The workweek was a very promising week, not to mention our halfway point! We had a meeting with our bosses and mentors to discuss our experience so far with the internship. Each of us had our own progress to show off. Nate had several structural analyses to show along with the structures that he designed for current projects. Luke had his wealth of experience in Maxsurf boiled down into a very useful user manual, along with many simulations and an absurd amount of data in spreadsheets. It is safe to say that Luke could probably teach a class on how to use Maxsurf. I was able to show off the program I made in excel to calculate the resistance and propulsion for planing hulls along with other data that I found for a few vessels I was working on.
They also gave us a chance to discuss what we wanted to do for the rest of the internship, but none of us really knew what to say because we didn't completely know what work they had. From telling them what we liked and didn't like so far they seemed to come up with some ideas on how to keep us going with work we enjoy doing, but the week still ended up being a bit slow.
There were also several parties that were held for various occasions during the week. One day we were celebrating a successful project with cake, and on Friday it was a farewell party for one of the people in the office who was leaving Metal Shark to go to another company in the area. There are always things to celebrate if you pay attention to them, and the people here at Metal Shark Croatia certainly look out for them.
Towards the end of the week though we were texting back and forth in a group chat with some of the international students at the University of Rijeka thanks to our coworker Anton. There was a bit of a debate as to whether I would go alone or with Luke and Nate since Nate thought he was setting me up with a girl, but we ended up all going at 4 pm to Prady's apartment to hang out with a bunch of people we had never met. Turns out the person Nate thought was a girl was actually a very chill Indian guy. Anyway, we ended up meeting two guys from India, two people from Nigeria, a girl from Slovenia, and another guy from Romania who all spoke English. We had a great time talking about our different countries, and we went to the observatory in Rijeka to attempt to see some stars. It was a cloudy night, but we were still able to see a few videos on one of those dome projectors that I have only seen at observatories.
After the observatory, we ended up back at Prady's apartment playing Risk until 3 am. There were several people who had never played before, but they were quickly brought up to speed and we had an awesome game. By the end of the night, we were starting to figure out when we were going to hang out next, but we didn't solidify any plans since we were all super tired.
After such a late night we slept in on Sunday and basically spent the whole day being lazy and staring at the paintings and decorations around the apartment, one of which makes a very strong point that "A day without daughter is a day wasted." I guess all three of us have been wasting our lives without daughter!
We have spent enough time here now to start noticing some similarities and differences between Croatia and the United States. For one, the traffic lights are different here. They show a yellow light both before they turn red and turn green. It is a very nice feature that I wish the U.S. would copy. Another thing that I have noticed is there are no pick-up trucks, SUVs, minivans, or other large cars we see on a daily basis in the U.S. It must be because of the high gas prices and small parking spaces. The towns and cities tend to have older buildings and pedestrian-only areas instead of the skyscrapers and taxi filled streets of cities like New York. Grocery shopping tends to take place multiple times per week at many smaller grocery stores instead of one big trip a week as most Americans do. There are obviously more differences than these, but I'll save those for later. Look out for next week's post, and remember: "A day without daughter is a day wasted."