As we all know, the World Cup is taking place right now and, of course, Europe is probably the best place to see it because these people actually care about football (unlike Americans). I have never closely followed football (and this is probably due to the fact that not many people in the U.S. follow it), but I really enjoy watching the games here.

The people here are absolutely wild about football. I would say the Germans get more riled about Germany playing just their first game in the World cup than Americans get when their favourite American football team wins the Super Bowl. For example, when I just got off my U-bahn stop on Sunday, June 13, I thought I had stepped into a war zone when I live in the quiet, suburban-like area of Rudow. But really, the Germans were merely setting off their fireworks and making loud noises because Germany had scored a goal in its first game of the 2010 World Cup.

One thing in Berlin that is popular is beach bars. There are several bars put in the setting of a nice, sandy beach and even have palm trees and several beach volleyball nets/courts. A group of younger employees (NOT interns!) at Deutsche Bahn have been playing beach volleyball every Wednesday at a beach bar called BeachMitte. I’ve already played twice with them and this past week our beach volleyball night coincided with a Germany World Cup game! So after we played, we watched the game at BeachMitte.

Watching the game at BeachMitte. This is Mesut Özil of Germany after Germany had won the game against Ghana!

Those are the volleyball nets. We had finished playing and were watching the game. On the left is Katja and on the right is Kati. They both work for DB Schenker, but Kati is the only one who actually works in my direct group.

Marvin and Marco from DB

However, I may have one answer to this new stringent luggage rule. On my Lufthansa flight from Boston Logan to Germany, I had to use the bathroom once. When I did, I had to take stairs down to the lower level of the plane to use the bathroom. The lower level was very spacious and nicely furnished with 6 to 8 (I forget the exact number because it was so posh down there) rather large bathrooms! So the lower level of the plane has been taken over by spacious bathrooms and forcing passengers to sacrifice their luggage!
Though, I will admit that it was one of my better bathroom experiences on a plane and I was impressed. I’m always impressed with Lufthansa, but this time I think I flew on a newer plane, which was why things seemed even nicer.

*Disclaimer: Just in case there is a misunderstanding… of course, I am not being entirely serious about why I think they decreased the luggage allowance.

Why am I in Germany for the summer?

I am working for Deutsche Bahn (DB), the German national railway company (however, they do more than just railways), in Berlin. More specifically, I am working for DB Strategy Transport and Logistics at the DB Schenker headquarters in Berlin. DB Schenker is the freight logistics subsidary of Deutsche Bahn and it comprises of air, land, and sea freight. DB Schenker handles worldwide logistics.

The DB Schenker headquarters are located at Potsdamer Platz in the Sony Center. My group is on the 10th floor, which is the topmost floor of the Sony Center. On one side, we have great views of Berlin and, on the other side, we have  views of the inside of the Sony Center.

This is the view into the Sony Center when standing next to the 10th floor elevator.

Well, if you want to see more pictures of some of the things I did in Berlin during my first week (before work started on June 7), you can look here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2041134&id=1233870200&l=12b025c555

I’m sorry I didn’t finish it, but things got really busy towards the end of my research internship at RWTH.

Here’s a summary of what happened after the Paris trip:
-My German friend, Katharine Hinz, visited me in Aachen (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019229&id=1233870200&l=06562471db). I got to see my first football game in Europe!
-For the final week in Aachen, just refer to the comments for this photo album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019282&id=1233870200&l=ad8018775e

When we arrived at the Paris Nord train station around 11:40am, we met up with Helen (a UMich student who is interning in the UROP International office) who got a ride to Paris through mitfahrgelegenheit.de. We then bought a day pass for the Metro and then headed to check into our hotel, which was located near the Bastille. After checking into the hotel, we went to the Jardin des Tuileries and the Louvre. While we had planned to go inside the Louvre, we unfortunately did not have enough time to actually go inside based on our itinerary for the next item we wanted to do. Here are some pictures from when we walked around the Jardin des Tuileries:

The Tulip Garden area looks rather unreal to me. It was very pretty. People just lounged around in chairs around this fountain.

Here are some pictures from when we were in the area near the entrance to the Louvre:

This is one side of the Louvre and the Pyramid.

I was trying to do a kick in front of the Louvre, but it did not turn out too well.

