ODTÜ

I thought it about time I talk a bit about the campus.

Given that Drexel is in the city, and METU is 20 minutes outside of one, I expected the campuses to be very different. However, I still can't get over just how much space is here. There's just to much space to care for it all.


Stray cats invade everything and they're far bolder than the Philly squirrels. Sometimes, the cats are chased away by students, sometimes they're chased away by some of the stray dogs that inhabit METU.


There are statues scattered throughout campus, and at times it seems random. For instance, these busts on pedestals (above). They are placed randomly in a green space without any accompanying landscaping. Some busts have fallen off their pedestal completely. I think they represent famous scientists and engineers (I saw Einstein the other day).


By a nice cafeteria's outdoor seating area, I found this statue of Ataturk sitting at a table. At crossings of roadways within METU, they seem to put up larger statues such as this one (bottom left).





The academic buildings have been done very nicely. None of them are amazing to look at alone (just like Drexel buildings), but the landscaping around them is nice. For instance, one of the computer engineering buildings (above). And then there's this scene in front of the Architecture Department, with water complete with fish:


The photo on the bottom shows the tallest building on campus, and it houses generic Engineering department functions. They put the wireless transmitter (or whatever) on top of it.

To get from the dorms to the classes, there's a rather large/long walkway called the "Ass Freezer" (translated from Turkish). It takes you past one of the sports complexes, as well as the stadium.


My host student tells me that some chemical engineering students created some compound to write 'Devrim' across the stadium seats. The word mean 'Revolution' and due to the features of the special compound, it cannot be cleaned off or painted over.

At night before classes started, the campus was dead silent, to the point that I could hear my blood pounding in my ears each night. Now, the night is full of people shouting in Turkish and music blasting.

The first thing I look for in a dorm room is the view and this one does not disappoint.

The evergreen trees outside my window
Some apartments on the left and right edges, but the rest is just evergreen trees and hills. It makes METU seem really isolated. As an added bonus, my dorm room is really nice, too. The building is fairly new and I share it with two other girls (one Turkish, one Californian).


EBI (my building) from the outside.


My dorm room from the doorway

My nook of the room

The view from my desk
We have a refrigerator, which we use to store our fruit and yogurt (our basic breakfast meal and lunch snack). I'm not really sure what I was expecting, but resources here are pretty much the same as Drexel (minus a wireless internet connection and air conditioning).


METU's campus functions as its own miniature city. They say there's about 20,000 students at METU and most of them have dorm housing. There's an in-campus grocery store, mini-mall, restaurants, and even a hospital.