life

Here comes a little update from Isla Vista. After Vegas not a lot happened over here. I sleep in every day as long as I want and usually go for a run after I wake up. You would probably be suprised how much I eat over here, because it is not much to be honest. A bagle or cornflakes in the morning and a dinner around 5 or so and that is pretty much it. I haven’t had Fast Food since the first day I came here when we went to Wendy’s in the UCen. Here are little updates:

- When we came back from class last week, we saw our first skunk! It was running away from us probably scared that I would spray it ;)

- It maybe does not look like it, but I am actually doing something for school too! We have lots of reading assignments. It is probably like 2000 pages just for this quarter. We have little quizzes in our “Understanding the numbers” class too. I also applied for a job at the UCSB called “Landscaping and Grounds”. I havent heard from them yet though. I might have to stop by at their office!

- Just to get you guys jealous I marked my running route on google maps:

- We took Bills Bus downtown on Thursday again and went clubbing to a place called tonic. Mira from South Korea and Elodie from France were with us this time. Poor Mira wasn’t used to loud music though. I felt bad for her. The club was awesome and I only spent 10 bucks for bills bus and 3 for my coat in the club. I guess this is a new record for me. On our way back I lost everybody of my friends. A guy called Lee showed me the way to Bills Bus and I met some crazy Egyptian named Hans (I guess he was kidding) who tried to talk german. I finally got onto the next bus..

- On Wednesdays we have a class called “Global Economics”. I love this class because our professor Mr.V teaches in a very entertaining way so that everybody is paying close attention. He connects political and historical aspects to todays economy! Its like an interesting current events class mixed with US-History, political science and global economics, Just awesome!

- Yesterday bass was shaking me out of my bed. After some Orangejuice I tried to find out what the heck was going on. See for yourself:

Update: When I was running my usual route a couple of hours ago I was running up the Campus Point when I saw some Soldiers form the Army with a hummer up there doing some training. They also had M16 machine guns with them. I guess I was too intimidated to ask them what they were doing up at the Lagoon ;)

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Wow, .. this is pretty much everything I can say about our 3 days in Las Vegas. It all started on a rainy Friday morning. Due to, well … let’s just say “girls and being on time”, we missed our bus to go to Santa Barbara Airport to pick our car up. After we eventually got their we took an SUV instead of a regular car because we had to pick up friends of Christoph in Riverside. So we took that 3 hour ride to Riverside and went to “In ‘n Out Burger” for lunch. And I have to say that this place could not live up to its reputation. The Burger was okay, but the fries? But hey, .. this is just more like an opinion. After our stomachs were satisfied we took on that long road to Las Vegas. Miles and miles of a totally straightened out highway were you were only allowed to go 80 mph.

After an additional 4 hour ride we saw light at the end of the tunnel. All of a sudden there was Las Vegas glowing in the desert. After a quick ride over Las Vegas Boulevard we drove to the Palms where Andre, Adnan, Christoph and Philip were already waiting for us. Because of typical financial situations of university students we were sharing a room which was supposed to be for 2 instead of 5. After we got ready we killed that 2 liter vodka bottle in about 30 minutes, took a freaking limosine to the strip, and started gambling in the Bellagio. This was just how I imagined a night in Vegas was supposed to be. Some went playing Texas Hold’ em, some were playing Black Jack and I was just sitting at the slot machines playing 1 Cent every game. While others spent an entire fortune (Adnan) I managed to get out of their losing only 8 bucks. Haha! Nice! We left the Bellagio for the MGM Mirage and went to a club. I think the name was Revolution but it could be some other name. As a matter of fact, there are some parts of that night that I don’t remember due to a big share on that vodka I guess. I found myself and Adnan later talking to two girls we met at Caesars palace. I don’t know exactly what happened after that. I think we took a cab back to our hotel at around 4 or 5. The rest of the story is kept secret! You know, … what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. We went to bed at around 6.30 and got up at 10. So we had exactly 3 and a half hours of sleep before we got ready and left the hotel heading for the Strip. The girls were still asleep and we decided to leave them in the hotel since it was tooking ages for them to get ready anyways. After seeing the fountains of the Bellagio and walking through the 1 mile shopping center we eventually met Annika and Fulya at the Caesars Palace around noon. We decided to get food in the Venetian. I had Panda Express, which is just awesome. We later saw the volcano break out at the Mirage and the pirate show of Treasure Island which should be really R-rated by the way! The Stratosphere was my greatest fear of the night and since the battery of my camera died earlier this day I did not even have a decent reason to go up there. I guess you could call it group pressure. We got up there and I was too scared to even walk freely. I decided to call it a day and went down to the Casino. The others went up on the freefalltower. After having a couple of free vodka-redbulls the others made it down the tower and we took a cab back to the Palms.