One of my friends from MIT, Hattie, is interning in Paris this summer and she ended up spending a lot of the weekend with us. She met up with us at the Louvre before we headed to the “New Paris Tour” at 4pm. The New Paris Tour is a three hour walking tour. On this walking tour, we were able to see the following sites as well as learn interesting historical stories about them from our tour guide: Notre Dame de Paris, The Latin Quarter, Ile-de-la-Cité, Pont Neuf, The Louvre, Palais Royal, Haussmann’s Renovations, Eiffel Tower, Tuileries Gardens, Les Invalides Académie Française, Opéra Garnier, Musée d’Orsay, Pont Alexandre III, Napoléon’s Tomb, Assemblé Nationale, Champs-Élysées, Arc de Triomphe, Grand & Petit Palais, and Place de la Concorde.

In the evening, we planned to climb the Eiffel Tower, but our dinner ran a bit late and it didn’t leave us adequate time to climb the Tower and get on the Metro before it closes in order to get back to our hotel. Instead, we just looked at the Eiffel Tower at night from the ground and relaxed on the lawn next to the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower sometimes does some random things at night. In this picture, it is having a period where it flashes crazy lights and looks all psychedelic.

I don’t exactly know the best way to use my digital  camera when taking pictures at night/in the dark. So I fiddled with the settings to see what kind of pictures I’d get.

This is pretty much the same picture as the previous one, but with different camera settings.

Underneath the Eiffel Tower

Sunday, July 19, 2009
Our intention for Sunday was to spend most of the day at Versailles. The city of Versailles is located in the western suburbs of Paris. We had to take the RER-C train to get there. Versailles is best known for being the site of the vast royal palace and gardens built by King Louis XIV. Each of us had to spend over 25 Euros (I think it may have been around 27 Euros?) for the whole ticket combo for admission to the palace and gardens. While Versailles was definitely a place worth seeing, I definitely think the admission was extremely overpriced. We thought it was a bit comical that in order for us to get into Versailles, we had to pay about the same price as our train ticket to Paris.

Here we are walking to the palace of Versailles.

Yes, Versailles sure is pretty.

The MIT kids got excited to see a statue of L’Hopital!

We got to walk inside the whole palace and it’s definitely really pretty in there. I wish I lived there!

View of some of the gardens from inside the palace.

I’m in the famous Hall of Mirrors.

A shot of more fountains and gardens in Versailles. There’s a watershow for an hour each day (it either starts at noon or 11am – I forget). All the fountains in Versailles turn on and run for an hour and coordinate with music.

Here’s a picture of one fountain in action. Though, Wen Hui was not impressed because she is from Las Vegas and the Bellagio Fountains are much more impressive than this.

Here’s another part of the Versailles gardens. Unfortunately, the fountains are not in action in this picture.

We left Versailles around 1 or 2pm with the intention of seeing the Catacombs at 3pm. Unfortunately, when we got to Catacombs, the line was rididulously long and we were told the Catacombs would be closed by 5pm. So we headed to see the Notre Dame where we met up with Hattie again.

This is the Notre Dame.

After Notre Dame, we decided to actually go up the Eiffel Tower. We took an elevator to the “second foor”. From the second floor, you can take an elevator to the top of the tower.

View of the rest of the tower from outside the second floor.

The view of Paris from the second floor of the Eiffel Tower.

After seeing the Eiffel Tower, we went to Montmartre for the evening. Montmartre is a hill about 130 meters high and it is in the north of Paris. Some people think Montmartre has better views of the city than the Eiffel Tower does and I think I might agree. Something amusing about the view from Montmartre is that you pretty much get a good view of Paris except for the Eiffel Tower.

I don’t think I took the best picture of the view from Montmartre.

Montmartre is best known for the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur. Here Hattie and me with the Sacré Cœur.

We ate dinner on Montmartre and we each got one of those pre-fixed three course meals.

The first course/appetizer was some sort of salmon pâté:

The second course/main course/entree was some sort of stewed beef with noodles:

I forgot to take a picture of the third course/dessert, but I got some chocolate mousse.

After dinner, we walked around Montmartre and then decided we just had to visit Moulin Rouge.

Here’s Hattie and me outside of Moulin Rouge.

We were all pretty tired for the night after seeing Moulin Rouge.  After all, we did have two rather packed days of exploring Paris. So we headed back to our hotel.

