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: