shot down in here. Sometimes all your ideas. That's when you have to start over from scratch. Risk Room indeed!
On Friday, this is what we were presenting to. A bunch of Old and Wise men, sitting in line with their laptops open in which they would type their feedback. The rest of your team seated against the wall in case they would need to answer questions.
Ping Center. The wall for rock climbing in fact. I loved the fact they had a wall to climb on, and in the end I only tried my skills at it once. It is no fun to scale a wall dragging 200 American pounds up. My muscles were done with me real soon then. First lose some weight, then try another climbing episode.
There were two walls to climb, one easy and one advacned. In the heart of Ping they reached up 12 meters (36 feet). The cardio room on the second floor looks out on the golf track on one side and you can see the wall on the other side. The indoor running track on the third floor goes around it.
Real American Food. Here you see the horror that was lunch, breakfast and dinner. I kind of like this picture, it's like an assembly line. No faces, just hands, eating away at the horrible food.
In the heart of Athens there's a park, with the second webcam pointed at the statue there. There was a bunch of young squirrels frolicking around there, and this is one of them.
I guess they grow into these larger squirrels later, though I'm not an expert on the incubation time of squirrels. I mean, really, who knows?
There were a lot of squirrels there. They were running around, demolishing the lawn, and running up and down trees. Some were pretty shy, some a lot less. I didn't feed them (despite my mothers' wishes to the contrary!) because I think they have quite a collection of flees, mites, and other weird stuff I didn't want to take home with me. Mom thinks squirrels know what to eat to get rid of flees. I told her it might be a hamburger and fries for all the squirrel could care. These are, after all American squirrels.
Said statue. It was near Perks and the Alumni gateway, and straight in front of the Athens campus webcam. I love the colours in this picture. This was taken one night when everyone went out to the pubs and Marijke and I chose to sit in the park and read Calvin and Hobbes, one of my many souvenirs for NoKey.
On Memorial Day there was a parade. Some parade...it wasn't much, though we were all ushered outside. I liked the picture of this fire truck, somehow it works.
Sogeti 27 had 8 times a false fire alarm. We just had the one in week 1, and I didn't even have my camera on me that day! Afterwards, I lugged it around faithfully and we didn't get another chance but this one to shoot a decent picture of the trucks.
Believe it or not, this is at Wal*Mart. There's a "Remeber our fallen troops" at Walmart. Right across from the electric guitars. Because, you know, everything's for sale at Wal*Mart.
Weekend trips were fun too. This is the first of the two weekends we spent there, when we went to Cincinatti. The mere sight of this city makes me not want to go in there. Please don't put me into the concrete jungle...
We visited Cincinatti for a ballgame: the Cincinatti Reds vs. the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates beat the Reds, but it was quite an experience. I love the preposterous way the Americans name everything. Really, there is a limit to patriotism.
The Great American Ballpark (see what I mean) from the inside. This is full zoom-out of my cam, and it gives a pretty good image of how far away we were. Upside to sitting there is that you don't get hit by balls. Downside is that you don't get hit by balls. You can also see how many Reds fans were there, although the ballpark was only filled for a third. Also, the chairs themselves are red too.
Finally, the ride home. I loved the fact that we got the real Ohio University Bobcats Bus. A Van Hool, which is a Dutch brand of bus, I guess. Still, it looked pretty cool when it pulled up to Bromley. After all, it meant that we were going home.
I spent € 1050,- and gained 4 kilos.
Comments appreciated.
This is me! Hey, lookit, I'm working on the grass. This was shot in the first week and is one of the few pictures I'm actually in. I got myself a nice cup of Perks coffee, dragged my laptop to the park, and sat in the sun to do some work. It worked fine of course.
Athens is a beautiful town. Americans are weird. Wherever possible, they mow the grass, even next to highways! They make wonderful parks with paths and water and squirrels (I guess you just can't keep them out), but there's streets breaking up underneath your feet.
This is the Baker Center (officially called the John Joseph Baker Calhoun Meeting Center or something similar), as seen from the Ping side of the park. We'd walk through this little park to get to the Ping each time we went there. The place is crawling with squirrels and there are even some wombats camping out in it.
The entrance to Bromley! This is the steep street we had to climb each day. In the basement we would have our course, and in the hall itself we would sleep and eat. Note the angle of the pavement - it wasn't fun walking there for us Dutchies. Also note the building across the street. My room looked out on that.
Here it is again. I've no idea what this building was for exactly, except that it was pretty and it was the view from our spartan dorm room.