Monday, July 20, 2009
We had to wake up really early to check out of the hotel and catch out Thalys train back to Aachen. We were trying out best to only miss a half day of work at our internships.

Since our hotel was really close to the Bastille, I tried to take a picture of it as we were heading to the Metro to get to Paris Nord:

There’s nothing left of the original Bastille fort today, but if you look very closely at this picture you can see the top tip of the July Column, which is at the center of the Place de la Bastille.

We returned to Aachen somewhere around 9:30am. Of course, I went back to my room to put down my things and rest a little before heading back into work. I probably got into work around noon. However, my friend Vasudha from MIT was visiting Aachen this day and I got a call from her that she had arrived. So I took an hour off from work to meet up with her and help get her acquainted with Aachen.

Here we are enjoying some German beer together. Of course, I ordered a BananenWeizen (Hefeweizen beer with banana juice) and Vasudha just got a normal Hefeweizen.

After meeting with Vasudha, I went back to work for the day, did grocery shopping, and worked out before I met up with her again in the evening. I showed her Pontsraße and then we got some drinks with some UROP International interns and German buddies. It was nice to get my second visit from an MIT friend. Vasudha is interning in Brussels this summer and that’s why she was able to visit Aachen this summer.

And if you want to see the rest of my Paris pictures, here is a link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018832&id=1233870200&l=2a9a5189d1

On Tuesday, July 14, I went to Köln with Levent. Köln is Germany’s fourth largest city and is the largest city in the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is one of the oldest cities in Germany, having been founded by the Romans in 38 BC.  Köln is a city that I’m always going through or briefly stopping by in, but never one that I’ve actually spent a whole day in or thoroughly looked at, which is a shame. I remember the last time I was in Germany for a high school exchange, the students explored Köln for a day, but I was unable to go on this trip because I had already returned to the US! Unfortunately, even on this Köln trip with Levent, I still don’t feel like I’ve thoroughly explored Köln given the nature of our trip and the fact that we were only there for an evening.

The town Levent is from is very close to Köln so he basically considers Köln his hometown (or I guess you could call it his ‘homecity’). He invited me to go to Köln with him to watch his older sister, Melisa, play in a piano recital. Melisa studies at a music university in Köln. We went to Köln by train from Aachen and we arrived about one hour before Melisa’s piano recital. So Levent showed me a little bit of Köln, but it was mainly just the area near the famous Kölner Dom (that’s German for ‘Köln Cathedral’).

Here’s Levent and me in front of the famous Köln Cathedral. It’s pretty big so the whole thing could not be pictured. The Köln Cathedral is a Gothic Church that started in 1248 and was completed in 1880 – that’s quite a long time to build a church. You can actually climb the 509 steps inside to get to the top, but we didn’t have enough time.

An important thing to do in Köln is to drink the typical Köln beer called Kölsch. The different cities and regions in Germany tend to have their own beer and the people from there tend to be very loyal to their own beer. Some cities even have strong rivalries with each other. A few different breweries make this Kölsch beer and Levent took me to the Früh am Dom (the brewery’s name is ‘Früh’ and it’s located near the ‘Dom’, which means ‘Cathedral’).

Here we are enjoying our Früh Kölsch in front of the Früh brewery. I’ve actually had bottled Früh Kölsch before in Aachen. Unfortunately, Kölsch is only seved in 0,2L glasses, which is much smaller than the usual 0,5L glasses that I’m used to in Germany.

After walking around the area near the Cathedral, we headed to Melisa’s piano recital. I enjoy listening to classical piano so it was nice to attend this recital. Also in attendance to Melisa’s recital was almost all of Levent’s family (extended family included). He has quite a big family so it was a bit overwhelming meeting everyone. After the recital and in order to congratulate Melisa for a well played piano recital, we went to dinner at some fancy French restaurant with Levent’s family and some of Melisa’s friends. It was really fun meeting Levent’s family and Melisa’s friends.

We took the train back to Aachen Main Station pretty late and didn’t get back until about 1 or 2am. Because it was so late and there were no more trains going to the Aachen West Station, which is closer to my dorm, Levent drove me back to my dorm on his motorcycle. This was my second time ever on a motorcycle and I love motorcycle rides! It was a fun way to end the night.

Well here is the link to view the rest of my pictures from Liege. And, no, you do not need a Facebook account to access them.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017022&id=1233870200&l=7e67be520f

Alea decided to visit me in Germany since I was there for the summer and she conveniently had family friends in Brussels she stayed with before she stopped by Germany. The plan was for Alea to arrive at the Aachen West train station at 4:43pm so that I could show her the Lindt and Printen factory outlets before they close at 6pm. I did not see her on the Aachen West platform at the planned time and waited on the platform for two and a half hours to no avail. Alea gave me the phone number of the international cell phone she had purchased for this trip, but whenever I called it I most certainly did not reach Alea. I was starting to get worried and was not sure what to do. I finally decided to go back to my room after the two and a half hours of waiting because not only was I getting cold, but I thought maybe I might have gotten an email about Alea’s situation.

Once I was back in my room, I indeed got an email from her mother stating that Alea had some problems with the trains and would be arriving at Aachen West around 7pm. I then quickly walked back to Aachen West, but Alea still did not come out of any trains that came by. I waited an hour and a half until I started to get cold again. While I contemplated going back to my room, a train came and Alea finally arrived in Aachen!

Well, I didn’t get to show her the Lindt and Printen outlets since it was around 9pm by the time she arrived, but I made us dinner and then we headed to Pontstraße where we got a beer and enjoyed the Aachen night life.

We went to Cafe Galilei and I got a BananenWeizen, which is banana juice with Hefeweizen beer. This was one of my favourite drinks in Germany. Of course, this is half liter size!

Alea just got Hefeweizen beer, which is one of my favourite beers in Germany.

This picture shows you how slow I was at drinking beer that night since more of Alea’s beer is gone than mine.

Saturday, July 11
On Saturday, Alea and I went to Liege, Belgium with a few other UROP International students. The trip was organized by the UROP International office and we just had to pay 5 Euros for the bus ride, boat tour, and city tour in Liege. I must admit that I fell asleep during the boat tour so I can’t tell you too much about that, but I can show you some pictures from the boat tour of the Meuse River.

Me asleep on the boat tour.

I think the walking tour was about two or two and half hours long. Here are some things we saw on the walking tour:

A fountain where dogs and horses have drank out of.

A clock tower. Liege is known to be the city of clock towers.

Some university students made took random trash to make this artistic piece.

This is a shot of the contrasting countryside that can be found right in Liege.

Alea and I went to some Italian place for lunch. Here’s a picture of our food. I got some lasagna with beef dish.

A cathedral in Liege… there are just way too many cathedrals in Europe.

Food in Liege. Unfortunately, I did not get to eat any of this.

My opinion about Liege is the same for Brussels and, unfortunately, I am just going to make this general opinion about Belgium in general. Liege was just a pretty city to look at, but it did not seem like there was much to do and that you could get bored fast. I will admit that there are more things to do in Brussels, but I’d also get tired of them quickly. The only thing I truly enjoy in Belgium is the food – especially the waffles! As stated in my Brussels post, waffles in Belgium make all other waffles taste so bland and disgusting. I even ate two waffles when I was in Liege!

For Saturday night, Alea and I went to something on Pontstraβe and then we met up with my buddy, Levent, around 10pm because he wanted to hang out. We first got a cocktail with Levent and then he took us to a bar/club called KönigKeller. On Saturday night, girls get two free drinks at KönigKeller if they arrive at the bar/club before midnight.We basically just had some drinks and danced the night away at KönigKeller. Their music was ok, but not amazing.

Sunday, July 12
On Alea’s last day, we decided to go to Aachen’s famous Carolus Thermen spa. The Carlus Thermen spa offers indoor and outdoor baths to relax in as well as four different sauna worlds, massages, and gourmet restaurants. If you want to learn more about them, you can visit their website here: http://www.carolus-thermen.de/go/bad_aachen/english.html. We met up with Levent, Helen (an American intern in the UROP International Office), and Michael (a UROP International intern from Johns Hopkins) at Ponttor around 10:30am in order to go to Carolus Thermen. We decided to go so early because Alea was trying to leave Aachen by 4 or 5pm and we still had to go to the Aachen main train station to purchase her train ticket back to Brussels.

