Adios Amigos

All of us wanted to gain some abroad experience by doing such a project. In the upcoming blog we are going to tell you a little bit about the phases of our preparation for our tip to Colombia.

The first phase existed of choosing a project. We had several meetings with a teacher, Henk Jan Verhagen, who is responsible for the projects. He had a list with a few projects which we could choose from. For example Indonesia, harbour design, Cuba, design of a retaining wall, and our own project in Colombia about the floodings in the city Cartagena. After deciding, Verhagen got us in touch with our professor in Cartagena, Dalia Moreno. She also gave us a further description of the project.

The follow up in this stage of the project was to search for sponsoring. After a lot of calling, mailing, speaking to companies, three companies decided to sponsor us. We contacted one of the groups that went to Cartagena for a similar research project. Through them we are now in touch with Juan. He grew up in Cartagena and now lives in The Hague. Since this is very close to Delft we decided to meet. At the moment he is helping us find an accommodation, but he has lots of other information that is relevant for us. Not unimportant, also some good restaurants and tips for nice weekend in Colombia. The final things we still have to do is draw up a research proposal.

At the moment we are “locked up” in one of the rooms in Civil Engineering to make the final adjustments on the research proposal. After this we are going to have a nice BBQ and drink some beers to celebrate that the preparations are done. Only packing our bags and getting to the airport is what’s left to do. The following post will come from Colombia.