Pics! Pics! Pics :)

After nearly 3 weeks full of fun (and hard work :D) we’ve got now a lot to show you, my dear friends 🙂 By the way, we told our American friends about this blog, so we shouldn’t backbite anymore (hahahaha just kidding :)).

Let’s start with the float trip pics, because we promised them a while ago.

They had quite fun 😉

Enjoy the view – the water was sometimes deep, sometimes shallow. You never knew it until you hit the ground …

Drinking game: Drink the bat filled with beer, count the seconds, take as much rounds as seconds you needed  to empty it around the bat and then HIT THE FREAKING BEERCAN …. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

„God, please let me out of here :D“

Most of the guys in our group: Rafiq, Drew, Brian, Jordan, Colin, Christian, Danilo, Ryan and Andres (he left :'()

It’s a beautiful pic 🙂

Our boat

Laura loading the bat

Irene trying to hit the beercan – she fell over instead 😀

Throwing the football 🙂 (The ground hurt)

Yep. That’s us.

Laura, Thais (she left :'() and Jordan

Zhe, Colin, Indiana and Irene

Three weeks ago we went to see the colligate shag brass band again, this time with a bunch of people, it was quite fun, these guys really know how to entertain 🙂 The next day, we went to see the awesome zoo in Kansas City with Jordan and Seseg. It’s one of the biggest zoo’s I’ve ever seen with a lot of beautiful  and odd creatures, it took us nearly four hours to walk around there. We made so many pictures, it’s really hard to decide, which ones we should show you. Sometimes we could stand next to the animals, especially the birds. We even had one kangaroo with it’s kid crossing our way – JUST great 🙂

The birds were so close, you could have pet them (we were waiting for a kid to try it …)

This freaky bird was everywhere

Cutieee

Irene was rather interested in the flora than the fauna ….

Just hanging around

Guess, he fell from the stone

Story behind this expression: This monkey was perfectly content until it saw Laura. He made exactly that face when he faced her, I swear 😉

This kangaroo mother just crossed our way with her baby

Laura killed the ape

That’s why they’re the animal kings 😉

MERKATS!

Would’ve like to do the same 🙂

❤

Loris

We have NEVER seen a polar bear this close!

strange bird

I have never seen this type of squirrel

FROGS!

I can see 6 monkeys 🙂

Typical zoo attraction

Laura gone wild

And suddenly – a wild Jordan appears

The shy Irene – animal likes to bath in the sun 🙂

Afterwards, we went to have BBQ in Kansas City. Wheneveryou go to Kansas City, you should try one of the many BBQ places there, it was really tasty (for American food, haha).

BBQ

BBQ

BBQ

Despite our tiredness (walking in the 35°C hot sun for 4 hours is quite exhausting) we went to see our friend’s at the comedy place (again). Still, we couldn’t laugh about the American humor, something is pretty odd about it, but I can’t put my finger on it, maybe it’s just too gross. Thanks to some contacts we’re always getting in there for free, which is why we will go there despite the questionable humor, we’re hoping to adapt and to get used to it 🙂  On Sunday, we were watching the float trip pics with our group and revived it by a spontaneaous pool party 😀 😀

Sadly, we have to had let go of some friends we made the past month, because they left Columbia. Even though we didn’t have the chance to get to know them well, we’re missing them – it’s never easy to let go of people you like ;(. To celebrate them we made a lot of parties. The weekend before they left we went to Kansas city again. This time for the great waterpark called „Schlitterbahn“ with the tallest waterslide in the world – it’s called „verrückt“. This is pretty funny, because nobody can pronounce either the waterpark’s name nor the one of the waterslide correctly. Luckily for them, they had us 😀 Still, just four of us could ride verrückt: You had to reserve your seat right after the waterpark had opened. After 1 hour every seat was taken for the whole day, which is – verrückt. Karina, Jordan, Irene and me were the first of us, who arrived, which is why we could arrange a ride for us, the others were too late 😦 Even with the reservation it did take us nearly an hour for the 5s ride. It’s like a freefalltower – just with water 🙂 Nevertherless, it was funny 🙂 After the waterpark we got dressed for party in KC but before we had BBQ again 😉

DOWN!!!!!! (verrückt)

Under water pic gone wrong (Colin is the only one doing it right ;))

My type of slide!

Us 🙂 Back to front: Rafiq, Ryan, Karina, Irene, Colin, Brian, Jordan, Alex, Drew, Thais. Zhe, Laura, Danilo, Jacky

Some of us: Ryan, Thais (she left :(), Colin, Zhe, Karina (she left :(), dunno, dunno, Alex

Jordan must have said nonsense again 😉

Hanging around: Christian, Victoria (she left :(), Thais and Irene

Floating in the river

One of the slides 🙂

Irene and Laura having fun 😉

This is verrückt!

