The Last Two Months

I haven't quite been keeping up with posting, actually this will be the last entry. I am currently staying at the Marriott Residence Inn again, waiting for my flight back tomorrow. The last few weeks in Logan have been really easy-going. Last week I finished all my finals, and each and every one was a true piece of cake. I will have a hard-copy of my transcripts in a couple of weeks, however as it appears at the moment all courses will be A's.

A couple of weeks ago we came across this awesome coffee shop called Citrus and Peach which had a real cool atmosphere. Overall a great place to chill out, and I loved hanging out there. The picture at the right was taken there, while playing chess with Ross (who lost)(big time).

For the rest nothing too mentionable happened, or I have already forgotten it. Fortunately all international students made some thousand pictures. What was pretty cool though was Halloween. The USU hosted a party that night called the Howl, which was pretty cool.
Overall it was a really good experience; made some good friends, learned a lot and saw some great things in the U.S.
So will be going back and will touchdown in the Netherlands within 30 hours. And the best thing is that my parents have been able to upgrade both fights back. Nice to know I will end my journey in style!

Week 8: Las Vegas Baby!

This weekend most of the exchange students went on a three day trip to Las Vegas. We started off pretty early, we rented the cars and embarked on our 10 hour journey. I was driving half of the time yet this was a pretty easy task since there was only one road to follow, leading us straight to Vegas. This road went straight to Arizona's canyons towards Nevada. When we stopped just across the state border there were already many opportunities to gamble, even in the gas-station.
After 10 hour we finally arrived and drove straight to the strip, where we were amazed by all the different casino's and the funny themes they represented.
The hostel we booked was pretty okay from the inside, and even had a jacuzzi. The neighborhood it was in wasn't that great; mostly homeless people and prostitutes were walking around, however when paying 20 dollar's a night, that's quite fine.
We entered the strip after settling in and by then it was already dark, transforming the city in a beacon of light making it even more impressive. There were slot-machines and roulette-tables everywhere and I started playing the 1c slots which was pretty cool, for an hour or so.
On the strip they have made replica's of just about everything; there is the statue of liberty, the Eiffel tower, a pyramid made of glass and a gigantic replica of the canals of Venice. After our initial orientation I headed clubbing with three other international students, which was twice as great as usual since Utah is missing that. The nightlife we visited was absolutely awesome, Vegas is by far the best place to party I have been to in the US. Although the admissions and drinks were kind of expensive we sure did have one hell of a time that first night, as you can see by the picture of the four of us returning from the strip.

The next day we wanted to see as many casino's as possible, and come to think about it we actually saw most of them that day. The casino's were quite the same from the inside however they were sure to give quite a show, attracting new customers. We spend most our time at Caesars Palace, the Bellagio, the MGM and at Luxor. We mostly walked around, visiting the attractions and shows and didn't gamble that much, I actually broke even at the end of the trip.
Yet you can find lots of people who did gamble a lot, you can spot them by looking at their membership cards in the machines, sitting there for just hours and hours, pretty funny. The casino's make sure they give you a lot of eye-candy so that you enter their casino's. When you made it in you will find that all lights are dimmed and no clocks are hanging anywhere, just to keep you playing and let you loose track of time. Also finding a exit is a big challenge, no exit signs to be found anywhere!

After this day of covering most of the strip we headed back to our hostel and sat down by the jacuzzi in order to revive our feet. We soon headed back for another night on the town, and mostly went to the Eiffel tower and the Venetian. Both pretty impressive to look at at night, after that we decided to call it a night in order to get some sleep since the next day we would go to Hoover dam.

Hoover Dam was only an hour away from Vegas, and it sure was worth the trip. The dimensions of the dam are hardly describable, and it separates Nevada and Arizona. After just walking around there we again went back to Logan through a last drive through the strip. We arrived at around 1 at night, and I had classes at 7:30 which was kind of though, and unfortunately very mandatory. The weekend exceeded my expectations and when I look at the 1500 photo's we took together I have some great new memory's.

Week 6: Salt Lake City

This weekend I've visited Salt Lake City (SLC), to meet my parents and to show them around Utah and also to meet some exchange students to check out the nightlife in SLC. I arrived early in the afternoon in Salt Lake City knowing that my parents stayed at the Marriott. Although I didn't knew that Salt Lake City has 5 Marriott's, my second guess was fortunately the right one and I was happy to find my folks there.
We decided to explore the city almost right away and my father showed me the car he had rented. It turned out to be the massive Hummer H2, the huge car/tank. Nice to know we would be cruising around Utah in style.
The main attraction in Salt Lake City has got to be Temple Square, and although I had been there at the beginning of my trip with Haley, it was sure nice to come back there. After a small guided tour though the Latter-Day Saints/Mormon history we decided to go back to our hotel, after getting something to eat at the local grill house.
Later that night I joined some international students and we visited some of the local bars and clubs. The nightlife sure is different in Utah though; no dance music what so ever, only R&B, and the funny thing is that in clubs there are TV screens showing the video clip of the song being played. I was surprised that after a few beers I still felt 100% sober. It turns out that in Utah all beers, even imported ones, contain only 3% alcohol, which actually explained a lot.
The next day we drove our car to Park City, the center of the Winter Olympics 2002. The weather in Utah can be really unreliable, the first day it was around 23 degrees and sunny, the next day it was snowing and only 5 degrees. Actually this was pretty nice since it gave Park City more the image it had during the Winter Olympics. After having some fun at Park City, we drove back in the snow (which was no problem for the Hummer), and had some dinner at an All American steak house.
The next day we went to Logan, where the university is. We took a stop at Antelope Island, an island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake. The weather was again great and we spend quite some time on the Island enjoying it. The rest of the day I have showed my parents around campus and we had some dinner down-town.

