Orientation

It's been just two days, but it feels like an eternity! I feel like so much stuff is happening every day, it would be enough to fill two or three days at home! Let's see, what happened so far, shall we ... ?

At the end of the last entry, I wrote about the car show that I was going to attend. I uploaded about a hundred and fifty photos to a facebook album about that. If you haven't noticed it, you might probably not have my contact yet. If that is the case, contact me!

On Monday, the orientation for the international students begun. From 9 to 1 we had all kinds of introductions and it was really interesting. At least most of it ^^ Some parts, like the "your away from your parents houses for the first time" didn't really appeal to me, so I just sat back, grinned and nodded. But in general, it was really interesting to get to know, what the University offers. The campus Health Care Center and the Campus Police Station are just two examples (yes, real police officers!).

After these four hours of introduction, there was a small market with like 18 booths representing different clubs or associations of the campus life. We were lured to talk to the people of the booths with a raffle. There were nice prices, but it wasn't my lucky day... never mind!

After the orientation was over for that day, I had an appointment with the head of the Computer Science Department about my individual studies. Dr. Paxton is a gracious person and he really seemed to be glad he could help. He presented to me six different possible topics for individual projects and I decided to take a closer look at four of them. He set the contacts up and soon I'm going to meet the corresponding person in charge of the projects.

The rest of the time, we had a nice chat. He told me, that he had been to Germany quite recently. He taught in Leipzig for one year (if I'm not mistaken). He also visited Hanover, because he once hosted an exchange student from Hanover. We talked a little bit about cultural differences, his and my experience (so far) and plans for the closer and the further future (ouh yeah, he said, if my individual project is really really good, it shouldn't be to hard to come back for a Ph.D. !!! :D ). He offered me to maybe join in on a tour to Yellowstone some day, to elaborate the matter (mainly the cultural difference- and experience-matter).

In the evening, I hung out with some people I literately just met a few days ago and some other people, I had never seen before. There wasn't much going on, but it was a nice calm evening anyway.

Today, Tuesday, the second part of our orientation took place. This time, it was for all of the exchange students separately - still about 50 people! After we introduced ourselves and had small enforced conversations, we heard about some more and some less important topics again. The entire orientation gave me the impression, that studying in the U.S. seems to be far more guided than it is in Germany - although I've never been to the Freshman Introduction in Hanover either ...

Everyone is really kind and helpful. Where ever you stand and walk, people come up to you and ask how you are and if they can help you. I think, slowly but surely, I'm getting used to the "thanks, fine, how are you?" whenever I see somebody. I somehow like it that way. I know, it's probably somewhat superficial, but it's still quite a nice environment, but I don't think, it could ever happen in Germany :D I mean, people had to be friendly for no reason ... tse.

Later today, I discovered the gym more thoroughly. I didn't take much time to train today, but I'm planning to do it far more regularly this semester than in Germany.

In the evening, there was a pizza party around the corner and many many of the international students came, met, ate, and talked. It was really nice; you could have a different conversation wherever you looked. I got in contact more thoroughly with some of the people I already knew and even talked to some I hadn't talked to before. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera, so no pictures of that event...

Well, I guess that's basically it for now. I'm not sure if anyone's going to read the entire article at all, but if you are one of these rare individuals, I'd like you to post a comment. ... I'm not sure, what I want you to state on specifically - maybe I'll come up with something for the next entry.

Well... me tired. Late. Needs to sleep. Bye bye!

Unintentional Flash Mop

Yesterday (Saturday), I meet with a whole bunch of the international students. We must have been like 20 to 25 or so ... It was really interesting to watch. At first, everyone stood in one circle. But as the group size grew, it reached its critical mass and disintegrated into three small circles, each with its own conversations going on.

At one point, we decided to be complete and started our march to the bus stop to go down town. The buses here have like 25 seats in total and as there were some other people in as well, some of us had to remain standing. It almost felt like home :D

Now the funny thing was, that we didn't really have any chosen leader. No one knew, where we wanted to get out or where we wanted to go in general. The only thing, everyone knew was that it was about lunch time and everybody was hungry. So when we crossed Main St, the group started moving and we exited the bus to find some place to eat on Main.

We came by some bars and restaurants and the people of Bozeman don't seem to be used to such a big group of students wandering around in the city, because everyone was looking at us. Then, we came by a place, that seemed suitable for the three or four individuals walking in front of our group. So they entered and everybody followed. But when the head of our group reached the end of the location, noticing that there were by far not enough seats and table for all of us, they exited through the back door and everyone follow again.

The look on the faces of the people sitting and eating there would have been worth a photo, but unfortunately I wasn't fast enough as the entire action took only about half a minute. It was hilarious and I really had to laugh hard. I thought, this was a really nice Flash Mop, only this one was totally unintentional, which made it even better!! Maybe we can do something like that again, another day...

We finally found a place to rest and I had a really good sandwich. I think we stayed for like one and half an hour. Afterwards, the group split up because different people wanted to do different things. I joined a group with two British people and one girl from New Zealand, which screwed my accent for the rest of the day :D MAN, these folks are hard to understand! Especially, if they talk that fast and (at least in my ears kinda) slangy :-/

Nevertheless, after some second hand stores, we reached our destination: Walmart. It was the third time I was there since I arrived and I took the chance to buy a bike. I had already thought about it for some days and I had decided to buy it, because 100$ is an ok price in my eyes and the use will definitely exceed these expenses!

Today, there's going to be some kind of a car show on Main St. So I might just grab my bike and give it a look, see what's going on there. I think that's it for now. Maybe I can manage to add some pictures ... let's see ... I really have to figure out, how to layout them correctly. This looks just horrible !!

See ya later, guys
ME