View from verrückt

Other side  (guess what – it’s KC)

Goodbye BBQ

Actually, this was taken in a night club …

I have to admit, I still don’t like KC – the people aren’t that nice as in Columbia and even we did

That’s how Jordan and Christian party 🙂

know where to go it was kind of boring and – expensive. As a guy you had to pay 20 bucks to get in a club later that night – really stupid. Despite the odds, we had a lot of fun and a tasty breakfast the next morning 🙂 But I can tell you guys, we were really glad to see our bed after these two weeks 🙂

This week was pretty exhausting but nice, too. On Friday we went out for one of the comedy shows, again. We figured – the more you drink, the more you can laugh about the American jokes. I’d rather not laugh again 😉

The next day was unbelievable epic for Laura. We drove 4 hours to Iowa City to see 2 of Laura’s favorite bands. Irene wasn’t that stoked as Laura (more likely scarred), but Laura was happy for both of them 😀 IT WAS INSANE! Here, have some pics of it 😀

Crown the empire

Ice nine kills

Ice nine kills

We’re SO metal 😉

We didn’t take this pic, but it’s pretty badass 😉 Ice nine kills singer crowdsurfing 🙂

In the night, we drove 4 hours back again. I can tell you, we would NEVER do this in Germany, but since the U.S. is so big, it’s not a big deal to drive a few hours. Additionally, our car is really big and comfortable, so you can sleep very well in it. By the way: You’re not allowed to sleep drunk in your car – that’s why everybody drives drunk. ‚murica.

Last Sunday we baked Scones (remember, Laura’s favorite pastry here) AND made Kässpätzle for 8 of our friends, who were willing to try them 😀 We absolutely had NO equipment for this. Thanks to Jordan we could borrow most of it, but the Spätzle press – that’s why we did the Spätzle the old way with a cutting board. We have to admit, the chinese guy (Jordan) was more talented in forming nice noodles than we are 😦 Maybe he has some German heritage !?

SCONES! (with cranberries and walnuts)

Rafiq, Brain and Drew expecting food

Sorry for the blurry pic, but it’s so nice

2 bowls full of dough!

nomnom

Irene making Spätzle

Eating while driving 😉

This day we learned a lot – not just how to bake Scones and cook Spätzle the old way – we even tried to understand the football rules. Football season has begun last week and some of our friends are really into it. Personally, I can’t understand why you would like to suffer so much injuries for an eggball :P. No, it’s inetresting. The whole world thinks America isn’t cultural, but after living here for nearly 3 months, I think there are a lot of things we don’t have. We just don’t see them as a cultural thing because America is a young country compared to Europe. However, I know I will miss certain things, like being able to go to a lot GOOD concerts (come on, the Bands in Germany aren’t that good), eat GOOD burgers (even though I won’t miss the rest of the American cuisine (höhöhö)) and the nice atmosphere here. They even got a lot of Sports, we don’t have and despite all prejudices a lot of them are really in a great shape. Still, there a a few things which will mark us as strangers (if they haven’t figured by our (horrible) German accent): They count different with their hands (you may remember if you know the movie inglouriuos basterds) and we are still not able to draw the numbers like they do (the 1, the 7 and the 9 are different). But we’re getting more and more American – Laura drove to Iowa City while eating a burger 😉 And she nearly spilled nothing! Another thing here is Laura’s name. Thanks to the completly different pronunciation Starbuck’s never get’s it right 😉

I’m sorry I forgot to tell you most of our activities, but here’s always so much to do – thanks to our great friends here – we’re always occupied and really enjoying our time here. Here are some pic’s with stories behind them I haven’t told you about yet.

So .. these actually exist! Dollar coins!

Irene’s favorite occupation 😉

THIS IS THE OREO WALL

Hamid made us some persian food. It’s chicken with rice and barberry (they’re sour!) – it tastes really good 🙂

We know you can’t await the next entry, so here’s burger …. 🙂

CAR!!! – Kickball – State Faire – Floating Trip

Aaaaaand I’m sorry again. Time flies here and we’ve got a lot to do – at work and with friends 🙂

Let’s start with Thursday the week before: Somebody (we didn’t even knew back then) lent us a car. He’s from the reactor and has a bunch of cars so he doesn’t need this one. So far, it’s for free, which is pretty awesome! It’s a typical american car (Mercury Grand Marquis LS) and we’re always fighting who’s driving 😉 Of course, it’s with automatic gear shifting and pretty HUGE – I mean, it’s soooooooo huge Laura’s car is half of the size

See for yourself:

When Leo brought us the car, we were pretty much ready for bed….
It was raining the whole day and we walked trough the rain for an hour, so we were really dead …

We really enjoy driving around, it makes life so much easier here 🙂 Nevertheless, we’re always happy to ride our bikes. Even tough we’ve got this annoying hill to climb to get to the downtown & University:

Note: This picture is taken halfway up the hill

We also got silverware, which made us even happier than getting the car ;).

