Winterbreak - Houston (Week 17)

For the first stop of our traveling trip we went to Houston for 3 full days. We arrived on the 13th at around 1pm at the airport and caught a Uber ride to hostel we stayed. It was a nice small hostel in a good location, we could walk to the Museum District and also to Downtown.

Our hostel:

On the first day, we visited the Museum District (there are really a lot museums - more than we could ever visit - also a lot of weird ones (Fire Museum, Wheater Museum, Museum of Print History :), etc.) - We decided to visit the Museum of Fine Arts first, as we read in several sources that it is one of the best museums in Houston.

Afterwards, we went to the Hermann Park, which is really close to the Museum District - It was a really nice park, there was also a little monument and a little lake where you could rent little boats.

We met a pretty nice guy (Denny) from Boston who was also traveling at the hostel and went with him to a bar close to the hostel (Griff's) and had a few pitchers of beer - real American style. Afterwards we went to another bar where they had really cheap drinks.

At our second day, we wanted to go the Holocaust Museum first - on our way there, we made an unintentionally long tour through the suburbs of Houston - but finally we got there and then found out that it wasn't open. We decided to go to downtown and go to the JP Morgan tower - and it was also closed as it was Sunday :(. But nevertheless we could see the city center and visited the Discovery Green Park. After that we went to the Holocaust Museum again, that was open then (I could take no pictures, because of copyright issues). At night we went out again to Grif's and had a delicious burger.

At our last full day (at Tuesday we already departed at 8:00am) we first went to a huge Mall, called The Galleria and to "The Waterwall", an attraction right next to it. Afterwards, we went to downtown, where we went to the underground tunnels of Houston. There is a really big tunnel-system under the city, which connects skyscrapers, so that the employees don't have to walk on the streets - there are also some shops inside (that was not really that interesting). We also visited the City Hall and the best thing of this day was the JPMorgan Chase Tower. It is the highest tower (about 305m) of Houston and we had a great view over Houston and its suburbs.

Overall Houston is a nice city, but there is not really a lot to do in downtown - you really should have a car here, because there were several attractions we could not do because they were 1 hour by car (and 2-3 hours by public transport) away (such as the Space Center and the Jacqinto Monument). I also expected a little more Texas, but I guess you have to go to more rural areas to see that. Nevertheless, the bars were nice and we met a lot of new people from a lot of different countries at the hostel. Next: NEW ORLEANS :D

Week 16 - Finals and Semester Ending

The first semester is over :) :D !!! I have completed all final exams successfully (In my opinion the exams here at Marshall are a lot easier than the final exams in Austria - I had one exam that I finished in less than 15 minutes :)). I don't know all of my grades yet, but I think it should be an A in all of my courses. And now I am really happy that the semester is over and hopefully (probably) I will have an awesome winter break.

Besides studying for the finals and taking them, on Sunday we made a photo-session at Old-Main (the administration building from Marshall) for a few nice pictures to keep memories of this nice time here.

Other pictures from the campus:

On Tuesday we had dinner at Fat Patty's, a restaurant/bar near the university, and the burger was really tasty. I also had an interesting beer with blueberries in it :).

On Thursday we finally had our semester ending party. We went to an Mexican restaurant called blacksheep and afterwards to Jake's.

Today (Friday) I slept long and packed until now for the following month of traveling. I'm really excited - my flight will depart at 7:45. :)

Week 15 - Dead Week and 1 Mile Climb

This week was the last week with classes for this semester (it's called dead week here). That means I'm almost finished with my first semester and I've already had 2 of my final exams on Friday, but at Marshall (and I think generally in the USA) the grading system is a lot different than in Austria. The finals I wrote on Friday only counted 10 percent to my overall grade! The other part of the grade comes from midterm exams, projects, assignments and quizzes throughout the semester, so it's a lot less severe if you would perform badly on the final. The finals I took on Friday were Spanish and Software Engineering. I'll get an A in Spanish and I also have a good feeling for the SWE exam.

What I did besides studying: Last weekend we had the last party with the Mexicans in Margheritas - they left on Saturday. On Sunday I also went for a run outside - the weather here in Huntington is a little bit unpredictable - it had about 15°C (59°F) and it was sunny, so I had to take the chance, because right now it has always at most 7-10°C (45-50°F). On Tuesday night, we went to "Herd Holiday", a Christmas event on campus. We could make the typical S'mores (a melted marshmallow between chocolate and crackers), drank hot chocolate and we made a picture with Marco, the mascot of Marshall.

On Wednesday and on Friday I went climbing with Marjolein and on Friday I could complete "the mile". There is a contest: if you climb up the wall (which is about 9.5 meters (31 feet) high) 171 times then you climbed one mile (1.6 kilometers). I am the third one overall, who completed the mile and the first one who is not a staff member of the Rec Center. On the next day besides studying for the finals we also went to a local church where a mini golf course was built. It was pretty calm because there was a football game at the same time - and Marshall is now conference champion!

Next week I have 3 finals and one project presentation and on Friday I will start traveling around during the winter break. We will go to Houston, New Orleans, Tallahassee, Miami (where I will meet my parents for 3 days), San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas and Grand Canyon.