First week - Icebucket Challenge, classes and recreation center

Short summary: My first week here was awesome :). I've made a lot of new friends and did a lot of things with them. And I don't forget the serious things: classes started this week as well.

Now I will give more details. On Thursday I was nominated to the ALSIcebucketChallenge, so I obviously accepted the challenge (at Friday). It wasn't as cold as expected, but it was really fun. Here is the video:

On the evening we met with a few international students and some Americans at a dorm suite to play some video games and chat a little bit.
The next day, we played disc golf at a state park near to the university. The goal in this game is to throw the disc to the basket with as little tries as possible.

On Sunday, we went to a cinema on Pullman Square and watched "The Guardians of the Galaxy". Finally the serious part of life also has to come, so on Monday the classes started. I had Spanish and Software Engineering on the first day. I think Spanish will be very hard, because we have quizzes every week and there will be a lot of vocabulary to learn. Software Engineering on the other hand will be a cool course - we will design a little "social network" for researchers, so that they can specify their activities and ask questions to the community. The third course I had on Monday was Psychology. I think this course is going to be very boring. The teacher is saying something, and then she has to wait because everyone wants to write it down (me included :D).

But besides studying there is also the time to do some other activities. I was at the recreation center a few times. It is really huge. You can do a great variation of sports there. From muscle training to racquetball (nearly the same as squash) to swimming and every kind of ball sports. There are 5 courts, where you can play basketball or badminton, 3 racquetball courts and two floors with muscle training machines. Furthermore, there is a running track inside the recreation center, which is really useful because outside even in the evening it is very hot and there is a high humidity.

Outdoor cinema on Tuesday (the new Godzilla movie - I wouldn't recommend it :D):

And here a few more photos:

I'll write the next post probably on Monday (Labor Day). We are planning to spend the weekend in Nashville, but it is not 100 percent sure. We have to rent a car, and maybe we must have an American driver license. But I'm looking forward to have an awesome time in NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE!!

Successful arrival - First Day at Marshall

I'm at Marshall University!! :) Yesterday (08/20/2014) I arrived at about 11pm at Charleston Yeager Airport. A airport pickup service from the university took me first to Walmart, where I bought some food for the first days, bed lines and blankets. It's true, in America is everything bigger than in other countries. Even if this was a smaller Walmart, it was bigger than every market I have ever seen in Austria.

After buying all the stuff, I was taken to the "Twin Towers West" dormitory directly at the campus. I had to fill out some forms and then I got to my room.

In the first picture on the left side, you can see my roommate, Ryousuke Amano. He's a cool and nice Japanese guy and I'm glad to live in a room with a normal person ;). The room itself is very small, I think you can see it on the picture. There are only two beds, two desks and two closets in it, not very comfortable. The shower and the rest rooms are on the corridor. There is no hot water, so a shower is always refreshing :).

Today I got up at about 9am and after breakfast Ryousuke and I went out to see the university. It's a very old style university. The main building was built in the 19th century, but it's very beautiful. The thing I like most is that there are many places to chill out and that it's a very green university (much trees, it's a little bit like a park).

After exploring the university and doing some organizational stuff at the international office, Ryousuke and I went to the huntington downtown to have lunch. The city is very small and there are very less shops and restaurants. Only at one place, the Pullman Square, you can do more things. There are sometimes free concerts, there's a cinema and many restaurants. We had lunch in a fast food restaurant called Five Guys. I took a burger and fries. The burger was really good, but I couldn't eat the fries, because there was so much salt on it. I hope this is not common in the US, but I think so.

I will upload more pictures soon. The next post will follow next week. Bye :)