Week 11 and 12 - Gaming Night and International Festival

The 11th week was rather quite, there was not much going on. I had the Spanish midterm, that I passed with great success :). I was also able to get an exception to take an Computer Game Development 3D-Course next semester and so I won't have to make the Computer Graphics course in Austria.

Besides the academics, there were about 160 Mexican students arriving at Marshall - they are making an English course and will stay for 5 weeks. On Thursday, I had a racquet ball game, which I also won and therefore I won the whole racquet ball championship for this semester. At the next day, we had the first INTO-party with the Mexicans which was great fun and afterwards there was a game night at the Campus Christian Center, where we played Mario Kart and learned a new card game.

In the 12th week there was more going on. I had to finish 2 projects and make a presentation about the software engineering project, but that was also going well. On Thursday we watched a comedian show - "Dakaboom" was making a comedy/singing-show that was pretty cool. At the next day after class there was a ceremony where a lot of people thought of the plane crash on December 14th, 1970 where 75 people lost their lifes, including the whole Marshall football team and some of their fans.

Afterwards, we helped to setup some stuff for the International Festival on Saturday first. We also went to the first basketball game this season, which was really nice, Marshall won. We participated in the halftime show - I represented Austria and carried the Austrian flag over the basketball court. Afterwards we went to Margarithas, a Mexican restaurant where we had a party with the Mexican students. Dancing is really important to Mexicans and you can see that they practice it a lot, because they can do it very well. I tried to learn Salsa a little bit but I think I will never be able to move like they do :).

On Saturday, I stood up pretty early to finish my poster for the International Festival. After that we had brunch and went to a tailgate party with the International Student Organization and we also went to the football game afterwards. Marshall won again and has now 10 wins and no losses! Go Herd :). We had to leave the football game earlier to be on time at the International Festival. I shared a table with the Netherlands, where I answered a lot of questions about Austria. And you won't believe it, there were more than 10 people who thought I was from AustrALia :). I think I really should buy a t-shirt "No Kangaroos in Austria" :). I also wore my Lederhose and that was really an attraction for the Americans, I was a motive in I guess more than 30 pictures. Furthermore, I also participated in the fashion show, where a lot of people represented the clothing of their contries. The festival lasted 3 hours and we went again to Magharitas and Jakes and had a really funny night.

Today (Sunday) and the whole next week, I will try to achieve as many points as possible for the Marshall Cyber Security team, where I was recruited to solve hacking problems. It was really hard today to solve some of the problems, but finally I could really help the team.

The next week is already the last week before the Thanksgiving break and I am really looking forward to the trip Chicago and Cincinnati and afterwards there are only two weeks left until the winter break - time is flying, but I am glad that the semester is almost over.

Third week - Lasertag and Mechanical Bull

In my third week in the USA I already developed a little daily routine. Now I know how everything works here. My typical day during the week looks like this: Breakfast at 9:00, then classes, then lunch at 12:00 then (on some days) again classes and at 6:30 dinner. I usually have breakfast, lunch and dinner with the same students every day. In the breaks I study, go to the Recreation Center or attend some activities on the campus.

On Tuesday, there was a mechanical bull at the university and I tried to stay as long as possible on it. I held the record at the time I did it (but I don't know if someone broke it afterwards). I managed to stay 78 seconds on the bull.

On Wednesday I played laser tag in a rather small tent. You get a vest and a gun and should try to hit the others as often as possible. I played twice and was on the second place both times (5 players play at one time).

On Saturday we watched the football game Marshall - Ohio. Marshall won the third game in a row with 44:14. It was a good game, but it lasts too long in my opinion. 3:30 for a football game is too long! After the game we had a barbecue in a park near the university and afterwards we went to a fraternity party. We arrived there at about 11:00 and they ran out of beer and other drinks, but we stayed there until the police came (at about 12:00). When this happened everyone just got away. The policemen didn't even have to come out of their cars. After we got away from there we went to a few bars and had a funny night.

Next weekend I will go to Chicago for one day. We will travel by bus (the trip is organized by the university).

Second Week - Free Climbing Fridays and First Football Game

After the trip to Nashville I had to return to the hard part of life. In this week the courses started with the real lectures and exercises. I had my first three quizzes in Spanish (that's a small kind of test, where you have to translate 20 English words), my fist assignments in Natural Language Processing and GIS and Data Systems and the Software Engineering project started. Furthermore I have to read about 80 pages for my psychology classes on Monday. Here is how my schedule looks like:

During the week I had a lot of things to do for my classes. Besides of that I often went to the Recreation Center which is very large and you can do a lot of different kind of sports there. I played racquetball very often, but you can also play volleyball, table tennis, badminton and much more. Furthermore there are two floors with many machines for muscle training and there is also a running lane inside. Until now I've never used the pool, but I really plan to go this week.

On Thursday I went the first time out in Huntington. A few Brazilians, the guys who went with me to Nashville and I went to a bar called Black Sheep. It was very funny and the beer was also good :). On the next day we went to another nice bar which had a lot of other beer brands.

Before we went out on Friday we also went to the "Free Climbing Fridays". On every Friday at the first 8 weeks you can climb at the climbing wall of the recreation center for free. It was really exhausting, but it was fun and we plan to go there again.

On Saturday the first football game took place and I was really excited to go there. The stadium of Marshall's football team, the so called "Herd", provides place for about 25.000 visitors. Unfortunately it was raining and there is no roof over the tribunes, so we all got a little bit wet. But this was no reason to be sad, the atmosphere was really great and there is always great entertainment during the breaks. Football itself is also rather interesting even if I only understand the basic rules. The only bad factor of the game was its length. It lasted about four hours!