An interesting week

Quite some time has passed since I've written my last bloq entry so I wanna keep you up-to date with the latest news from American and my life there. So here we go:

There were mid-term elections all over in the United States and (unfortunately), the Republicans have (re)-gained much power, especially in the House of Representatives. Many people are concerned about that, including my flatmate, because Obama has less power now and it's getting harder for him to implement new laws and changing America's structure. However, a Democrat won the election for the governor and will replace Arnold Schwarzennegger next year in january or feburary (by the way, I'm wonderin what he will do next after his political career: Does he still want to be active in politics or not?!)

Anyways, in the meantime I blocked my toilet for the third or fourth time here in America but this time I couldn't fix the problem (thank God that I've worked at a sewage plant before ;)..) so my roommate had to call a plumber to solve the problem. So when I tried to flush the toilet, there was too much pressure in the pipeline and I think there must be a leak/hole in it because on the first floor, water dripped down from the ceiling, just next to the kitchen table. Hmm Yummy! :-)
Fortunately, the plumber fixed the problem and guess what- it wasn't me :-) It wasn't my fault..there was some kind of moisturizer tissue in the pipe which I have never used before in my whole life..It was from the woman who lived in my room before, so I'm innocent.

Yesterday I went to the first basketball college game of the season! Yay! We played gainst Hawaii State and we won easily..hawaii played really bad so it wasn't a close game. I know that not everybody who ready my blog knows this so I wanna mention it real quick again, also as a short reminder for the other people who might know this: In college basketball games, you only play 2 halves a 20 minutes and the shot clock is 35 seconds. So sometimes it takes a long time for one team to finish a play designed by the coach and a player shoots the ball in the very last seconds... I asked many people at my school why there are different rules for college games but so far nowbody could gave me a satisfying answer.

Oh any by the way, I just checked upon my "old" German wikipedia article (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumpsoles) and I realised that someone added some information to it :-) It's really cool to see how one's own article, planted like a seed in the soil, suddenly "grows" and becomes bigger and bigger..I think I will write another one, or add some information to existing ones, in the near future. In America they call that "giving back to the community",lol :-)

Next week will be Thanksgiving which means that I have to finish my term paper (Hausarbeit) for my history of the US class, and then I'll be free as a bird and I'll go to San Fransisco with Henry for Thanksgiving :-) We're invited to come over to a Japanese family which Henry knows well so we'll probably have a real American Thanksgiving dinner :-) I'll let u know how the turkey tasted ;)

Alors,

have a good day !

PS: Americans can't write my name properly lol :-)

Time flies!

Wow, the last 10 days went by really fast...I just brought Martin&David back to the airport and their flight leaves in approximately 2 hours :-)

The last 10 days were crazy, but in a good way, of course :-) They arrived on Wednesday last week and when I picked them up at the airport they were really tired and had a jetlag so I just took them to the hot tub so that we could all relax a lil bit :-)
The next day, we went to Knotts Berry (or Scary) Farm which is an amusement park not far away from my home. You just have to the take the 91 West and it's about 30 mins away. I don't know if I told you guys before but I'm a little but scared of roller coasters and heights but Dave,Alison and Martin persuaded me to go on every ride with them :-) They even "convinced" me to go on the freefall tower, and believe me, my palms were moistly..but I wasn't the only one who was nervous, Alison was also scared un poquito. Sometimes, I hate peer pressure :-)
Anyways, we had a lot of fun during that night and it was cool to go and see all the scary mazes (labyrinth)...the actors alwasy scared Alison the most just because she is a girl...thhat was funny :-)

So for the weekend we picked up Florian Wulf, another international exchange student from Hechingen, and we did a roadtrip to the famous LAS VEGAS, or also called Sin City. I can really understand now why it is called Sin City: There is (legal) prostitution, gambling,parties,alcohol...whatever you want, they have it. It's pure hedonism in this city but that's why it is so much fun :-) It's amazing if you go there for one weekend but I can't imagine living there my whole life or even working there. This would be too (partying) much to handle.
So we left Vegas at 4 am in the morning on Sunday and Martin drove all the way back to Las Vegas within 4,5h while everybody else was sleeping in the car. Thanks once again Martin :-)
As soon as we've arrived back home, we went to the supermarket, bought some groceries and made breakfast. I think the breakfast is the best meal here in America because it's the only meal during the day when I don't eat fast food..sad but true :-(
Anyway, we slept for two hours and then we drove on the 110 North to the famous Staples Center to see the LA Clippers play against the Dallas Mavericks!!!
Unfortunately, the Clippers lost the game considerably against Dallas, and our successful German Wunderkind did not play that well either during this afternoon. However, it was a great experience and we enoyed it so much so that we decided to see another NBA game, namely the game between the Clippers and the Oklahoma Thunder. This game, which took place Wednesday night, was a little bit more interesting because the Clippers played better and in the end they actually won the game!!! ( As a matter of fact, this was the first victory for the the LA Clippers so far in this season)

The weather was really really good during Monday till Friday so for most of the time we just did stuff outside or we played basketball (or watched it at night, that is :-) ). For example, we went to Hermosa Beach on Tuesday where Dave enjoyed the high,strong waves. It was fun to actually be able to go into the ocean again without being to cold or freezing afterwards. I think we had around 30-40 degrees Celcius everyday...yes, you guys back in Germany (or PV) are allowed to be jealous now :-)

I have about 2,5 weeks before my next trip with Henry to San Francisco, so now it's time to focus on school again, study Spanish,and write a term paper for my history class. And it's also time to immerse myself in the English language again. I spoke enough German the last 10 days.
Having said this, here is a common saying/proverb in English: "Out of sight, out of mind". I think this one is easy to remember since it is so similar to the German equivalent.
There is also a similar one in Spanish but I forgot this one..I'll look it up for you.

Have a nice weekend, and I wish Dave&Martin a good and safe flight back home!

Flo