Also, this picture must look pretty weird. Us Dutch are used to having the traffic light before the crossing. US traffic lights are on the other side of the crossing.
The Risk Room, as Sogeti27 (the group that went before us) called it. This is the central meeting room in the Bromley Basement. This picture was taken during laptop hand-out. To the right is the coffee machine and on top of those cupboards is the webcam you guys could sneak a peek at. The door in the back leads to the exit and the smaller meeting rooms the team used extensively during the time there.
It is called the Risk Room because your ideas can be shot down in here. Sometimes all your ideas. That's when you have to start over from scratch. Risk Room indeed!
On Friday, this is what we were presenting to. A bunch of Old and Wise men, sitting in line with their laptops open in which they would type their feedback. The rest of your team seated against the wall in case they would need to answer questions.
Ping Center. The wall for rock climbing in fact. I loved the fact they had a wall to climb on, and in the end I only tried my skills at it once. It is no fun to scale a wall dragging 200 American pounds up. My muscles were done with me real soon then. First lose some weight, then try another climbing episode.
There were two walls to climb, one easy and one advacned. In the heart of Ping they reached up 12 meters (36 feet). The cardio room on the second floor looks out on the golf track on one side and you can see the wall on the other side. The indoor running track on the third floor goes around it.
Real American Food. Here you see the horror that was lunch, breakfast and dinner. I kind of like this picture, it's like an assembly line. No faces, just hands, eating away at the horrible food.
In the heart of Athens there's a park, with the second webcam pointed at the statue there. There was a bunch of young squirrels frolicking around there, and this is one of them.
I guess they grow into these larger squirrels later, though I'm not an expert on the incubation time of squirrels. I mean, really, who knows?
There were a lot of squirrels there. They were running around, demolishing the lawn, and running up and down trees. Some were pretty shy, some a lot less. I didn't feed them (despite my mothers' wishes to the contrary!) because I think they have quite a collection of flees, mites, and other weird stuff I didn't want to take home with me. Mom thinks squirrels know what to eat to get rid of flees. I told her it might be a hamburger and fries for all the squirrel could care. These are, after all American squirrels.
Said statue. It was near Perks and the Alumni gateway, and straight in front of the Athens campus webcam. I love the colours in this picture. This was taken one night when everyone went out to the pubs and Marijke and I chose to sit in the park and read Calvin and Hobbes, one of my many souvenirs for NoKey.
On Memorial Day there was a parade. Some parade...it wasn't much, though we were all ushered outside. I liked the picture of this fire truck, somehow it works.
Sogeti 27 had 8 times a false fire alarm. We just had the one in week 1, and I didn't even have my camera on me that day! Afterwards, I lugged it around faithfully and we didn't get another chance but this one to shoot a decent picture of the trucks.
Believe it or not, this is at Wal*Mart. There's a "Remeber our fallen troops" at Walmart. Right across from the electric guitars. Because, you know, everything's for sale at Wal*Mart.
Weekend trips were fun too. This is the first of the two weekends we spent there, when we went to Cincinatti. The mere sight of this city makes me not want to go in there. Please don't put me into the concrete jungle...
We visited Cincinatti for a ballgame: the Cincinatti Reds vs. the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates beat the Reds, but it was quite an experience. I love the preposterous way the Americans name everything. Really, there is a limit to patriotism.
The Great American Ballpark (see what I mean) from the inside. This is full zoom-out of my cam, and it gives a pretty good image of how far away we were. Upside to sitting there is that you don't get hit by balls. Downside is that you don't get hit by balls. You can also see how many Reds fans were there, although the ballpark was only filled for a third. Also, the chairs themselves are red too.
Finally, the ride home. I loved the fact that we got the real Ohio University Bobcats Bus. A Van Hool, which is a Dutch brand of bus, I guess. Still, it looked pretty cool when it pulled up to Bromley. After all, it meant that we were going home.
I spent € 1050,- and gained 4 kilos.
Comments appreciated.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-06-16 11:00 pm (UTC)The ninth photo is of a chipmunk, rather than a young squirrel. They are a separate species, mostly ground-dwelling and not nearly as prevalent as squirrels. But I can see how they could be considered the same animal at different stages.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 10:57 am (UTC)I must say I was pleasantly surprised by the friendliness and politeness of the Ohio people. Athens is a fun little town and the students we encountered on campus were (as far as I could tell) genuinely interested in where we were from and what we were doing there).
We flew in through Detroit and Columbus, and Columbus didn't look so bas as Cincinatti did to me.
And you know, a couple of cats could easily solve that little squirrel problem you guys have over there. *grin*
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 07:41 pm (UTC)