The Carolus Thermen spa was very enjoyable and relaxing. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of us in the spa because my camera would have obviously gotten wet, but here are some pictures of the spa from the internet so that you have an idea of what it’s like in there:

Here’s a picture of all of us who went in front of the entrance of Carolus Thermen:

After the Carolus Thermen spa, Alea and I quickly got ready before heading to the Aachen main train station in order to get her a train ticket back to Brussels because she had not purchased it in advance and we were having trouble buying it online. Levent kindly offered to go with us so that he could help talk to the people at the ticket counter in German. With extreme luck, Alea was able to get a first class Thalys ticket to Brussels for only 24 Euros! Thalys is one of the nicer and faster trains you can take in Europe and the train Alea was taking back to Brussels was a direct train from Aachen to Brussels. I later learned that Thalys was doing a summer special where a certain number of first class seats were only 25 Euros. I should definitely take advantage of this next summer and it is too bad that I did not get this deal for my Paris trip the following weekend! Alea surely enjoyed being spoiled on her first class train ride to Brussels!

After Alea successfully got on the train headed to Brussels, I met up with Helen, Michael, and their German friend, Hendrik. We ended up going to an Eis Cafe (‘eis’ is German for ‘ice cream’ – though European ice cream is much lighter than American ice cream and it’s usually gelato) and we ordered spaghetti ice cream!

The four of us split two large orders of Spaghetti Eis. One had strawberry sauce and the other had chocolate sauce. Spaghetti ice cream is made by first putting a layer of whipped cream down. Then, vanilla ice cream is pressed through a “spaghetti maker” so that “noodles” are formed over the layer of whipped cream. The syrup is then put on top of all of this. I’m not sure what they used as the white stuff that dusted everything, but I will assure that it is not cheese.

Running is an activity that I love and hate. I have always admired the idea of running, but I never really seemed to find the tolerance for the seemingly monotonous activity. However, I started forcing myself to go on regular distance runs during my freshman year of college and have continued it ever since then (minus the 6 month break from physical activity due to my knee injury).

The UROP International office has sent the interns emails about signing up for the Lousberglauf since May (before the program even started). The UROP office really wanted to create a “UROP International” team/group that would run together at the Lousberglauf. I finally got the courage to actually signup for the race in the beginning of June.

And so there ended up being 13 of us on the UROP International team for the Lousberglauf – three Germans and the rest Americans. The UROP officie even got us all spiffy athletic shirts that had the UROP International logo on the back:

Here’s what we looked like from the front:

All of our race numbers actually had a chip on them called the “Bib Chip”. There were sensors at the start and finish of the race that would be able to scan these chips (as the runner passed the sensor) in order to help time how long it took you to complete the race. The results were available shortly after the race and online. I’m not going to broadcast my time on here because I am a bit embarrassed by it.

The Lousberglauf was quite a fun experience despite the fact that it was pouring very badly the entire time (I got soaked). The whole area at the foot of the Lousberg (which is right where the four dorm towers are, including mine) was full of beer vendors, food vendors, stages, and more. What I thought was quite comical was that right after several Germans crossed the finish line, they would immediately go grab a beer from one of the beer vendors. That doesn’t sound too healthy to me.

The run itself for me was definitely a bit hard going uphill, but such a relief when I got to the downhill part. The entire time I felt very hungry (though I am known to have a very good appetite and am frequently hungry) and kept complaining about my hunger to my running partner, Stephen (he’s a UROP intern from Georgia Tech). My knee was rather sore after the run and my head felt even worse since I was recovering from a mild concussion (that I got in Serbia) and actually wasn’t supposed to be doing any heavy physical activity. Despite all this, I still thought it was a good race.

After the race, I cleaned up (and dried up from the rain) and then conveniently just headed to the bottom of my dorm where all the party action was happening. Apparently, after the Lousberglauf there’s a big party afterwards. Again, there’s lots of food and beer vendors and a stage for a cover band to play. I ended up hanging out the rest of the night with Stephen and my German buddy, Levent.

Anyhow, I shall continue about my departure from the Universiade…

I was scheduled to fly back to Germany from Belgrade on a Germanwings flight (the return leg of the first flight I missed) for Sunday, July 5. The last day for the Taekwondo competition at the Universiade was Monday, July 6, and the rest of the USA Taekwondo team was scheduled to fly out on July 8. It was definitely very unfortunate that I had to leave early because I did not get to watch all of the Taekwondo competition nor did I get to see the rest of Belgrade and party with the rest of the team.

