Royals

We woke up early and Meikel, Gizem and I went to the gym - yessss! Gizem is our guest until Friday and also a German student from Paderborn university. Her name is turkish and it means mysterious. Cool name! Very jealous even though I like Ines. Whenever someone here asks me what my name is I always say Inessss. Otherwise I am called "Eines" which is aweful!!
After the gym we made eggs and had a big breakfast.

I had to study a bit until Jessie and Lara arrived to have coffee with us! Fun time! The lecture was ok, I had a 2hour break which I spend with Carson. (Carson I know you will read this - it was fun hanging with you! Hope to get some more coffees with you until december!) After the break we had another 2h lecture.

Got a new mirror app and I am sooo in love with my new shoes - haha!

When we got home Meikel and Gizem had cooked dinner for us - Gizem you can stay here for a looooong time ;-)

We just booked Vancouver - yipeeeah!

Plans for the future:
4th of October: Oakland and Berkeley
5th of October: San Francisco
10th of October: American Football Game in Stanford
11th of October: Surfing in Santa Cruz
12th of October: San Francisco
17th - 19th of October: Vancouver!!
24th - 25th of October: Napa Valley
20th of December until 22nd of January: Roadtrip to the South of California
22nd of January until 11th of February: Hawaiiiiiii

I will be very busy... no time for pool dayz anymore - hahaa! So excited to be here! Very strange how fast the last 3 weeks went by while we arrived in the US. Really loving it so far! Some things are weird here: Asian students do have an american name. When the professor takes attendence and the students name is for example lee hong sun, the students says "you can call me Steve". Actually this is pretty cool! You can choose a name which makes life probably easier for the professor - but I guess no such thing would ever happen in Germany... What I like about the US that woman call me cutiepie oder honeybum or sweetie - most people in Germany are only rude :-) haha!

Wake me up

Today was an easygoing day. I wanted to get up early to go to the gym - but I slept until 9am and woke up with heavy sore muscels from hiking... so I skipped gym - will go tomorrow!
I started reading my first university lecture - purchasing and supply chain management. Until page 35 nothing new happened. The weather went to be fantastic today again, so I thought a little time on the pool wouldn't be bad :-)

View from our balcony.

Pool lecture...
















Our lecture at the university started at 6pm so we decided to cook dinner before - thai curry!

University was ok, at least I was able to wear my new nike shoes and my new watch! Life is gooood :-)

Will spend the evening organizing some things: Hawaii, Vancouver and so on...

It's raining men

Weekend Trip to the Yosemite National Park!

We started on Saturday morning at 8am. We - that's my apartment and the apartment under us. 7 persons in total. It took us around 4 hours to reach the Yoesmite NP. This was the route we took:

We had a quick break at Starbucks but the 4 hour drive went by very fast as we had some great conversations! Thanks to Stephan for driving all the way!!

The landscape changed really fast after we left Hayward and there were beautiful places!

This one was taken not far away from the entrance of the nationalpark.
From left to right: Stephan, Meikel, me and Andrea

We navigated our route with our mobile phones which we charged simultanously. But 1h before entering the park you have no service at all! No phone connection for the next 2 days... when I left my mobile still had 96% of battery. When we arrived we parked at the parking lots of our "accomodation" which was... a tent! The weather was still great so we decided to hike up to the Vernal falls. The whole park has a free shuttle service which we took to reach our starting point. It took us 1.5h until we saw the falls and another 0.5 to get on top of them. Down was easier in about 1hour.

The whole crew from left to right: Tom, Andrea, Meikel, me, Jana, Sarah and Stephan.

Stephan, Tom, Jana and Sarah decided not to reach the top of the falls as they planned to make the campfire. So Meikel, Andrea and I were the only ones left and started to move up again... The view was fantastic!! And we were pretty exhausted as the steps were very high.

