Midpoint Dialogue Reflection#
I have officailly been in Belgium for rougly two weeks by the time this blog has been posted (assuming that I’m not stupid enough to accidently get myself sent home). From a learning standpoint, class has really been accelerating quickly. Compared to my experience in Seattle, I had 8 weeks to learn object-oriented design and its special topics course, while here that has been cut to roughly 4 weeks. It’s interesting being able to compare my experience learning at different rates in which and learn the crucial aspects of database design needed to successfully complete the project. It’s also been really interesting being able to learn more about digital policy, which was an area of computer science and political science that I knew nothing about before switch my major, but being introduced to it makes me want to pursue further knowledge within certain areas of digital policy. On Monday, May 27th, we visited AMChamEU, which was the European branch of the American Commerce, which represented American businesses that have branches or dealings within the EU. After listening to Lucia talk about her experience with getting involved at AMCham, the important tasks she works on - with coordinating and meeting with bigger American companies and hosting these collaborative events-, makes me interested in pursuing my masters in a similar field of digital policy.
European Culture Shock#
There has been a few moments of culture shock that has happened to me after being aborad for two weeks, some good and quite unique that has come to my attention:
The Good Things
The quality of life overall is beyond comparable to that in the United states that I’ve noticed. The air seems freshier - but this could also be because we are in a “small” town outside of Brussels. The towns are overall much cleanier with no excessive trash and rubbish on the street, and the overall environment being maintained by workers who throughly do their job. The food is better, not just in terms of cusinines and restraunts available within a half mile, but the quality of the food is better as well. From fast food chains like KFC and McDonald’s to local bars and restraunts like Barvista and De Graffe, all have fresh ingredients with no additives and preservevatives. I feel healthier overall even though most of my diet consists of takeout and restaraunts.
The Not-So-Good Things
There has only been a few things that I haven’t liked as much since being here in Belgium which may be traditional around Europe.
Paying for water at bars and restaraunts!!! At first, I didn’t fully process that water was not free with meals. The fact that water is more expensive than beer at certain restraunts is absolutely crazy to me, but I guess that gives me an excuse to sample beers from the beer capital of Europe.
No AC: I am fully aware that air condition is not common within Europe, and if it is installed its typically installed by that tenat however, coming back from long excurisons in the evening and my room being a sweatbox is not ideal.
Individual Contributions to Phase II#
During this phase of the project, I primarily focused on creating the intial ER diagrams needs for the personas and then with Carson reevaulated and looked over the diagrams to see if anything needed to be added, changed, or deleted from the diagrams before fully fleshing these details out into the implementation of our project. Carson and I worked together to create the sql ddl tables for the Global Data Model. I created the figma file that holds the wireframes for our website, and worked on the user side for the urban development and the immigration specialist archetype.