Explorations
Digging for Energy in Distant Lands
The Blue Mosque in InstanbulPhoto by Suzan Erem
Summer 2004
Writer and researcher Suzan Erem traveled through Turkey this summer to get reacquainted with the country where her father was born. Along the way, she caught up with Penn State graduate student Esra Eren, a young Turk who is exploring ways to meet the energy needs of her rapidly modernizing country. Eren, a student in the energy and geo-environmental engineering department, returned to Turkey to collect research samples for her master's thesis. In these dispatches from Turkey, Erem writes of a country struggling to keep pace with the European Union. She also tells the story of Eren's life as an international student—adjusting to a large American university, exploring the world of research, and experiencing the joy of returning home for a visit with friends and family.