Week 22 - Martin Luther King Walk and Bouldering Competition

Again a week is over and it is time for a little report :). On Monday I went to the Martin Luther King where a lot of people demonstrated for the rights of black people. The walk was kind of unspectacular, but I met a few new people and so it was fun anyway.

On Tuesday, there was the first meeting of the International Student Organization, and we brainstormed what events we are going to have this semester. Besides that I met a few people that arrived here, they were from Finland, Sweden and Korea. On Friday we wanted to go to a poker night which was organized by a fraternity. Unfortunately, when we arrived there we just found an empty house, so we went back and had a party with a lot of Brazilians in a room at the dorm. It was a funny night, but I had to leave early because I had to get up at the next day, because I participated at a bouldering competition. For those, who do not know, bouldering is just climbing without rope to a height of max. 3-4 meters. The competition was really nice, 24 people climbed for about 2 hours and I even won in the beginners division :).

On Sunday I slept in and played soccer at the afternoon. Beside that activities I had plenty to do for my courses. I have to work continuously over the semester on a web-project for my software engineering class, and I also have a project in games development. Furthermore, there is also a bunch of assignments I still have to do until next week, but still I have enough free time and can't complain :D.

Week 21 - Start of the second semester and Halftime!

After a long traveling trip in the winter break I finally had to return to Huntington for the second semester. I had the first week of this semester now and I already have a lot of stuff to do. I think this semester I'll gonna have more work than last one. Here is my schedule of this semester:

Except from the courses there was not a lot going on this week. I went climbing and played pool a few times, but now there is really not a lot going on on the campus...

Besides that I it is now approximately halftime of my stay here in the USA, and I want to give a short summary. I arrived at the end of August here and the first weeks were really nice. I made the ice bucket challenge, found a lot of good friends, went to Nashville and did a lot of other stuff. Later I also went to Chicago and to Kings Island for day trips. At Thanksgiving I went again to Chicago and Cincinnati. Also the courses went well, I got an A on all of them! In the winter break I traveled a lot again -> I went to Houston, New Orleans, Tallahassee, Miami (where I met my parents), San Francisco (where I met Austrian friends), Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. And nevertheless I went skydiving near Las Vegas at the last day of my trip which was just awesome. And I also calculated the distance I traveled in the US: I traveled about 18600km (11560mi)!

Here an overview of the places I visited until now in the US:

Winterbreak - Las Vegas, Grand Canyon and Sky Diving (Week 20)

On the January, 6th I caught a bus from San Diego to the fabulous Las Vegas :). I left San Diego at about 9 in the morning and it took about 8 hours to get to Las Vegas. At the evening I made a first visit to the Las Vegas Strip, but I did not really stay up long because I was tired from the journey.

The next day I went again to the strip and visited a lot of casinos/hotels. It is very interesting how much the hotels invest into the buildings - they rebuilt the statue of liberty (New York New York), a pyramid (Luxor), a volcano (Mirage), parts of the antique Rome (Ceasars Palace) and Venice (Venetian). I also visited Madame Tussaud and could see a lot of prominent wax figures.

At my 3rd day in Las Vegas I made a trip to the Grand Canyon. It was about a 5-6 hours drive from Las Vegas (I made a bus tour). The first stop (after about 1 hour) was at the hoover dam - we went to the new built hoover dam bridge, where you have a nice view to the dam. After another 5 hours drive (which included a few breaks), we finally arrived at the Grand Canyon and the view was really nice. We went to two look out points and I also climbed a little bit down the Canyon to have a better view around.

My last day in Vegas was really nice. I went sky diving! I was a little bit nervous before, but it was just really awesome. I jumped off the plane at a height of about 5000 meters and was free falling about 35 seconds. I really would like to do it again sometimes! Besides from that I also went to the "Welcome to Las Vegas"-Sign and watched the volcano show of the Mirage.

Over all Las Vegas was nice, even if I traveled alone - I'll remember all the nice hotels/casinos, the Grand Canyon and of course the sky diving for a long time. Now I'm already back at Marshall for the second semester, I'll keep you updated! :)