Of course, for my last night in Belgrade on the July 4 (I don’t think team USA even did any July 4th celebrations… that’s kind of sad because I like celebrating Independence Day with my friends back at home) I wanted to hang out with the team as much as I could or try to go out in Belgrade at night. While my last night didn’t go as swimmingly as I wanted it to, it was still a memorable experience…

After the competition day was over for us on Saturday, July 4, we went back to the Athlete Village to relax a little bit and our coaches told us that they’d be willing to take us to the Hyatt for dinner. Dinner at the Hyatt was definitely a fun affair and it was nice spending more time with the USA Taekwondo team members. However, after dinner it started to rain very very hard. We all got into taxis to get back to the Athlete Village. When we arrived at the Athlete Village, it was still raining extremely hard and my teammates wanted to run to the USA apartment. I obviously did not have my knee brace with me and it is very difficult and painful for me to attempt to run when I do not have my knee brace on. So TJ, our male featherweight, decided to give me a piggyback ride. Unfortunately, he slipped backwards on the wet cement, which caused me to fly off his back and land rather hard on my head, elbow, and butt. I definitely got bruised up rather badly on my butt and elbow… and my head? I thought it was just a bad hit, but I could tolerate it. However, the doctor for our team saw me fall and insisted that she check my head out after we took our team pictures.

The team doctor claimed that I failed her memory test and that I had a mild concussion. I then was brought to the medical clinic in the Athlete Village to get checked out who then made me go to the Military Hospital in Serbia. Although this was a very unique medical experience, I don’t want to blog too much about my medical experience because, to be honest, it was not the best medical experience I’ve had and I don’t want to be offensive… I probably already achieved being offensive by just mentioning this though…
You can ask me if you want to learn more about my medical experience in Belgrade.

Here’s a picture of me and Master Chuang riding in the ambulance on the way to the Military Hospital in Serbia. Master Chuang is a coach for the US Collegiate National team and he is also my coach back in Boston.

As for my head and my bruises, they definitely continued to hurt pretty badly for the next 1-2 weeks. In fact, my elbow and butt are still really sensitive and it hurts when I touch them. My head felt really dizzy and achy for the next week and I also felt sleepy all the time… this obviously did not help me be productive at work during the week.

When I finally returned to the Athlete Village after my medical excursion for the night, I just hung out with a few team members in our apartments for the rest of the evening. I couldn’t really go out on the town with a concussed head.

On July 5, I spectated the first half of the Taekwondo competition day and then I had to head back to the Athlete Village where I checked out and was driven to the Belgrade airport for my flight back to Germany. Quite an interesting coincidence happened while I waited in the check-in line for my flight – I bumped into Claudia Beaujean’s boyfriend. Claudia Beaujean is the female individual poomsae competitor for the German national team and she did indeed compete at the Universiade. She usually places within the top 3-5 in internatoinal competitions. She’s extremely good and I like her poomsae! Claudia’s boyfriend’s name is Frank. Frank and I got along well and he requested to be seated next to me on the plane. We talked the whole way back to Germany and he even offered to drive me back to Aachen with Claudia (she flew back on the same day, but a different flight), which means I didn’t have to waste money on a German train! We all ended up exchanging numbers, which has now resulted in us hanging out and training together sometimes. It’s great training with Claudia and I’m definitely learning A LOT from her about poomsae. I hope I can remember it all when I go back to the US.

Here are some pictures from the team photo opt. They were taken on Bobby Ren’s camera. Bobby was a member of the pairs poomsae team for the Universiade and he is also an instructor for the MIT Sport Taekwondo team.

The girls, both sparring and poomsae. Unfortuantely, Carissa and Karolina (two other poomsae girls) are missing.

The guys, both sparring and poomsae

Everyone – including coaches, president, team manager, and doctor

Poomsae people, including the poomsae (and sparring) coach, Master Chuang

Poomsae members trying to sync

If you want to see the rest of the pictures I took of the Universiade, here is a link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016877&id=1233870200&l=14967ab8c5

Unfortunately, my camera isn’t the best and I don’t have great photo taking skills so I don’t think my pictures effectively capture the Universiade experience.