An overdue entry

I should start this entry by apologizing for the enormous amount of time which has passed since the previous report: sorry. The past two months have been busy beyond any previous experience of mine, in a positive way, and that is why I have not been writing for the blog, even though I should have. Let this be my Thanksgiving resolution: to keep these pages more alive.

Yes, today is Thanksgiving, and I am so lucky as to have the week off from school. Most people have left New Haven to visit their families and have dinner together. I myself am staying in town and will eat the traditional stuffed turkey in a couple of hours with friends from school that stayed as well. Apart from the turkey, I don't really know what Thanksgiving is all about (I suppose to thank the universe for the good things it gave us) but it's a great excuse to have a quality dinner and some drinks with friends in these cold days.

Also, it's great as an excuse for a holiday. The School has the week off and I used it to take some days off from coursework and just relax and enjoy. With Selin I went to New York for a day or two and escaping New Haven even for such a short while was exhilarating. (A short update on my situation: Selin is a Turkish girl in the second year of the same program I am in and we have been happily together since the end of September.) New York was as it always is: BIG and alive. Odly, traffic is something I really miss here in New Haven, and there's plenty of it in New York. Also, New Haven sleeps from 1am to 7am even if I don't want to - New york never does.
Below are some pictures from our NY excursion: we saw our friend Dania off at Penn Station, strolled around Manhattan, had some lunch and a beer in Madison Square Park beside the Flatiron Building, took in a sunset over New Jersey on the west side, and then went to have delicious pizza (the best I had since Turin in Februari!) in the West Village. The dessert was... GROM! Finally I made it there, and tasting my beloved ice cream after so much time was definitely worth the many dollars it cost. By the way, it is me in the pictures - yes, I am growing a moustache. November is Movember, and I'm part of a team of moustached men that raise money for prostate cancer research. Though I haven't collected a single cent yet, I like the justified experiment with my facial hair. Nobody (including me) thinks it's pretty in any way, but I certainly find it interesting.








We took the free Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty the second day.


Selin loves food, and so do I, and she has been 'slowing down' my food. After I first got here, I found everything very expensive, so I chose food as cheap as possible, with as many bang (in calories) as my buck could buy. It took some time to realize that all that food I bought was pretty much crap: fat, artificial, overly processed, and awfully bland and tasteless. Maybe it was Carlo Petrini's talk here at Yale (the president of the Slow Food movement) in October that subconsciously changed my views. But it's been mainly discovering alternatives to the crap at Selin's place and finding that good food is not that much more expensive. But still, it is, and it takes more effort since you need to process it yourself. Also, there are so many occasions where you can stuff yourself for free and simultaneously win time and money, but often times it's pizza or chips and a human being should not live on that. Food is one of the reasons why I'm looking forward to coming back to Belgium for Christmas, with maybe a short trip South to Spain or Italy. I was exalted when I opened the package my family had sent me, with dark chocolate and hazelnuts, white chocolate, real cuberdons, and marsipan! Oh, the things I'll eat!

As far as School is concerned, I mentioned that I have been very busy. Instead of giving the entire account of everything that happened in the blog void between entries, at the likely risk of boring my readers, I will sum up the highlights.

My classes have been going well - the homework is very time-consuming but has not been overly difficult and the two midterm exams I had went well. Apart from the four classes I talked about in the previous blog entry, I took an extra one-credit class about conflict resolution and negotiations which was interesting but held at the inhuman time of 6 to 8:30pm Monday evening when the stomach is empty, sugar level low, and attention somewhere else.

I am very glad to have been admitted into the Forestry Club - kind of the praesidium of our School's students - thereby becoming part of a group of wonderful students that organize a ton of events for the students and faculty and make sure that the informal atmosphere is kept alive. I have been assigned the task of snackretary and am thus responsible for providing food.

Progress is being made on the cookstove project I am working on - an affordable design for developing countries - but it is rather slow and I will have to put in more time before going back to my home turf.

As I speak, water is boiling for the Brussels sprouts I am taking to the Thanksgiving potluck (as well as a rather disappointing chocolate mousse which is overly sweet because I had to make do with Hershey's chocolate) and I have to devote my attention to them, so I will end this entry, and try to write more soon. Happy Thanksgiving, dear reading audience!