Before

After – YAY!

On Friday, we went with the 573’s to a typical American Comedyshow. There were two Comediens, the first one was partly, the second one wasn’t funny at all for us as stupid Europeans 😉 The American humor is somewhat strange and arrogant. Afterwards we hit the dancefloor. We were the only ones dancing, but it was quite fun. You won’t get to see any pictures of that 😉 Like every time, we drunk a lot.

The next day, we played Kickball with a slight hangover 😀 Kickball is the same as Baseball or Softball – Americans aren’t that creative – just with another ball. This ball is much softer and bigger than the others, which is why you don’t hit it with a bat but with your feet. They told us, we should kick it like a soccer ball but that didn’t work out well (it might be because we don’t play soccer very well :D). Additionally you can throw the ball directly at the opposite players and stop them from reaching the base 🙂 It was really funny but a lot of work. I didn’t count baseball as a sport because you’re always stopping and discussing or drinking or whatever but, man, it’s a lot of sprinting, especially when you could do a homerun or more than two bases at once. Every muscle hurt the next day. We made some pics for you 😉

Laura and Irene doing sports … uhm… more like standing around

Action, wuuuuhuuu!

It was really humid and we played it for 3 hours straight 😀 After having lunch with the gang we went to sleep – Irene just needed half an hour, Laura (the little baby) slept for 4 hours. We spent the evening with the gang again at Jordans house playing some games 🙂 This time (and I guess the only time) without drinking much 😀

The day after we went to the Missouri State Fair with Jordan and Hamid. Every U.S. state has a fair, which is like a large amusement park with A LOT food. We tried to eat everything, we could find. There were also a lot of things to see, for example Ronald McDonald entertaining kids (‚MURICA!), pumpkins, healing stones (what the hell?!), kitchen utensils and animals. We made a bunch of pics for you:

This beauty is called corn dog. It’s fried sausage and tastes horrible. But hey, it’s on a stick!

Jordan with cheesecake on a stick… nomnomnom

There were a lot chickens/turkeys/gooses/ducks/whatever strange birds you could buy. Most of them won an award…

Jordan, Laura eating a turkey leg & Hamid being Hamid 😀

We present you: The crowd

Pumpkins!

Pumpkins, ham and stupid kids (there were a lot of them)

Irene caught in the act

DEEP FRIED OREOS. Americans deep fry everything.. They were delicious 🙂

… yeah .. ‚murica….

Don’t know about these guys … 😉

We were also cooking some things. On Wenesday last week we made Frikadellen & echten deutschen Kartoffelsalat for Anthony, who’s now on his Europe trip. His reaction was somehow decent but it was really hard to find the ingredients, because they’re using strange spices, no herbs and a lot of strange stuff. We liked our food (but forget to take a picture of it ..):D

By the way: The bacon here is delicious!!! (this is typical American breakfast, we had it for dinner :D)

Laura ordered a bunch of concert tickets for herself because she’s sooooooo happy to get to see a few of her favorite bands 🙂 Irene is sometimes forced to go with her 😉

WUHU!

Last Friday she planned to go alone to one of the concerts in Columbia, but Jordan joined her unexpectedly. There were 4 bands playing, but just two of them (Laura’s favs) were good and all of them played just 3 or 4 songs, which was disappointing. Nevertheless, Laura and Jordan drunk a lot and Irene joined them after the two hours of concert (BUUUHHHH!! (for the concert)). We made a couple of new friends at the bar 😀 And we entertained the whole 573s via facebook. Amongst other things we took this picture:

I forgot to tell you about a couple of evenings, I guess. Most of them were heavy drinking in a bar….

Back to Friday evening. We had to get up at 5 in the morning, because that’s when the floating trip started (Laura had to skip a concert in St. Louis for that :() 🙂 We got maybe about 3 hours of sleep. We almost didn’t start the float trip at all  because the wheater looked pretty bad, but since we decided to go the wheather got better – we even got a little bit of sun. We were really scarred because Jthe gang told us about the drinking games they liked to play, but in the end Irene and Laura were amongst the last ones standing 😉 This fact might be the result of two months heavy drinking …. We had a really funny time there but everything hurst now. Especially because we had to sleep on the hard ground. We’ve got uncountable bruises and horsfly bites but we enjoyed the time 🙂 We didn’t take any pictures, we didn’t even bring our phones with us, because we didn’t want to lose them. But the 573s brought a waterproof camera with them, so we made a lot of pics. We might see them this weekend, but we’re not sure, if the 573s agree to show them to you and we’re not really sure if we want you to see them 😉 Among other things the gang told us the whole week before the floating trip some stories about a mysterious Molly, who was topless when they first met her and so on… We discovered it’s not a real person they were talking about … Americans are REALLY crazy 😉

Instead, we promised you pictures of the park nearby, so you could enjoy these for compesation:

Where’s Laura? 😉

By the way, this is our apartment complex

We even discovered Europe 😉

Since last week, Irene is working at the reactor. Laura’s still fighting with organic chemistry 😥

This weekend we will got to see the „colligate shag brass band“ again – this time with the 573s. Furthermore we like to go to the zoo in Kansas City and we maybe meet the 573s to watch the pictures of the floating trip together…

If you worried about us due to the protests in St. Louis: It’s a 2 hours ride from here and the next trip we’re planing to go there ist in the middle of September, so there’s no point to worry 😉

Hope you guys enjoyed our pics so far!

