USA Exchange 2009: 23.04.2009

Chicago

Last weekend we (our apartment) made our first longer trip. We started at Friday midday to Chicago and stayed in Holiday Inn for two nights. We arrived at Friday evening, so we just went to a club called ‘Soundbar’ after we checked in. It was a cool club. At Saturday we did sight seeing. We went on top of the Sears Tower (currently, the Sears Tower is the tallest skyscraper in the United States) the Buckingham Fountain (you will know this from Al Bundy), the Navy Pier and the Millenium Park.  At Sunday morning we ate a great pizza in Little Italy, before we drove back home.  It was a short but awesome trip.

typical american car

chicago at night

Holiday Inn Lobby in the 15th floor

our room

first night in chicago

hmmmm american breakfast

the biggest building in the USA

Sears Tower

us on the Skydeck in the 99th floor

view from the skydeck

the one and only Blues Brothers

the Buckingham Fountain (known from Al Bundy)

Star Wars Battle in the Park (crazy americans)

Navy Pear

trying to touch his "Airness"

in front of the United Center Home of the Chicago Bulls

Free Time Activity

In Flint we have a huge range of free time activity. There are a lot of „Clubs“ for the students. So if you want to do something else then studying you can register in a club. For example there is a „Scuba club“, „Racing Club“, “Fencing Club“, „Internationals Club“ etc.. I dicide to join the „Cliffhangers Club“ (climbing).

On last Monday I climbed for the first time in a climbing hall in Pontiac (1 hour away from Flint). We got an intro from an employee of the climbing area. After thet we could try it on it’s own. It was so much fun!

Planet Rock in Pontiac

(f.l.t.r. Nico, Manu, me)

me at the wall

Another Basketball game

Last Monday a few guys and me went spontaneously to another NBA game to Detroit. Although there weren’t that much points like at the game in NY it was exciting as well. The game was decided in the last 30 seconds and the Bulls won 91:88.

The Opening

The Cheerleaders

Final Score

Class schedule

Here are some information what I’m studing during my academic time in the US. First Nico and I took „Intro to Virtual Reality“, „Written and Oral Communication“ and „E-Commerce“. After the first class in E-Comerce (Monday evening from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.) we decided to drop that course and take another one.

We dropped the class cause we haven't the business background to pass that course. So we decided to choose a new one „System Programming Concepts“.

Our car

Here is a picture from our ride. We already bought it on the first week in Flint, but the weather was too bad to make some pictures earlier. It's a Mercury Villager (never heard that brand before). Actually the car belongs to our apartment and Cako, another guy from Germany.

(f.l.t.r. Frieder, Manu, Nico, Cako, me)

1st day in our new home

Campus Village is a residential home for Kettering students. I live in a apartment with Manu, Nico, Frieder. After our arriving at Friday, we brought Hagen to the Bishop Airport in Flint and said good-bye to him. Because we needed some food and other stuff for our new home we went to WallMart for shopping the whole afternoon.  At the evening we invited all the Germans and some Americans to our apartment. It was really great and we did party all night long. This was a really awesome first day in our new home and now everybody knows, where the party-apartment in Campus Village is!