 

After me and the boys all got dressed we killed another bottle in the room. We figured that it was way cheaper than get a 20 dollar beer in the clubs. The girls too their time, .. what a suprise :) After midnight passed we decided once again to leave without the girls. We were already pretty fired up and the clubs only stay open until 4 ish. First Club: the Rain. Very good music (which is not definite for american clubs i guess) and a cool place. We did not hang out there too long though and so we made our way up on the 55th floor to the Ghostbar. A pretty awesome location with a glass floor on the balcony overlooking the entire strip! Probably the best location I partied in EVER! Just when we got ready to leave some girls came to dance with our boys and we ended up staying in there the rest of the night. We missed out on the Playboys club and the moon. I do not remember much of the time after that but last time I looked at the time it was 7.30 in the morning. And again: Some things stay in Vegas ;)

The alarm went off at 10 in the morning. We had to be out of the room at 11. After those 2 and a half hours of sleep and a total of 6 hours the last 2 days we all looked pretty trashed. We met down with the girls in the hall and took off to a Las Vegas Outlet Center. After I prayed to god that he gives me the strengh to endure a visit to an Outlet Center with 4 other girls I ended up buying a little for myself too.

 

We finally made it home at around 11. We all fell int0 our beds being totally exhausted from a couple of awesome nights in Las Vegas.

Last night Fulya had a couple of german friends over to celebrate her 22nd birthday. Enjoy the pics!

 

The girls would’nt wanna believe me when i said thats not the smell of weed. They thought that the entire town was getting high. It sure smelled like it, .. but from my experiences on the east coast i knew that the spraying of skunks smells almost just like it. When we went shopping last saturday we finally saw a dead skunk on the road so the girls would believe me after all.

One day I was playing basketball on the court just outside my door. We just finished a 4 on 4 game when suddenly a huge crowd came onto the court and wanted to start a tournament. It was to fraternity houses playing against each other.

On Wednesday we did a lot of reading for the upcoming class. I don’t like books and for some reason I was a lot quicker with the reading than the girls. Our instructor who does global economics is the coolest guy! We is into planes and all this. We owns a little plane himself. So he offered a “Discovery Flight” where students can actually fly a plane for 45 minutes for 80 bucks. Every single student in the class signed up. I like his class already. He tightly connects global economics to politics and other current stuff. A very interesting class!

 

It has been quite a party week for us.  After class we and some other germans drove down to a house party of four other german girls. We bought some beer and had to drive their with our bikes. I had some cans in the basket in front of my bike when i passed a cop car on a stop sign. Haha, … just smile and wave! Smile and wave. Boy i can tell you I almost shit my pants ;) Driving back was fun too ;)

On Thursday alot of reading again. No, .. its not just party all the time! Too bad that we had a quiz in that class that night. I still got like 6 out of 10 right. And those quizzes don’t really count anyways. After class we all went downtown because Thursday was a major partynight in Santa Barbara. We took Bills Bus. This is a bus which pics up students in Isla Vista for 10 bucks two ways. There is music on the bus and it allows students to drink. Pretty funny. The clubs in Santa Barbara were alright. Didn’t like the music very much. We went to Sandsbar and Eos. I lost all the other germans after the Eos so i took the bus home alone and went to Freeb!irds to have some Nachos. Yummy. I guess Freeb!irds are the best!

Although I watch craiglist every day I havent found cheap surfing equipment yet. I wann ago surfing so bad! Yesterday we rented the movie Hangover. Today was a rather lazy day. We did all of our grocery shopping. Its quite a pain in the butt to take the bus to Albertsons and carry all this heavy stuff back to the apartment.