Two weeks later… Sorry for that!

Sorry again, guys. We’ve been occupied with getting faster Internet, moving, working hard and .. having a lot of fun 😀

Last week we’ve been to a brass band concert and they’re definitely worth staying up after midnight on a Thuesday! We had a lot of fun listening to them. Sadly, a lot of people left after 11 p.m, even though the band is here from Mizzou. If you like, you could check them out:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mt5OQKU9Ag

The colligate shag brass band

Laura found out the name of her favorite candy – it’s called Scone.

What a coincidence – Laura’s fav coffeehouse also serves her fav candy 😉

On Friday, we moved to our new apartment. Even though we posted some pictures of it, you’ll get to see more now. While we were packing, we realized we’ve got a lot of stuff but we didn’t even know where we got all of it … We’re afraid that when we’re leaving our apartment we will have even more stuff we don’t know where to put …

 

This picture sums up everything we own 😉

Our living room (the couchs are a little bit smelly)

May we present you: The ancient vacuum cleaner from another century …

Irene’s room

Laura’s room – yes that’s actually an air matress

Kitchen

As fate willed Laura got this desk 😀

The only thing we’ve got in our freezer …

When we were unloading the car a few people started to help us – we really love these kindhearted people here 🙂

Additonally, we searched for the cheapest electric kettle and toaster we could find, you can see the result here:

Aren’t they lovely?

We rewarded ourselfs with this:

Nomnom!

Last Sunday, a friend (Hamid) of us had had birthday. So we went out on Saturday to smoke some hookah and having a few beers to celebrate him. But wait – there’s more: The next day we tried to bake a apple-pear- crumble cake. Regarding the circumstances – we don’t have a kitchen aid or even a bowl to mix something our cake was pretty badass:

The proud winners of the kitchen war 😉

With Streusel and jam!!

Wednesday was our lucky day 🙂 We’ve been at a free street concert (guess what – they played country music … they even yodeled in one song) with one of the girls we met on the 4th of July and her friends. Suddenly, one guy came out of nowhere asking Irene „Wait. You’re German, right?“ – best pickupline ever 😉 We didn’t recognize him right on the spot, but later on we figured, that he’s been to the same radiation safety class as we’ve been. It was super boring and couple weeks ago, so we couldn’t really remember him … He introduced us to his friends and we had a funny evening…. Frankly, it felt like Friday 😉

On Thursday one of the guys we met the evening before asked us to go to the only club in Columbia with him and some other friends. We witnessed the real party life of Americans – there’s just one word to describe it: Escalation. Firstly, the mixed drinks aren’t really mixed. It’s more like 99.5% alcohol and 0.5% softdrink. Secondly, a lot of girls start dancing in front of the DJ, who is standing on an hightened platform. Neither the girls nor the boys are ashamed of anything – there were a few couples more than making out…. But most of the folks on the dancefloor were mainly having fun. Everybody danced – it was really unusual for us to see boys dancing 😉 All in all you can call it „pretty intense“ 😉 Sadly it had to end at 1 a.m. It’s really annoying that everything is closing at 1 here.

On Friday, we’ve been eating sushi with the guys from Wednesday and a really large group.

Vroom vroom – here comes the sushi boat

After that we have had some beers (and one disgusting Long Island Icetea)  … How shall I put it … there has been a lot of drinking again 😉 We invited them to our place for some more beer.  Unfortunately, we forgot about our clothing line … One of our new friends was really bemused by it … He couldn’t stop laughing

Cheapest way to hang your clothes

Most of the guys in the group (more likely known as the 573 – Club …. at least that’s what Jordan (the „Are you German?“-Guy) told us. 573 is Columbia’s area code) are dealing with life science (ewwwwww biology!). They’re international, we’ve met a Chinese girl, one form Bellarus, one from Brazil, some guy from Pakistan and one from South America. They’re really nice people and we really hope to see them more often!

On Saturday we treated ourselfs with selfmade pancakes:

One of the 573s – Christian  (the same guy who went to the Club with us) –  was driving us to a big mall and after that we wanted to go swimming in the Lake of Ozark’s – it’s one of the biggest manmade lakes in the US. Unfortunately, we didn’t find a place where we could get into the water and it was far too late to search for another place – the lake is unbelievable big. That’s why we just took one picture:

It goes on for miles….

