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 4 - First Exam and the Food in the Dining Hall

Another week has passed. I just had my first real exam (before I had several quizzes) 2 hours ago in psychology - it was way easier than expected and I really studied too much for it even when I did not that much :). Apart from this this week had not that great highlights. I really looked forward to the trip to Chicago. We would have departed at Friday at 9pm, but on about 7pm we got an email that the bus has broken down and that the trip was canceled. It will now take place in two weeks on the weekend. So I hope that everything works fine then.

The activities during this week which i can remember now: On Thursday we watched "The amazing spiderman" and played pool afterwards, on Friday we went out to a bar called "Jake's", a small sports bar. The next day we borrowed some bikes from the Recreation Center of the university (I had to run, because they had only 3 bikes at this time) and went to a nearby park and spent the day there. We played "Ultimate Frisbee", a real American game which is like football only with a frisbee. The goal is to reach the end zone of the other team and the player who holds the frisbee is not allowed to move. It was harder and more exhausting than expected. On the evening some Brazilians and other international students went out again to another club in the city and I tried to imitate some Brazilian dance moves :D. On Sunday I had a tennis match and by the way I will learn how to climb next week. I signed up for a climbing lesson, in which we learn how to secure each other and also the basic techniques.

Today (Monday) I went on a run to the Ohio River. Here a few pictures:

I also want to give you some information about the food they offer on the dining hall of the university. The good news I will not die of hunger :), I have an unlimited meal plan which means I could eat 900 times a month!!! There are two dining halls on the campus, one is directly in my dormitory, but I usually go to the other one which is only a few hundred meters away because the qualitiy of the food is there usually better. The food itself is sometimes really American.

Breakfast:
At breakfast most Americans eat scrambled eggs, bacon and some kind of grilled meat. Other options are bagels or toast bread with some kind of spread, cereals, waffles, fruits (pineapple, melons and sometimes strawberries), some kind of cakes or sandwiches. I usually eat a bagel with spread, cereals or occasionally waffles, cakes or fruits.

Lunch and Dinner:
At lunch and dinner they offer almost the same food. There are various options which differ each day. But they have pizza, burger, hot dogs and fries every time, so it is very easy to eat unhealthy. But that does not mean that you have to take this every day, you also have the option to eat salads, fruits and self made sandwiches which are much healthier. Almost every day there is also a international dish (mostly asian or pasta) and one dish which changes every day. For desert they have brownies, muffins and pudding. You can have a lot of different drinks too, you have options from coke, fanta, powerade to orange and apple juice. I really cannot understand why some Americans drink coke at breakfast and put so much ice in their drinks.

The quality of the food really varies a lot. Some of the dishes are really good whereas others sometimes taste like nothing. On weekends there isn't the possibility to have breakfast, instead you can have brunch which will be offered from 11:00 to 2:00.

I hope I will not grow the American size :).