And I also got another video for you guys. It keeps track of how long it takes me to go to the beach by bike ;) Enjoy

And you will understand when you see the pictures i took today. But let me start at the beginning of this beautiful day:

It started pretty bad with a cold shower. This freaking place dont have hot water i guess. Or it was just me, cuz when the girls got into the shower they had warm water. Whatever. After 2 minutes in the shower i managed to get a bed for 37 dollars from craigslist. Well, .. the bed got stains and smells pretty bad. But hey, .. what can you expect for that price. I got ready to take some pictures and to drive around Isla Vista just to get an impression of what this place is like. Well, .. look at the pictures and enjoy:

 

I drove around in my beach cruiser the entire day. All along the coast line and I met up with Fulya and Annika at the Lagoon. They were trying to figure out what to do with they courses, because they only have 12 out of 16 credit points they need. So they might have to take online classes from UCLA. Does not sound too bad to me. Maybe even the best choice, .. who knows. I also bought a sweatshirt in the bookstore which says “UCSB”. I like it very much.

At night we went to the Basketball game of the UCSB Gauchos. They played the opening game against the UC Davis and had a fantastic game, but see for yourself. We beat UC Davis by like 20 points in the end.

 

After the game we went back to our apartment where Fully and I decided to got to a pub where a german called Mattis invited us. We did not know that the pubs here close at 12h so we missed the party cuz we went out too late. We decided to see if the Del Playa Drive can life up to its reputation as the number one party street in IV. It exceeded our wildest dreams ;) Mattis hit us up at the cell and told us to come to 6525 Del Playa. We just walked into that house and partied with the germans we met. They had a balcony which was probably about 50 meters away from the ocean. The view was amazing. It was a big apartment with probably 10 rooms. The party was pretty crazy too. We went to what we later called “the spaceroom” just to see pretty crazy people laying around the room totally wasted. It was fun though. The music was good, … I had a very good time. The entire street was one big party. After Fully and I had a very good hot dog, we went home. It was a very cool day!

Well well, … here we go again. New problems, but let me start at the beginning. Today we got up and Paul hooked us up with some silverware and a WiFi router and also some bud light beers! That guy is awesome. Here are some pics of our new home:

 

We had to bring the rental car back and went to that second hand shop right next to it. We bought kitchen utensils for like 50 bucks. Everything from pans to plates to cups and so on. A guy from enterprise gave us a ride back to Isla Vista. Later we went to pick up our beachcruisers! We had to get some stuff fixed and the bikes are pretty rusty and old, .. but i love them and they will do their job. After we had a delicious pasta and salad which Fulya fixed us, we went to our first class “Managing employee benefit programs”. And here comes the problem: Apparently, there were no prerequisites for this class. But when we walked in and introduced us to the instructors they said that the prerequisites for this class are the “Fundamentals of Human Resource Management” and that we cannot take this class because we did not have this class. They also said that they turned down foreigners because last time some foreigners failed the class. And it obviously did not count that we took this class in germany. We will talk to our administrator tomorrow about this. We stayed until the end of class although we do not have a chance to get in their just to see that it is all very easy stuff which we all could do in the twinch of an eye. And we already paid 440$ for this.

After class was over we all were pretty pissed about the situation. We decided to go home and have Ben and Jerry’s. Unfortunately that did not solve the problem! Good night.

Monday

Lots and lots of problems. Major ones, minor ones, you know… problems. We managed to solve our biggest possible problem just today! After the Orientation day ended at 12h, Fulya, Annika and I had a big schedule on what to do next. (98% of the International students were from germany by the way). We have a super friendly supervisor called NJ and she helps us out where every she can. We signed up for classes at Ker Hall, we had our Student ID’s done at the University Center and after everything was done our search for a place to stay continued. We called some people who advertised on craigslist, we went to the community housing department, where Maya, a very nice girl, helped us out with our search. We came to a point where every one of us was pretty exhausted about finding a place. But finally, .. .there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel. We called for a spot on Segovia Rd. The guy says that we could look at the place today, as long as we made it to his office in 25 minutes. So we jumped off of the computer at the community housing office, ran across the campus and drove to the office. 5 minutes before the office closed we came in and a friendly guy showed us the place. The girls immediately fell in love with the place as soon as we walked in. We told the guy that he should hold the place for the next day at 12h. We were all excited about the place because it is so near to the beach and to the campus as well. The restaurants and shopping street is also just one block away.. Here are some impressions taken with my cellphone camera, better pics will follow.

