Yerun Karabey's Blog Entry

I started the day with reading the brochure of the NSCC building (Waterfront Campus - Centre for the Built Environment) and said to myself: ‘wouldn’t it be nice if my graduating project could be designing a building located in the Netherlands that has the same basic idea of learning from an actual building.’ I think the Netherlands and every other country needs a building like the Waterfront Campus where students study on different levels and learn and get inspired by the building itself. I’m thinking to develop a method for a sustainable campus that can be used all over the world and actually design a sustainable campus in the Netherlands.
We started the day with a conversation with the teachers about the project that turned into a really educational conversation for me about , for example, how homes are heated in Canada and how they are built in Canada. I learned that homes have oil tanks where oil is stored and used for heating the house and a company comes by every three months or so to refill the tanks. This was very strange for me because in the Netherlands we use gas to heat our homes. I also found out that in Ireland they don’t have to pay for their water, but that it is incorporated in their taxes. I also found out that water in Canada is also very cheap compared to electricity that’s very expensive.
For dinner Paddy, James, Arwin, John and I had poutine from Alexandra’s near the hostel which was very delicious. We thought we were very hungry so we all ordered a large poutine but it turned out large here really means LARGE. We didn’t finish and took it with us to the hostel and put it in the fridge for tomorrow!

- Yerun Karabey, Student, Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen