Starting off the weekend, Arik and I rushed to catch our bus and after running around the station for an hour we finally stumbled upon it, sweating profusely, only
to wait another hour for our bus to leave for Paris. The weekend only got better from there. A few blocks from our hotel was the Bois de Boulogne, which is the
largest public park in Paris. There, we went
to a concert and experienced a more local setting than the tourist attractions
that we had planned for the rest of the weekend. The next morning, we spent nearly 4 hours at
the Louvre and saw maybe a quarter of all the art housed. Afterwards, we stopped at a super market to
pick up some fresh baguettes and cheese to snack on while we walked by the
Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe. That
night we ate dinner at a fondue place that seated about 40 people with
everybody sitting at two large tables and enjoying the sharing format. Afterward, we went to the Eiffel Tower
again to see it beautifully lit up.
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| Eiffel Tower in lights |
On Tuesday, it was the Fourth of July so everybody from the
IRES Program decided to have a barbeque to commemorate the holiday. We were able to rent a grill, cook some
burgers and chicken, and hang out with some of the other
Wisteria residents in our building.
The World Cup has been a great addition to our time here because
it displayed the unification of the whole country. It seemed like everywhere we went in Belgium
whether it was Leuven, Ghent, Bruges, or Brussels, there was a crowd for
every game. Unfortunately, just this
week they were knocked out of the tournament, which ultimately was disappointing
for all the fans, but they still held their heads high from an
impressive run in the tournament.
Again, we traveled during the weekend. This time our destination was Amsterdam where
we stayed on a boat for the weekend, “The Botel”. Exploring the city with extensive canals made
for great sight-seeing while also being able to check out amazing museums like
the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum.
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| Enjoying the canal in Amsterdam |
The weekends have been jam-packed with travel and fitting a
whole city’s worth of activities in it, but the weeks have been just as busy at
work. I am still working on the
functional prototype for the stress visualization application. I was nearing
the end prototyping for fake data that I had been manually inputting to create
the graphs and color schemes. I finished
full functionality of the application integrating the user’s calendar and
graphing data on the monthly, daily, and hourly time frames. Recently with the nice weather I have been
able to do some of my work outside to enjoy the outdoors while working on my
computer. This week I have been able to
use real data to see the usability of the application. Next week I move on to a pilot test and user testing,
so I can make the User Interface more practical for those who will actually use
it.
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| Enjoying my outdoor lab space! |
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