 

Tuesday

So we went to the office and signed the contract. Little did we know that the place did not accept credit cards. They wanted cash or checks. After lots of thinking we decided to each take the cash out of our account. We signed the contract and moved in immediately. The guy provided us with bar stuhls, chairs, a table, sandwhich maker, microwave and a TV. He also promised us a WiFi Router and some Bikes. Nice eh ?? We ordered a Pizza from Domino’s because we had to wait for a guy that had to fix our door lock. After that we went shopping for the rest of the stuff that you need to live in an apartment. The food shopping was the most fun obviously ;) We also managed to get Fulya a bed from an advertisement off craigslist. Annika and I bought air matresses for the first couple of night until we find something a little more confortable. We were all so exhausted at the end of the night. Tomorrow we will have our first day of class, .. which brings me to my schedule of classes. I had to pick three classes:

Tuesday -> Human Resource Development -> 18h – 21h

Wednesday -> Managing employee benefit programs -> 18h – 21h

Thursday -> Understanding the numbers for human resource professionals -> 18h – 21.20h

Los Angeles: Union Station: 03:41h

8 hours ago I was sitting in Boston waiting for the delayed plane to Los Angeles. Now I am at the Union Station in Downtown LA. Union Station? Why the heck am I there? Well, apparently you cannot rent a car without a drivers licence. And this is exactly what I forgot in germany. The day before I left germany I went to a club and I forgot to take my licence out of my jeans before I left my house to go to the airport. Its 3:48 in the morning. You could literally hear a needle drop. Nobody except for sleeping people are at this station right now. I haven’t eaten since 12 or 16 hours. I haven’t slept since 24 hours. And I do not want to go to sleep because those people here dont look too friendly. When I arrived at Herz they told me that I cant get a car unless I got my licence. So a nice Herz employee took me back to the airport and told me exactly what to do. I took a shuttle bus to the station I am at right now. The driver was very friendly but was talking weird stuff at times. I gave him a good tip though because he tried to help me too. So I now bought this ticket and the train will leave in like 4 hours… so long.

Goleta: Motel 6: 21:44h

So I arrived at approx. 11h in the morning in Goleta. In the meantime the girls managed to get a car and picked me up from the trainstation. I checked in at Motel 6 and after that we went to visit Isla Vista. I probably had the best Sandwich in a very long time at Silvergreens. Or it was so good because I haven’t eaten anything for like 20 hours. We drove around the campus area just to see how beautiful the whole area is. At 16h we had an appointment to watch an apartment. It was advertised as furnished but actually wasn’t so we did not take it. Same with another appartment we watched in IV later that evening. Tomorrow starts college with an orientation day and we still have no place to stay. I’ll watch some Family guy now. “There once was a boy who liked to suck his thumbs. His mother told him to stop, but he would’t. So his mother cut off his thumbs. Now he has no thumbs. Good night”

This is it. I am Sitting at Gate 33 at Boston Logan International Airport. I got free Wi-Fi access thanks to Google. Nathan and Jon Mark just dropped me off at the airport. I got some stuff done this morning. I went to the place where Deborah works just to realize that it was a Saturday afternoon. She mentioned that she doesnt work on the weekends :( So i didnt get to meet her again unfortunately. I brought back some Hollister clothes to the Providence place mall. I ordered sweatshirts and shirts in large and I looked like a german sausage in them… Just like Nathan said: ” I guess they want you to feel bad because you dont fit in their clothes.” I also had to exchange the rayban glasses which I ordered on the Internet because they were too small for me. Thats the problem with online orders.

Right now, i am freakishly nervous about going to Santa Barbara. The flight takes off in like 2 hours and I have the most uncertain future whatsoever. I just talked to Philip on StudiVZ and told him that I am about to go one of the biggest cities in the world. Rent a car at 12h at night. Drive up the west coast to Santa Barbara and meet the girls at motel 6. I did not make any reservations at all. We did not even find an apartment yet. I don’t know where I All I got is me, my ipod and my macbook ;) And my parents credit card of course ;) and some dirty underwear.