Sunday was a cosy day 😉 Laura destroyed one of our plastic spoons (we still don’t have silverware) trying to eat Ben & Jerrys (it’s really a destructive addiction :()…

😦 nooo, his life was soo…. yellow ..

So, that’s what happended the past two weeks. Did we mention, that our apartment is close to a little lake? We will definitely take pictures of it!

In the meantime, see what we found at one of the trails:

TUUURTLE!

 

Just to make clear: We don’t party more than we work 😉 We’re really serious about our research here. Laura finally knows what she has to do (she’s synthesizing something no one has ever done before) and Irene is responsible for a bunch of hightech machines, which nobody understand besides her advisor and her 😉

 

 

New appartment// Into the wild

We haven’t moved to our appartment yet, but we will – hopefully on Wednesday. Nevertheless, we’ve got some pictures for you:

 

Our tiny bathroom (at least there’s not much to clean)

The best room within our appartment 😀

Living room 🙂

Room #1

Room #2 – guess who will be living there…

Sadly, we don’t know, when we’ll get Internet 😦 We’re looking forward to cook real food. Everything you get in the dining hall dooms you to roll instead of walking around. Too much sweets & fat 😀

On Sunday we were cycling 30km to a nice Winery located in the vineyard along the Missouri river. If you’re longing to be alone just rent a farm in the middle of nowhere in Missouri. The landscape is amazing and versatile. However, you get pretty lonely because the large planes seem to be left by their own. We’ve seen a lot of big butterflies, big scary spiders, squirrels, centipedes and even some deers walking along the trails.

The wine here tastes similar to the wine of Rheinhessen 😉

We don’t have to tell a lot this week, so just enjoy the pictures of our trip:

The view on top of the vineyard

Most of the bat caves you can find here are inhabited by endangered species

Our reward 🙂

These rocks are really huge, we couldn’t frame them in pictures

There were a lot of Creeks we had to cross

Softball-St.Louis-Soccer

Time flies really fast here. Within the week we’re mostly in the labs learning some organic stuff (or sitting in front of the labeling box wondering why it’s not working ;)). Lucky for us, the city creats a lot of cycle roads and trails (to animate the student’s to live healthy) and we’re riding them gladly. In case you wondered, what our bikes are like, we’ve made an picture during one of our explorations: 

The green one belongs to Irene, the blue one is Laura’s

Most of the people aren’t much into bicycling, they prefer the four wheeled vehicles, even though they’re not faster due to the traffic lights 😉

On Friday, we watched Anthony (a Chemistry PhD) playing Softball. His introduction was „it’s the retarded brother of Baseball“. Well, it didn’t matter, because we didn’t know the rules 😀 During the game we tried to guess them (quote „It’s so much more fun, when you’re just making up rules by watching the game“). What we figured was: 1) you don’t have to be in a good shape to play this game. You just have to fetch a ball fast enough (or hit it) and you should be able to run 10 m in a short time. 2) As a player you’ve got enough time to eat and drink plenty while the game is on – there are a lot of breaks. Especially when you’re team is in the offense, there’re just a few of the players on the field – the other’s are drinking and eating :D. 3) Even though we didn’t understand the game, it was fun ;). This is how an regular field looks like:

The field is split into two zones: The red and the green one (don’t ask why – we haven’t figured yet)

On Saturday, we rented a car again:

This one’s a Toyota Corolla 😀

And we drove to St. Louis. St. Louis is a big city full of cultural events and diversity. Like Kansas City there’s a river which flows trough the city and divides it into two states. Kansas City is partly Kansas and partly Missouri, St. Louis is split into the Missouri and Illinois area by the Mississippi (by the way: the Missouri river leads into the Mississippi). The main tourist attraction in St. Louis is placed at the missourian riverside and called the Archgate or Gateway Arch.Some crazy architect decided to build an 192m high gate, with tiny elevator- bubbles in it, allowing crazy tourist to get on top of the arch just to gain a better view of St.Louis – us among them. It took us 3 hours to „climb“ the Archgate because of the long line. And it was somehow disappointing – the windows were really small, so we couldn’t take the breathtaking pictures we wanted. However, this is the view of St. Louis from nearly 200m height: 

You can see the tiny windows in the back

The Archgate not recommended for claustrophobic or acrophobic folks

St. Louis, IL

St. Louis, IL

St. Louis, MO

St. Louis, MO

This is what the city looks like on ground:

‚Murica!