This pic doesn't look at all like - holy shit we finally made it - ... Guess my cam takes good pictures ;-)

On top of the Vernal falls are the Nevada falls which make a small lake before going down the Vernal falls.

We went down just in time because ist started raining... like hell... then it stopped... and started again...

This was our tent... It is very simple with a bunk bed, one camp bed and a bigger bed... for 7 people ;-) This was going to be interesting! The rainy weather and the cold temperatures weren't any good either! 

The guys made campfire and each of us got a can of ravioli. Later we grilled marshmallows!
Unfortunately Stephan's can exploded a bit while opening and I was the one sitting next to him... My face and my jacket looked as if I took part in an CSI Miami episode... Still have no idea how to get that tomatoe sauce out of my jacket but heeey...

The problem while sleeping in an tent are the bears. There is quite a chance to meet one - if you want to!?!? But to avoid them you have to store your food in bear lockers.

We saw some coyotes and deers and squirrels but no bear! Yesss!

The night was crazy. Everyone was freezing like hell... it had about 8 degrees celcius. I wore around 7 layers of clothing. I was the only one who brought a blanket to the camp. And I was the only one who was glad I made so ;-) Andrea and I shared a bed the night and we both were really glad we had such a blanket! All the others only had a very thin rug and yeah I guess they were freezing. It rained like hell the night and I dreamed that our car was washed away - haha!

The next morning was pretty! At least at first...

Our tent was located next to a small river with a beach! Guess its the most awesome tent in summer... but camping definitely is nothing for me! At least I learned that ;-)

We drove to the Glacier Point on Sunday morning. During our drive there - another 1h car ride up the hill - I snapped that photo:

Glacier Point is a touristic point - grea to take amazing photos! It is around 3,200 feet above the village and the clouds went over so quick! The view was amazing but it was soooooo cold! While driving to the Glacier Point there even was snow on the streets!!

The ride back home was a tough one as the weather was bad and everyone was super tired. We stopped at Wendy's ( I am a huuuuge Pulb Fiction fan...) - first burger so far!

It was a fun trip and thanks to the tent a very low budget one. It was cold as hell, without the campfire I would have frozen my ass off... I was happy to have my blanket with me and Andrea was too - LOBESCHULTER ;-)

Distance on an airplane: 6723 miles 
Distance rode on a bus: 234 miles
Distance in a rental car: 454 miles
Time on airplanes: 15 hours 15 minutes
Time on a bus: 6 hours
Time spend in a rental car: 8 hours
Time spend on the pool so far: 12 hours
Amount being called sweetie until now by woman: 5

Money on my mind

It's FRIDAAAY! And on friday there is no university - at least not for me and my crew. So we went shopping today! It was my first visit to an american outlet and I really enjoyed it.

Here is the link to the homepage of the livermore outlets: 
http://www.premiumoutlets.com/outlets/outlet.asp?id=107

While waiting for our driver Jana we took some selfies...
From left to right: me, Meikel and Andrea.

We drove around 25 minutes to reach the outlet and the parking lots weren't crowded yet. As the area is quite big there aren't a lot of people in the stores.

My favorite stores were Nike, Fossil, American Eagle, Levis, Banana Republic, Aldo, Converse,... ok you see - there are sooo many good brands there!

From left to right: Sarah, Jana, Meikel and Andrea.

Andrea joined my Converse - family...

 At Nike I bought some new trainers, running pants and some shirts for the workout. The prices are fair compared to Germany. My trainers were another -20% off so I only payed 31$ :-) At Fossil I bought a new watch which was -50% off. And at American Eagle I got myself a new pair of jeans and a very nice woolen jacket for the colder days. In every store there was Sale or an additional -x%. It was a fun day and a great outlet - this has definitely not been our last visit to Livermore ;-)

Tomorrow at 8am we are leaving for the Yosemite Nationalpark. Stay tuned for a new post on Sunday about our adventures - hope we will not have a meet and greet with some bears...