I think I have never been this nervous in my entire life !

Lets have a quick revision on my time here in RI visiting my buddies Nathan and Scott: I had a very nice christmas eve at Mrs. Lemlers house ( Nathan’s Mum ) They had a huge family get-together. A lot of people i recognised from my past visits, but also a lot of new faces. On Christmas day we went to Mrs. Lemlers house again because we still had to open the presents. In America the kids get to open their presents on the 25th, .. not like in Germany.

One day I went to visit the Perry’s. All of them were there. They even got a new dog! Sugar still recognised me when I walked in the door. She sat on my lap a long time. The boys got so tall, unbelievable! Steve is 1,90 or 1,95. Even Matthew, wo was 7 or 8 when i came here in 2002 was very tall. Steve told me about some crazy stories of Charly. ;)

On that same night our french class form 2002 was getting together downtown Newport to have a drink or two. They get together every year aroun that time and since I was there I was able to go too. Nobody knew though and only a few people recognised me right away. I met up with Tim Grimes and my studdy buddy! Was nice to see Mrs. Milone again. She did not change a single bit :)

 

One night Scott and Nate took me out to a little Pub near their house called “PJ’s”. I had like 5 Wodka-Redbulls and we all got a “little” drunk that night. Nathan was diggin one of the dancers in the pub and he bought a shot for her at the bar. Unfortunately she gave him a fake number… might take a while for him to get over that ;) Just kiddin.. It was a very funny night!

I have a new favorite restaurant in RI. Its called Smokey Bones and Nate took me there one night. I had the most expensive dinner for the time I was here. The Babey-Back-Ribs were so good though! And 30 bucks for that aint so bad either !

We also went to see Mike at the bowling alley at the navy base! I suck at bowling. Although I hit a strike when it counted. Nathan and Brandon were pretty good at it. They can do that whole spinning and stuff.

I bought some really nice leather chucks for only 65 bucks. In germany they would have cost over 120 dollars at least. I must admit I gained a couple of pounds already… well, how can you not gain wait with all those delicious fast food restaurants around ;)

New Years was pretty crazy this year. We started out at Brandons house. I was getting pretty sick at DJ Hero on the playstation3. When we left at 9 o clock to go to the club District. T I was already pretty intoxicated ;) The club had an open bar from 9 to 11. Well, … open bar actually meant beer and coke. And they said they were out of coke by 10 o clock. I ordered my wodka-redbulls anyways and thought of the 20 bucks as an entrance fee. Josh got pretty intoxicated after like 10 seconds after we entered the club ;) We were 22 people in total and without us, .. that club would have been pretty empty! Nates friend Duce was making out with a girl, or should I say she was making out with him? Anyways, he got in trouble with her brother. I stepped up to them and busted a pose on them. The guy starts pushing me like a little girl. Haha. I was on the dancefloor for the entire night. Although the music was not really my favorite I had a really good time. Got pretty drunk by the end.. I had a blast!

 

We also went snowboarding again yesterday. We had a pretty big group of about 10 people going. Watch the video further down!

Okay, … I better be leaving now. My flight to Los Angeles takes off in a couple of minutes. They start boarding already. I am sooooo nervous right now. Weird feeling when you go somewhere and you do not know where you a sleeping for the next 6 months :)

In the end I would like to say that I met some cool new people like Jon Mark or Duce and although I wasn’t hanging out with them alot I will miss them when I leave. But also my old buddies like Brandon, Mike and Josh and all those others who I forgot to mention right now I will miss alot. Thanks to Scott and Nathan, who hosted the “very destructive german” for the last 18 days. Thanks to Mrs. Lemler for the christmas presents and that I made it on the fridge! Thanks to all of you guys!

I would like to end this revision with some quotes I gathered throughout those 18 days:

“Get off the fucking couch” – Scott

“Max, Do you have american money”? – Scott (after I broke the couch)

“Smells like german in here” – Nate

“We beat you at world war II” – Nate (in front of his entire family)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1M9VGxJecU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5LtaQQuBRU