I started to realize, that I'm already about to forget names, details and faces from the last week. So I really have to write it down soon. Maybe I have to split it in multiple parts.
The week was great. The people I met and got to know were great (only six are going to Latvia. The others go for example to Finland (a lot), Estonia (quite a lot) or to Poland, Danmark, Sweden (a few)). The supervisors were great (one has been in Latvia, two weren't Germans but former/actual exchange students in Germany). But I think it is kind of boring to hear great, great, great and also not very informative. So I'll try to start at the beginning and tell a little more about the week itself, what we did and the circumstances.
Okay, I'll start at the very beginning (but I'll make it quick). To be honest, my opinion of YFU wasn't that amazed, it was more in favor to AFS. My first contact with YFU (besides the application stuff – the YFU questionnaire was a pain in the neck) was in Cologne where the selection meeting took place. It was only a single, short hour.
AFS organised a whole weekend. I got to know around twenty people. It was fun. AFS has a local bureau in Aachen. Most of the people remet afterwards (okay, to be exact most of the cool guys – there were of course some who weren't -reasonably- accepted).
I was accepted by AFS and YFU. So I had to fill in a few more questionnaries and so on. Meanwhile, I had a lot of contact to AFS students.
Hell, I wanted to make it short. What I wanted to express is that AFS was active and YFU only sent a letter or questionnaire every now and then. I had two more weekends with AFS, several activities – nothing with YFU. I acted myself and got to know a former and local YFU (&Latvia) exchange student and meet two future 06/07 students online. (okay, there was a huge deal of chance involved)
However, until March/April I would have prefered to go with AFS, due to the large number of people I know there. That has changed. With the last week in Hamburg. Damn, I'm heavily extravagated again. In fact, I wanted to tell about last week (like the first paragraphs may suggest). Okay, I'll do so the next time. And I hope I'll remember something to write about.
June 8, 2006 at 9:16 pm |
afs rocks
June 8, 2006 at 10:16 pm |
Yap, indeed. I never said they don’t. ;-)
June 13, 2006 at 4:21 pm |
I found your blog while searching for terms “Semantic” and “Latvia” :)
While it turns out the blog post was not really about Semantic Web in Latvia, I also noticed mention of GeoURL and other interesting things, hence decided to comment.
If talking about semantics and GeoURLs, then you should take look at FOAF Map – it allows to “put people on the map” by accessing their FOAF (semantic) profiles and extracting their location informatio from them.
And if you want to get richer metadata from the WordPress blog, take a look at WordPress SIOC RDF plugin that is part of the larger SIOC initiative.
June 13, 2006 at 8:17 pm |
Both interesting. I’ve got already a foaf file although I should expand it, as the information given there are very incomplete. Unfortunately I’d like to extract my SIOC metadata from this blog at wordpress.com where I can’t run plugins. Mayhap I’ll find a solution.
October 3, 2008 at 12:21 pm |
I’m in Denmark with YFU now … and I don’t see nothing un-OK with them ..