Sophia Can’t Love us More Than Her Hometown
I hope you like that the title is a Morgan Wallen reference!
To begin my day, Kasie and I took the tram to Starbucks. I got a Cool Lime Refresher and a ham and cheese croissant. I had to get a Cool Lime Refresher because they discontinued it in the U.S. 6 years ago, and it was my absolute favorite thing ever. Don’t worry, I’ve only had 3 since I’ve been here.
Today, we traveled to Utrecht, Sophia’s hometown. She said we were the first group she had taken to her hometown, so that was really cool. After taking the metro and a tram, we arrived. Then, we walked to Aurea Imaging. There, we listened to a presentation on precision agriculture and farming. However, prior to the presentation, I took notice of the building we were in. It was an office building for many startups. There was really cool seating areas and rooms, and the building was just nice overall. I can see how the office building attracts people to rent out the space with how nice it is. Furthermore, they had a nice gym and a buffet station. During the presentation, one of the things that I found very interesting was how the keep customers coming back. They have 2 types of clients: breeders and growers. For growers, it is harder to entice customers to come back again because they can’t see immediate results. This means they don’t know if they are benefiting from Aurea Imaging. To overcome this, they work with the growers on a 3 year cycle. This obviously ensures that they continue working with the growers year to year, but it also allows the growers to give Aurea Imaging a chance before writing them off. This is a really great way to keep business coming. They also talked about how they go from concept to consumer. A simplified version of their process is collect, analyze, model, interpret, and execute. These 5 steps take Aurea Imaging from concept to consumer. After the presentation, we had a delicious lunch. I had a turkey and cheese sandwich with a salad. For dessert, I tried a rice cake with strawberry and apricot jam. Overall, this company visit has been one of my favorite ones so far. It was a very engaging experience.
Next, Sophia took us on a tour of Utrecht. We walked through a cool tunnel that was spray painted. We stopped for gelato that Frank and Dr. Bursic so kindly bought for all of us! We also stopped at a church that was very beautiful on the inside. In addition, we got to visit a library. Overall, Utrecht was a very pretty town that I am grateful to have visited. We finished our day by taking the metro home. We are planning to give biking a try later today.