A lot of the frontages are just painted …

As an European you’re always confused by the american definition of a city. There’s no pedestrian zone you can walk trough. Additionally the „interesting“ parts of the cities aren’t nearby, sometimes you might be walking an hour from one to another. But there are a lot of nice places to go in St. Louis (just use the Metro).There’s an area called „The Loop“ with a lot of interesting shops – like Ben & Jerry’s. Laura HAD to go there, because – Ben & Jerry’s! It’s like a normal ice cream shop with a lot more type of  Ben & Jerry’s than in Germany:

Nomnomnom NOM NOM!

 During our explorations we discovered a tiny Archgate:

Another interesting place to go is the Forest Park. There are a lot of cultural events and museums and a zoo:

Yes, we took alot of selfies that day….

In the evening we went to a nice pub, eating chicken wings like every sane American:

Nom nom again …

Of course we watched the soccer game on Sunday – in a bar with genuine German beer. We accidentally met a lot of Chemists – they’re everywhere 😀 The game was quite fun because half of the guys in the bar voted for Germany the other half for Argentina. 

We need to move within the next week, so we might not be able to post another article the next week because we need to settle again and buy some sort of router – and we’ll get a better kitchen than this:

 

In the meanwhile, we’ll show you a cupcake for comfort 😉

 

 

 

Getting used to Americans ;)

Sorry guys, I know a couple of you will check every day for news, I wasn’t able to write something down due to lazyness 😀 It’s quite exhausting to write in english – and to listen the whole day to the english speaking folks. That’s why we’re getting to bed early most of the days.

And sorry again – we didn’t take a lot of photos this week.

Instead we tried to get used to our new home. Last friday was the Independence Day – which meant we got the day which seems to be tempting for the Americans to drink without restraint. Normally they don’t need a reason for it, but drinking for a purpose is always nicer 😉 We were invited by a guy we’ve just met that day to a bar. He’s a Ph.D. in Chemistry and has been forced to baby-sit Irene at the Chemistry Building (Laura „worked“ (more likely sat around decoratively) at the reactor). After Irene mentioned that we’re currently searching for appartments and such he took us to an estate agent and viewed some appartments with us. In the evening he invited us to the bar. This is just one example for the open-hearted and open-minded way in the middle west. The people are awesome, you could talk to a bunch of people on the street and end up hanging around with them in a bar. TOTALLY AMAZING 😀 That’s what happened on Friday. After we recovered from the night (we figured „drinking“ means: Drink a lot in a short time range, because all bars are closing at 1 in the morning and alcohol is cheap here (like gas ^^)), we went to the theatre, where you could grab free drinks and food (for 3$) and sit on the patio. That’s were we met two turkish guys 😀 We watched the fireworks with them and two friends of them (these were Americans) and went to a bar afterwards. If you come to think about it, it was a pretty odd constellation – 2 american, 2 turkish and 2 german guys 😀

The fireworks was also amazing. Propably because there are no strict regulation concerning the environment – it was a lot more sparkling and colorful than german fireworks. I tried to frame it with a picture but it’s not appropriate:

Yay, fireworks!

Most of the folks we met so far, will be heading to Europe within the next months 😦 It’s the holiday season and the campus and downtown are really quite. We were told this will change in August and we should enjoy the city until the undergrads (aka kids) will overrun the town.

On Saturday we rented bikes to go to the mall (which is 5 miles away). These bikes were without gear shifting, which made it difficult to ride up the little hills 😀 Nevertheless, we’ve reached our destination 😉 We’ve got our own bikes now – thankfully, they’ve got gear shifting 😀

Currently we’re getting used to the unbelievable sweet food and the really bad coffee. Also, we’re trying to find an appartment… It’s not that easy because Columbia is a University City like Mainz and furnished rooms are scarce.

On Monday there was a scary storm. Missouri is haunted by tornados and hurricans, which is why you can’t compare the thunderstorms to anything we’re used to. The storms can reach up to 100 km/h and it’ll rain more than cats and dogs. Additionally the lightening is constantly – which lead to an electrical ahutdown for an hour. Laura was really scared and huddled up to the wall. Contrary Irene was bemused 😉

The coming weekend we will watch a Softballgame and visit St. Louis. Certainly, we will watch the german soccer team win 😀 Even tough we’re planning a bike tour on Sunday.

 

First week!

Now that we’ve settled a little bit, I am able to keep you updated 😉

You already know that we’re currently renting two rooms in one of the residence halls. Today  is the start of the  summer school’s second session, which we noticed immediately on the basis of the hallway’s noiselevel. We thought we had to change rooms by now, but there were no claims so far, so we will wait until we recieve a move-out mail (or someone steps in our room and demands us to leave). With the help of our first week’s supervisor we managed to get a small fridge. Unfortunately, the freezer compartement isn’t working .. our precious ben & jerrys floated away … 😥

We also got our student’s ID (Mainz should adopt this all-round card too!):

It’s like a credit card crossed with a key card – you can pay with it and even open some doors

In case you were wondering, the tiger is the mascot of the University of Missouri (shortly Mizzou or MU).

