My room

I'm still alive. Just took a blog-break. There are still exciting things going on here, I meet a lot of people, still do a lot of sports (tennis, soccer, etc. - no real american yet).

Here two pictures of my room, because it's difficult to make it fit in one. This is my half of the room, the other half looks exactly the same. Can't take a pic of that now, because it is 2 pm and my roommate is sleeping :-)

I'm living in the "White Hall", that's the residence hall where most of the internationals live. Good place to be.

Before I leave, got a quiz for all the Swiss: Try to figure out who the guy on my screen is. (hint: it's definetly NOT my desktop)

cleaned up for you!!!

Hopp FCL!

Juhee, Basel gschlage!

Touchdown!

What an amazing event! This day was great. Thousands of people barbeque in the streets, hours before the game (start 2.30 pm). And the ambience in the Camp Randall Stadium was just stunning. I still don't understand a lot about Football, but I was never bored within the 3.5 hours. The only problem was that I didn't have any sunscreen...

The UW Madison University Team, the "Badgers", won 14 to 0 vs. San Diego State University. It's incredible for me that these are non-professional teams, and the big stadium is always sold out... Imagine Uni Bern plays vs. Uni Basel and there would be more than 20 spectators :-)

Marching music, national anthemn.

Touchdown! View to the crazy students sector.

Canoeing

On Thursday we paddled on the lake for the first time. My canoeing course is really a lot of fun! I'm so glad we capsize because the water was disgusting... more seagrass than the Sempachersee!

Tripp Lake, Whitewater

Fast Food

Altough this is a very small town, we've got all the fast food chains represented here... Don't worry, I do enough sports. Though it would be very funny to see a fat Chris :-) Who could imagine that???

Pizza Hut, McDonald's, KFC... just one of the streets.

Madison - Capital of Wisconsin

Last Saturday we went to Madison, that's about 45 minutes from Whitewater... we'll go there again this Saturday to see a football game of the UW Badgers. That's an university team... 80'000 spectators are expected to be there. Crazy.

The State Capitol Building, Madison, WI

Studying...

... starts here in the first week, not only before exams. This is really new to me, gotta get used to it first :-)
The lecturers expect a lot of participation, and preparation is a must. Papers to read, assignments and tasks to fulfill, presentations, etc.
The classes (it's really called like that, and that says a lot) are much smaller, from 10-35 students. Professors know the names of us. There's no place to hide.

But I actually like that more than in Bern, because there's no interaction at all in the auditorium in Bern, and therefore no motivation to do more than the mandatory things.

Gotta go back to my books now :-)

My (brand new) car

A bike is nice to ride around the campus, to the sports center or to the town... but in a country with NO PUBLIC TRANSPORT you just have to have a car. That's what the Swiss delegation in Whitewater was planning from the very beginning, so we share this car now:

Ford Escort, 1996, 96k miles, 1 broken AC, 1 weird tachometer. We love it!

Lots of fun fixing the license plate...

The three car owners Denise, Christian and Lukas in a yummy backery.

My brand new bike

To get around on the campus, I bought a veeery funky bike! I'm so proud of it!

Start of the semester

Tomorrow (Tuesday), the fall semester will start! I changed some courses, added some sports. My courses are:

- Advertising and Promotion Management (3 credits)
- International Business (3)
- Ethics in the Marketplace (2)
- English (Writing) (2)
- Tennis (0.5)
- Weight lifting (0.5)
- Bowling (0.5)

Friday off, Mondays start at 1pm... thats a long weekend!

More pictures following soon!

Football

The UW Whitewater Warhawks won (about) 75 to 14!! How exciting!!

Parties...

Even though Whitewater is a very small town, it has some bars, and these are really ok up to now.

The guy in the middle is Conall, my Irish roommate.

Chicago

On Saturday I went to Chicago for one day, it's about 2.5 hours away. We didn't have much time, but next time we're gonna stay there for some days and check out the nightlife! Some pictures:

Navy Pier, with Denise and Sophie