2 weeks

I have been in Denmark for two weeks now. I have been acclimated to the time change as well as many of the lifestyle changes of living in Denmark. For instance unlike at home most stores close at 5:30 sharp and therefore you need to do grocery shopping etc much earlier in the day unlike in Burlington where Price Chopper is open 24/7.
This week I had a few more classes and my project group was finalized. Here at Aalborg there is a semester long project that students work in small groups to complete. Each group is given their own room to work on the project and store materials as well as do regular work in along with a key so you can bring your computer and leave it behind when you go to lectures etc. Also the groups have an adviser who is usually a faculty of the school or a professional in the field that the project focuses on. Our adviser is the professor for Aerodynamics a class that I found out is almost entirely designed around wind turbines. This is very handy because the project my group is working on is designing a VAWT or Vertical Axis Wind Turbine. These are different from what most people associate as wind turbines because those are HAWT or Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines. Although mathematically HAWTs have potential to be more efficient than VAWTs due to Betz's Principle there is a potential for small because they make less noise, look more attractive and can fit into small places that HAWTs could not. I will not go too in depth on the project but that is what my team and I have to do. In the end we will conduct lab tests most likely using CFD computational fluid dynamics and build a model and use a CCWT continuous circuit wind tunnel to test the model and then we will use that data to write the conclusion to our report which will be in the range of 80-100 pages. We have already gone to the library to find books although most are 20-30 years old but theory is unchanged just the technology is different. The project is due at the end of May and we will defend it (Like a thesis) in June and then we will be done... !
The classes I had this week were Aerodynamics and C Programming. I am interested in C because it will be nice to learn some programming as it is essential for most engineers to write or find someone who can write programs for various applications. Tomorrow at 10am (uggggh) I have a 4 hour language bath in Danish and starting next week I will take an intro to Danish class for 8 weeks. Other than that my only other class until late march is Combustion and the Environment. However when I am not in class I will be working on the project so my week will be busy. I will hopefully be able to travel on weekends because I have no classes on Fridays...
I have to say I was very tired Monday morning. I stayed up an watched the Super Bowl (Thank god the Packers won!!)  The game did not start until 12:30 my time and at half time 2:30 I planned on going to be but this did not happen and I ended up not falling asleep until I knew the Packers had put big Ben in his place. The game was very interesting to watch. We could not find a stream from the US with out paying for it however we did get a Norwegian channel that was showing the game. However they do not have advertisements here so during the commercial breaks there would be a Sports Center like commentary of the game (talking heads...) However there were 5 commentators, 4 white Norwegians and one black American... So the Norwegians would talk to each other and laugh in Norwegian and when they had a question they would ask the "expert" (the black guy..) and they would ask him in decent english and then he would talk. However the rest of the time (most of the time) he would just sit there awkwardly no really sure what was going on. And when he did say stuff he said some things that were incorrect which was also hilarious to the Americans in the room watching the game (however the other international students hardly noticed...) So that was pretty funny addition they video called some other guy who was supposed to be some expert and when he was talking he kept stumbling on his words and he called Ben Rothlesburger, Ben Rothenburger which was really funny and by the end he was just laughing at himself which made it all the better. Also I have to say I am not sure if you experienced this at home but the camera work was horrendous. They kept using awkward camera angles and they would cut to the camera before the guy was focused so he would be zooming in and out and moving the camera around really fast which was ridiculous. Also for a while they did not have the little lines that they add for the first down which made the game more tedious to watch. Luckily because the broadcast was done by fox during the game the commentators were American and so the game was announced in English...  All in all it was quite an event, we even made some "American" food for the game including spinach and artichoke dip, cupcakes, and chicken wings.
During the week I also met my buddy Rebecca. She is very nice and together we walked around with a few other people she knew and one of the girls who worked for the tourist center in Aalborg pointed out some places to go. It was very good because it allowed me to connect where I had been and have a better mental map of the city. I also bought my cell phone and some things from my room at Ikea (which had the exact same floor plan as the one in Avon, MA which was nice because it was easy to find things when I remembered where they were... There was one difference. There was no section where you could by the frozen meatballs, gravy and lignonberry sauce however you can order it upstairs at the cafe. My guess for why they dont sell it here is that you can find food like it at the super markets, but to be honest I would buy it anyways at Ikea because they are really good...
Yesterday I made chili for dinner. I had bought all the ingredients I needed but some friends from my Collegium wanted in so they contributed themselves and a few extra ingredients. I found Habanero Peppers at the Fotex near the Campus (major score!!!) so I added then to the chili, but it turned out to be not too hot because I only added 2 peppers so next time I am gonna use 4 and when I eat the left overs I may add some raw Habanero to it. The chili was quite good, maybe not as good as dad's but for my first time ever and I did not even use a recipe nor did I have a good variety of beans(Regular supermarkets only have Baked Beans and nicer ones like Fotex only had kidney and baked beans... plus the cans were in Danish so it was hard to know if the tomatoes were crushed, whole, or in sauce form so I got one of each...) so I was more than satisfied. I also made baked ziti earlier in the week so I have been eating quite well...
I will try to write more frequently because I realised that this is getting very long and I have more to tell for the future so you may notice many short blogs instead on long ones like this. Well I have a get together with my friends tonight at 8:00 so I need do some work and make dinner. My next message will most likely be on Sunday(From now on I will try to commit myself to certain days when I will write the blog... we will see how it goes...)