 

 

 

 

On top we’ve got our own office at work:

Can you imagine? We even got our own door signs!!!

We also managed to get an american phone number even though we seem to appear rather dumb 😀 Talking (and writing) in english is more difficult then I’d like to admit 😉

If you’re wondering what the tap water is like, you’re a lot more considerated than we are 😀 It’s chlorinated as hell and without any micronutritions of chalk – which means you won’t get the soap of your hands or the shampoo out of your hair if you size them like you’re used to. Took me several tries to understand this simple fact 😉

The money is still a mystery to us. The coin’s size doesn’t represent their value (which is by the way not labled largely on them):

From left to right: Quarter dollar, ten cents, five centy, one cent

At the moment, we try to get bicycles because Columbia and the University itself are quite big, even though they’re not confusing anymore. In general the environment is fully green with a lot of different plants and animals.

During our explorations we took a bunch of pictures and of course we want to share them with you 😉 – but first let me explain something to you. Some friends  of mine set me serveral tasks  I try to accomplish:

1. Try all of the sweets you see! – Kind of unsolvable. Even though I haven’t tried American Pie, Pancakes, Cupcakes, Popcorn, Brownies or American ice cream yet,  I don’t think it will take long to taste all of them 😀 My favorite pastry didn’t reveal it’s name so far, it’s kind of short breadish with different fruits in it (in contrary to the other sweets it is not full of sugar at all). The donuts by the way don’t taste like they look, it’s kind of disappointing 😦

2. Take a picture with a Promi. – I don’t think someone popular will walk around in Columbia 😀 Let’s see if I can find one ^^

3. Try all the things you only can find in America. Uhm … Like the tap water? uargh. I think I will return to this quest several times 😀 We’ve got couple of new impressions 😀

4. Wildlife – take a photo of typical north american animals. When we left Germany I didn’t think this would be the first quest I could solve. Nevertheless, Irene and me learned a lot about the common squirrels. Like little rabbits and crazy birds they run around happily across the campus, definitely not feeling disturbed by all the people passing by (unless they’re called Laura who chases them frantically):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Learn some jokes for finding „new friends“.  E.g. „Why couldn’t the baby Jesus be born in Missouri? – Because they couldn’t find three wise men or a virgin“. Yep, thanks, I’ll use them ….probably…..

6. Learn the regular lab vocabulary. They attached a list of 20 pages (DIN A5) – Amazingly we know most words 😀

7. Do some party -> A Check list : – beer – visit a student’s party –  visit a summer party – TGIF – stay awake till the sun comes up again – visit a posh party – visit a halloweenparty – find your fav club /pub  Ok, we’ve visited a great pub with amazing tasty american beer and even more tasty burgers. I really love to go there a few more times 😀

Contrary to the common opinion the beer tested great (it’s called Blue Moon) and the burger were delicious

8. Sing this song to someone and jot down the reaction:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqezXDgObWE ; Seriously, guys?!

9. Discover Missouri through a typical navy (while singing the song). Uhm… well … we’ll try. Personally fear wells in me every time I see the river Missouri – it’s enormously large and floats fastly, so it seems kind of dangerously.

I present you: The Missouri river (which ends in the Mississippi)

 

 

 

 

 

 

One solved, 8 to go!

Now you get the promised photos of Columbia (or CoMo) and the University:

Mizzou

One of the typical buildings

Memorial Union

View on the student’s center

still Mizzou

another typical building

yep, that’s still the university’s campus

Columbia’s town hall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the weekend we tried to rent a car. We figured you should do this online 😀 After a long walk ( about 2,7 miles (= 4 km)) we finally got a beautiful car:

Most of the german driving rules apply to the american ones. Still, you’re allowed to pass someone on the right side and they don’t use „right before left“. You have to stop on all 4ways, the first one who arrives there is allowed to drive away firstly (First come, first serve). Furthermore you’re allowed to turn right even though the signs are red!  You get used to it pretty well.

Sucessfully driving a car we visited the Rockbridge Memorial State Park, which is near to CoMo. The scenery is breathtaking beautiful. There are some caves in which live a special endangered kind of bats. One of the caves is called „The Devil’s Icebox“. The weather was kind of tropical, it was hot – then it rained heavily for 5 minutes, stopped shortly and got hot and misty. Here are some impressions:

The Devil’s Icebox after heavy rain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Sunday we made a trip to Kansas City (which is 2 hours away from here). Driving the highway is pretty boring, because the highway is straight and you can set the coast, so you only have to hold the wheel. We figured Kansas City is quite dead on a Sunday, nevertheless we took some nice pictures and went to sealife, where we saw a lot of Nemos and Doris 😀

Actually this is within a mall (Crown Centre)

Skyline Kansas City

Some kind of arts museum

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sealife

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll stop here and end with the quote of my fortune cookie. On Friday there will be the national holiday of the Independence Declaration, which will be celebrated with fireworks, food and music 😀

