Week 25 and 26 - Closed University, Basketball-Game and Run in the snow

The 25th week was pretty quite - therefore I did not write an own blog post for that week and will combine it with the current week. At the first week I went to a boxing class on Wednesday, which was really interesting - we learned some basic techniques and also tried it at a living object (who obviously held pads that we used for practicing punching). Later that day we went out for 25 cent pitcher night at Jake's. On Friday a pretty big group of international students met at the gym and we played a lot of badminton, racquetball and walleyball. The next day I went to a basketball-game of the Herd. The stadium was pretty full as Marshall played against Western Kentucky University which is really close and therefore the atmosphere in the stadium was really nice. I also went climbing that day after a break of about 1 and a half weeks - and my elbow did not hurt anymore, so I was pretty happy. We also went out at night. We went to Jake and as it was Valentine's Day, we all put some hearts on our clothes as a party gag. On Sunday I just had to do a lot of work for my courses and worked the whole day on assignments and projects.

The 26th week was really influenced by a lot of snow. It snowed the whole night from Sunday to Monday and at the morning there were about 15cm (6 inches) snow lying on the ground. As Americans don't have winter tires, I can somehow understand that it is a risk to drive under that conditions. The university decided to close for Monday and Tuesday, so there were no classes at these days. We obviously had to find something to do at that time :). So, to celebrate the great amount of snow, we decided to run around the campus only wearing swimming wear. According to Google weather, it was -12°C (10°F), but in my opinion it did not feel that cold. We ran a little bit more than 1 kilometer (about 0.8 miles) - our route was from the gym to the administration building (Old Main) and back on the 5th avenue. The run itself was nice, but there was a crazy guy, who tried to tackle us in the snow, as you would image someone would do it in the NFL :). He got Matheus immediately after we left the gym and he also tackled me in the snow just before we came back to the gym. It was cold, but the whirl pool in the rec center let us warm up quickly - I'd do that again :D. We also found our way on twitter (video), where someone just recorded us from their dorm and even the town of Huntington posted a meme about our run.

I also went climbing at the same day - and unfortunately my elbow hurt a little bit again. I just hope that it get's better again... As classes were canceled for Tuesday, we decided to pre-celebrate the birthday of an American friend. We had a few beers at a dorm room and then went outside to enjoy the snow :). On Tuesday I first worked on a few assignment and at night I had my first racquetball game of this season's tournament. I won with 2:0 and I'll have my next game next week. Afterwards we had the real birthday-party at a flat a few minutes away from the campus. Despite the fact that the people in West Virginia don't celebrate "Fasching" (which is something close to Mardi Gras or Carnival), we decided to dress up for that evening - I wore my Lederhose. We played card games and it was a really funny night.

On Wednesday I had my only two classes for this week, because the university decided to cancel classes on Thursday and Friday too. The reason was that the weather was too cold (-26°C or -15°F, respectively) - Americans are sometimes just big wimps ;). My schedule for this week looked like this:

Besides all that, this weekend (beginning with the 20th of February) 7 international students and I will travel to Washington, D.C for a long weekend from Friday to Sunday. We'll rent cars and drive to D.C. and hopefully have a good time there :).

Week 13 - Road to Thanksgiving Break and Hunger Games Movie

I want to give you a short update before the thanksgiving break next week. I will go to Chicago and Cincinnati with two other international students. This week I registered for the courses for the next term and I am glad that I got all the courses that I wanted on the time I wanted. I registered for Spanish II, Game Development II: 3D, Software Engineering II, Cyber Security and Digital Image Processing. I hope the courses will be interesting and that it is not too much to do :).

This Tuesday I had only one class and therefore I could sleep a little bit longer than usual. And when I looked outside the window there was the first snow I saw in the USA. For me it was no big deal, but there were a few Mexicans which saw snow the first time and it was really exciting for them. After the only class that day we watched the second basketball game of Marshall against another team of West Virginia. It was in my opinion more interesting than the first one and Marshall won again. On Wednesday after dinner I went climbing again and now I am almost climbed one mile high -> this is a contest: when you climbed 171 times up the wall it will be one mile (1.6 kilometers). Only 2 people got it, and I hope I will be the third one (I'll also get a little price then). On the next day I had a presentation of my a poster I created for my GIS-course, and I am fully satisfied how it went. In the evening I played racquet ball against my SWE professor again and watched the first part of "The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay". After that nice movie we also went to Blacksheep and had a funny night. Today (Friday) I packed all my stuff and hope that the Thanksgiving week will be nice. We will travel to Chicago over night by train and it will take somewhat longer than 12 hours!

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.