Beyond the first Frontier - 08/05/2016
To start the second part of the study tour well, we enjoyed a day without any planned activities. This was a day to accommodate to the new environment of Los Angeles. Most of us slept in a bit, to compensate for the long day of travel yesterday. However, as the breakfast was open until 10 o'clock, we were all active at a reasonable time.
The breakfast was quite satisfying, and after it some people went swimming in the hotel swimming pool and hot tub (which are really enjoyable!). Some explored the neighborhood of the hotel, and found out that the prices in the USA are much more student-friendly than the prices in Canada. There's even a store, a few blocks away, which only has articles priced 99 cents, including food! Beside this, our next supervisor, Wilfred van der Wiel, arrived at the airport so some of us went to pick him up and give him a ride to his hotel.
After some relaxing, swimming and a nice lunch, it was time to see one of the highlights of Los Angeles area, Venice Beach. The temperature is much more friendly than in Toronto and many of us wore shorts and flip-flops. The famous Venice Beach is located about 100 km away from the hotel, so we went there by car. It was really cool to see many people hanging out, doing some skating or basketballing and struggling to ride on a bicycle.
After getting our feet wet in the ocean and relaxing some more (during which one of us bought a cd with trumpet covers from some rapping dude), we went back to the hotel.
Today was a nice variation on the usual long days of travel, focussing on companies or universities and more travel. We really had time to re-energise and become ready for the next portion of interesting companies and universities.
By: Tobias Feijten