Lost in Trans… ehm… Chicago// First impressions

So we figured out it does take a while to get over the big sea (namenly the atlantic ocean) – but it takes just as long to travel within the U.S. 😉

Our flight from Frankfurt to Chicago was one hour delayed, which wouldn’t make a great difference, so we didn’t mind. 9 hours later we were happily and safely in Chicago, but there was one great obstacle to overcome – the borderline protection. If you think Laura was the one who got stopped by them you’re wrong, they took Irene’s passport accompanied with the words „we like to ask you a few questions concerning your Visa“. Needless to say we were shocked and confused. They put us into a waiting room with a bunch of other people and treated us like prisoners (NO PHONES, SIR, PUT -IT-BACK!!!!). Nice welcoming, U.S. thank you very much 😉

A lot of people who got later in were a while before us done and could move on. Not so Irene, she had to wait 1,5 hours. Joke on us, they just gave us her passport back without ANY comments. So we waited just for fun. Additionally we missed our connection flight to St. Louis. The borderline protection booked us another flight automatically – which would have been 6 hours later. We figured out it’s possible to enroll as a „standby passanger“ on a flight list, meaning we just distressed some people on a desk to get on a earlier flight. Unfortunately the flight got also delayed (1,5 hours) and the staff member was pretty overstained, which leads to a really messed up situation: He checked Laura in, but forgot about Irene because he couldn’t read her name right. Laura resigned from the flight and the staff member closed angryly the check-in line for all standby passengers. Thanks a lot, Sir.

To ease the tightness we just tried our first U.S. hot dog. It was kind of flabby…. Saturated we tried a new attempt to get an earlier flight because our original flight got announced with more than 4 hours delay. This time the staff member felt sorry for us, so we could take an flight to St. Louis at 6 p.m. which should have started at 2 p.m.

So, if you try to fly from city to city in the U.S. just make sure you don’t get to Chicago as an transit airport – what stays in Chicago will wait in Chicago mostly for a long while 😉

Finally we reached Columbia by Shuttle at 11 p.m. and luckily our hotel wasn’t closed. During our little odyssey (22 hours) we learned quit a lot:

1. The toilets are somewhat different (see pictures): The doors don’t close up to the floor and for reasons unknown there’s plenty of water in the toilet bowl.

2. The weather in St.Louis and Columbia is kind of tropical. So if you enjoy a shower you can’t enjoy the effects of it, you’ll turn into a sweaty meatball right after you step out of the shower. But you can get used to it pretty easily. Laura really likes it 😀

3. The Americans like to freeze. The temperatur gradient between outside and inside seems to be about 10 °C – you have to choose between getting grilled or frozen.

4. The Americans seem to build a road firstly and then neatly align shooping possibilities or restaurants on the brink of them.

Another bemusing thing is the American breakfast. Our hotel offered a do-it-yourself waffel station. Needless to say, we’ve tried it, you can see the outcome in the pictures. Furthermore they like some sort of gruel or porridge named grit, especially in the south. Neither did it look good nor did it smell good 😀 We didn’t try it.

The next morning our Professor picked us up and drove us to the research park. She’s really nice but left afterwards and will be back in 3 weeks… Therefore we were accompanied by another staff member, she spend all the day with us getting settled and so on. But again nothing went like we thought it would 😉 Instead of a double room we need to pay for two single rooms- which makes a  200 dollars difference. We need to move in a few days and are only  allowed to stay until 26th July at the university’s dorm rooms. We don’t know where we will stay afterwards, but our supervisor respectively the lady who helped us out today (Margee) will support us. Margee even offered us to stay a while with her.

Furthermore the rooms don’t have any bedsheets nor pillows nor blankets and you can’t rent them either. Which is why we’re now stucked with pink (!!!!!) bedsheets, because they were the cheapest (guess why). You can see them in the pictures. Margee will bring us some of her own 🙂

We haven’t decided yet, if we will buy a car, because within Columbia it’s possible to ride a bicycle 😉 The city is somwhat confusing – the university buildings are handled as normal buildings you can drive anywhere by car and there are a lot of student’s association houses. Everything looks the same 😀

We will keep you updated about futrher explorations

Do it yourself Waffel station

Didn’t tast like we thought it would …

Nomnomnom grit

what the hell….

What the hell ….

Just an ordinary dorm room

😉

Leaving on a jetplane….

Tomorrow is the day we’re finally leaving our beautiful home country to visit the U.S. We will be flying to Chicago, then heading to St. Louis and then traveling  to Columbia by bus.

We’ve got approximately six months to discover the big country and take in different impressions during our stay. Certainly we will miss all of you and we know you will miss us, too, so we’re writing this blog to keep you up to date.

Whatever we will experience, we will share it here 😉