Today we traveled to the engineering college in central Amsterdam and to the Airplane company of KLM at Schipol Airport. The engineering college was extremely informative because of how it was similar to the University of Pittsburgh. For example, the main University building that we explored was extremely similar to the Posvar building at Pitt. Posvar hall has extremely large lecture halls, brick ceilings, and floors. The engineering facilities at the VU campus also had similar features. The fact that I was able to draw so many parallels from the Amsterdam University to Pitt allowed me to envision myself as an overseas student. It was also extremely interesting to see at Vrije University the Dutch equivalent of a Pitt pathfinder on our tour. She was extremely helpful in guiding us throughout VU university and explaining each aspect of the engineering school. On our break, we also got to experience local food places around their campus for some lunch. Overall, I thought that the visit to VU university was extremely informative and insightful.

The second part of our day saw us visiting the Schiphol Airport for a tour of their aircraft facilities. The first part of the tour saw us visit the aircraft hangar with our tour guide Donald. This for me has been my favorite part of our group visits so far. We were able to walk around and even inside large 747 aircraft passenger and cargo planes. Most of these planes were part of the KML airline fleet. In the hanger Donald explained the maintenance routine that the aircrafts undergo every day. This includes a various number of checks and routines that field mechanics and engineers go through when an aircraft comes in for repair. Each aircraft generally only has 24 hours for pre-checks to determine if it is ready for commercial air travel, and one week for KML to do repairs. It was extremely helpful as an aspiring engineer to tour the maintenance hangar because it allowed me to see mechanical engineers at work. It was also extremely easy to see the idea of concept to customer in this part of the airport. Donald explained how every single piece of equipment in their hangar has tags and records and most do not come from the same place. For example, he explained how all of their cleaning solutions and chemicals each have labels that employees must scan before use. Donald also then explained how each bottle of disinfectant came from different companies. This shows how many different companies provide products to KML and other airlines to provide the concept of an aircraft to the consumer.

During our tour of the airport, we also got to see the engine testing center of Schiphol. This was also extremely interesting to me as an aspiring engineer because I was able to see how mechanical engineers perform tests on airplane engines on a day-to-day basis.

Finally, we ended our day with the group dinner and Dutch talk show. The talk show specifically I am sure was the highlight of the day. To say that not many points were made during this show would be an extreme understatement. The overall thoughts and messages were good however, the people that spoke and shared their opinions gave little to no facts or examples back their claims. There main message was to encourage sustainability and promote a healthy lifestyle for the planet, which is a noble goal. However, their plan to accomplish this from what I gathered involved completely abandoning the concept of capitalism and changing society as we know it. From a market standpoint and reality standpoint this is just not possible. Ultimately, the people on the talk shows lack of awareness to reality and basic business knowledge made for an entertaining end to the day.