Week 9 - Run to Ohio and Kings Island

The 9th week in Huntington was a really nice one (besides a midterm exam on Tuesday). I went climbing twice and climbed my first 5.10a route which is a really huge challenge for me. On Tuesday a few other international students and I also watched a free movie in the cinema on Pullman Square. "Gone Girl" was a really good movie for all who like thriller movies and I really loved it. On Wednesday I mostly had to work on a project I had to finish and on Friday I went on a run to Ohio - it sounds far away, but if you run over the Ohio River bridge you are already in Ohio - it was about 8 to 9 kilometers (5 miles) and I had a really nice view from the bridge and the other side of the river.

Certainly the coolest day of the week was Saturday. We went on a trip to the attractions park "Kings Island" which is in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was a bus trip of about 3 hours and the best thing was that it was free (organized from the Campus Activities Board). We had several rides on different kinds of roller coasters and also went to a drop tower which was about 100 km/h fast. There were also several Halloween attractions, like haunted houses or a haunted corn field which were fun, but they weren't really scary.

View from the Ohio River Bridge and the other side of the Ohio River, respectively:

Kings Island:

Week 8 - Applebutter Fest and Annoying Units

It has been about 2 month now that I am here. The first midterm exams has successfully passed but there are more coming in the following weeks. I also have to do projects in 2 of my courses and I have to write a paper in my Natural Language Processing course. So right now there is a lot of stuff to do.

Besides that I had a rather quiet week, I went climbing a few times and managed to climb the first 5.9 route, so I am happy with my progress :). On Friday, we went Crate Stacking (Bierkisten-Klettern). It was fun - I managed to staple 14 crates until I fell). Furthermore, on Saturday we attended a Applebutter Festival in Barboursville (about 30 minutes by car away from the university). As the name says, the festival is about applebutter, which is just mashed apples with several ingredients, like for example cinnamon. We also carved some pumpkins, played a few games and they also had very good food and deserts (but compared to the dining hall, where I usually eat, this is not a great challenge).

I also want to write about the units Americans use. Here a quick overview of all (for Europeans) weird units:

Measure	Unit in Austria/Europe	Unit in America	Conversion
Temperature	Celsius (°C)	Fahrenheit (°F)	Celsius = (Fahrenheit - 32) / 1.8
Length	kilometer meter centimeter	miles foot inch	1 mile = 1.60934 kilometers 1 foot = 0.3048 meters 1 inch = 2.54 centimeters
Mass	kilogram	pound	1 pound = 0.453592 kilograms
Volume	(milli)liter	ounces gallons	1 US oz = 29.5735 milliliters 1 US gal = 3.78541 liters
Fuel Consumption	Liters/100km	Miles per Gallon	20 MPG = 11.7607 l/km

That can be sometimes really weird when you hear someone talking about ounces and pounds or Fahrenheit. For example one beer with about 350ml is here labeled as 12oz. And by the way, America is except from Lebanon the only country which has Fahrenheit instead of Celsius.


Crate Stacking:

Week 7 - Homecoming and Written Driver License Test

This week was Homecoming Week in Marshall. There was a lot going on on the campus during the week and of course at the game day. For all of you, who don't know what "Homecoming" is (probably the majority of the readers), Homecoming is just a randomly picked football game in the season, where a lot of PR is being made and the whole week before there are events (mostly to make money :)). On each day of the week there was a specific topic for dressing and some students really followed these guidelines. We should go to class with pajamas, dress up as people in the 90s, super heroes or villains.

On Saturday there was the Homecoming Parade. I participated in the group of the International Student Organization. We all should wear traditional clothes from our countries and I also wore my Lederhose. We all got a pack of candies and threw it to some kids, who stood at the side of the streets. Afterwards, we had a little tailgate with the ISO. A tailgate is just eating something before the football game (we got some pizza, chips and beer), a lot of Americans also have barbecue at their tailgates. The game started at noon and Marshall won with 49:24!

Other activities this week:

On Sunday I played for the ISO-Team in a dodge-ball tournament. Dodge-ball is comparable with the Austrian "Völkerball", with a few extra rules. It was fun, even when we lost every game.

I also made the written driver license test in the local DMV. In the USA you can get your driver license really cheap and fast. I only had to pay 5 bucks to take the written test. The test itself was not very difficult, but I had to study for it because there are some custom regulations for West Virginia such as laws for alcohol, punishments and other variations. So now in about 30 days I can do the driving test and the I will hopefully get my license. I got a pre-drivers license, so now I would be able to practice but I would need a car and someone with a driver license would have to accompany me.

On Thursday we also went to a "Hispanic Night" where they had a lot of good food from South American countries. And the best thing was that I won a tablet - which they gave to a random attendee. Afterwards we also went to Jake's and had a few beer.

Trip to Chicago

This weekend about 40 other students and I went on a trip to Chicago which was organized by the university. We departed on Friday at about 9:15pm from the university and arrived at about 7:45am, so the bus trip of about 730 kilometers (450 miles) took about 11.5 hours (because of the time difference). However, I slept better than expected during the trip.

After we arrived we first went to a small cafe and had breakfast. Afterwards, from 9 to 12, we visited the Shed Aquarium. It's a very big aquarium and they had of course a lot kind of fish, jelly fish, whales, dolphins and much more.

At 12 we went through the city to a restaurant called Giodarno's, which is famous for its unique pizzas. On our walk we could make a few pictures of the skyline, the fountain and the Millennium Park.

After lunch we first visited the Chicago Cloud Gate and afterwards we went to the Navy Pier, where we made a boat tour through the rivers of Chicago.

We planned to go to the Willis Tower afterwards because on the sky deck you would have a great view over Chicago. After we walked there (this took about 1 hour), they told us that we would have to wait 2 hours before we could go up, so we decided to just go to the center of the city and have dinner (we didn't want to go a lot around because it was really cold and no one of us was really prepared for this - about 4°C, 39°F respectively). We had dinner at Cinos and stayed there until about 9pm. Afterwards we walked back to the Navy Pier and watched a small part of a firework which was lighted in the middle of the city over the river. At about 10pm we came back to the bus and drove back over the night.