Day 4

I kicked off the day with a jog. Bad decision; I am not a morning person, let alone a morning runner. Anyway, I ran with Cedric, Tom, Cristina, Vilde from Norway, and Joe from the UK. Cristina and I ended up breaking away from the group and finding a waterfall on campus! It was scenic and fun, but morning runs make me sleepy. One thing I thought was interesting: Cedric is from France, and he tells me that nearly everyone smokes. I've seen him light up a few, and roll his own cigarettes, but he even decided to smoke one before and during (yes, I said during) his jog with us! It seems a little bit counterproductive, honestly... But it's his choice!

Today was again a long day of classes for the most part.

We finished up our last session with Mr. Zaluski, and studied the effects of technology in media and publications. For example, we examined the decreasing role of newspapers, such as the New York Times, due to the rapid spread of such technology like website publications (ie. the Huffington Post) as well as constant accessibility to the Internet for news updates.

We also discussed the use of software and hardware in our everyday lives, and how the innovation of technology has literally changed us. We also designed our own gadgets that we predicted would be invented in the future.

My group, Alvaro, Victoire from San Francisco, and Katarina from Montenegro, designed the iChip from SKAV (Sara, Katarina, Alvaro, and Victoire). Slightly unoriginal, yes, I know, but we agreed that it was inevitable that some kind of universal object that will be created, and perhaps even implanted physically into people's bodies.

We presented our product as one that could receive and give neurosignals to digital objects and could stimulate our sensations to give the brain knowledge without physical vision. For example, like if we wanted to watch the news or a movie, we could just think of one, and watch it without need to actually physically watch it--since the brain is what actually interprets what we are watching, and not the eyes.

This was the end of our documentary series. After that we went for lunch, which was one of the most entertaining times of my life. My friends all attempted to eat an "American" style lunch.

Hello there Alvaro.

Richard from Latvia... Knife and fork...

Hamburga for Cedric. Nom nom nom.

A lively discussion about American eating styles and obesity also ensued. Apparently many of them were surprised when they got off the plane and they didn't see any overweight people. Doesn't bode well for the United States' overseas image. I then went to the campus convenience store with Alvaro and Tom from Denmark, and they were so impressed to see firstly the cheaper prices for things like Ben and Jerry's, and second, the cheese in a spray bottle. Thank you Kraft.

After lunch was our second set of classes, which was "Comparative Constitutionalism". This one required a much more interactive approach than the first one; we started out describing the constitutions of all the nations that the fellows were from in the group. I hadn't realized that Luxembourg was a constitutional monarchy with a Duke, nor had I realized the socialist policies in place in Denmark. There's so much left to learn about the world.

And then we took a political and social beliefs survey and compared it to a Pew Research Poll center poll for different countries. It's interesting how so many diverse beliefs could be reflected in one room!

Last, but not least, another documentary was shown. This one was co-created by Chris Zaluski, and was about station wagons. Not my favorite subject, but it was artfully done.