The next morning I woke up by a sms, with the great news that my brother's girlfriend gave birth to a healthy daughter, Leyla. This was absolutely great news and my parents were able to leave that very next day to Spain to visit them. All in all, a great weekend!

Week Three: Yellowstone

This weekend I have been to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. I've went with three other students; Melike from Finland, Aurelie from France and Ross from North Ireland. Friday early in the morning we embarked on our trip and we drove our rented car for many hours through Idaho and Wyoming. While going to the park we were invited taking a tour through a LDS church which was pretty nice. Afterwards I had even received a book of Mormon, and go figure, they had even one in Dutch!

Next to Yellowstone there is Titon National Park, which is mainly beautiful due to its impressive scenery. High mountains accompanied by an intensive blue lake made for a great place to rest and there was also a place for some shopping. The shop was quite internationally oriented and I was very happy to find some Hoegaarden and Ross even much so with their selection of Guinness.

We arrived at Yellowstone near dark. We had met some French travelers with whom we shared a campsite in order to cut down on the costs. After starting up a fire and enjoying some of our beers we went to diner, where Ross was brave enough to try the Bison Burger, although he told me he didn't think to much of it. Since Yellowstone is situated quite high it got very cold at night, in fact freezing. This made us all very happy with or zero degrees sleeping bags and we all got a good night's sleep.

Saturday, our second day, we really started to explore the park. We started off with some geysers. Nice fact; Yellowstone holds 80% of all the world's geysers. The first ones were particularly special to look at. After that I must have seen another hundred and I believe if you have seen one, you've seen them all. However the most known one was certainly impressive. It is called the Old Faithful, since you can quite accurately predict when it is going to erupt. And when it does it is certainly impressive, easily reaching a two story height. The rest of the day we just cruised around and enjoying the wildlife and scenery which leaves you amazed though every minute of the drive. In the evening we decided to camp outside of the park, going into Montana. Here we found a cheap yet nice campsite and the best thing was that we didn't have to be careful with bears.

Our last day began with breakfast at a typical American bar with no tourists what so ever. The rest of the day we again drove around, focusing on the park's canyons and trying to spot a bear.
The park's canyons were easy to find, since they were everywhere however the bears proved to be a challenge. But then, finally!, we spotted a bear not to far away from the road. It was a black bear which stayed nearby for almost half an hour. It also represented a great ending of our trip since some hours later we started our 6 hour trip back to Logan. All in all a very nice weekend, certainly worth remembering.

The Second Week

Today I went to the library which has recently been completed. All high-tech searching equipment there, with the main attraction called the Barn. The Barn is a warehouse capable of storing 1,5 million books. Though it operate machines which know where the books are located and they will get them for you. I was given a small demonstration of the facility and made some low quality movies.

On Monday I was informed that a phenomenon called a total lunar eclipse would occur. I woke up at around 4:30AM and the moon turned bright red for about half an hour; absolutely beautiful! I wasn't able to take a decent picture however it did look something like this.

This week I've also had my first classes and unfortunately three classes start off at 7:30. I am taking International Management, Managing Cultural Differences, Buyer Behavior and Operations Management. All classes seem to be very interesting and there is little or no overlap with classes done in the Netherlands. At the university the focus is mainly on self-study and assignments, and that's quite a lot of work. Now the real studying has started and I'm actually looking forward to that since it has been quite some ago that I've taken classes.

Thursday was pretty special as well since there was an American Football match in the stadium on-campus. Although the Utah State team eventually lost the atmosphere was really nice and they made it quite a happening with all the cheerleaders, mascots and students rooting for the USU team.

It has begun!

It has begun!

The flight to Salt Lake City went incredibly well, I swiftly got through all 6 security checkpoints and was pleased to recover my luggage without any problems. A great start.

The Salt Lake City Residence Inn Hotel was very large and even included a kitchen; it appeared that ‘Residence Inn’ meant most visitors stay for a long period, as opposed to my 15 hour stay. First thing that you will notice is the enormous US flag in front of the hotel and when you are specifically looking for them you can will find them nearly everywhere.

The next day I drove up to Logan with my cabdriver Marc Moody who lived his entire life within the Salt Lake City area and was able to provide a great historical overview of the area: ‘Did you know most of Utah was once one big lake, sir?’. When arriving the Utah State University I immediately recognized the scenery from the movies and the place has fields of grass nearly everywhere.

The room is well… okay… I will say nothing more in order not to take a turn into negative town. It will do nicely.

The first couple of days in the U.S. I have traveled across Utah with Haley, my student buddy. I’ve loved these first days. On Monday she has shown me around campus and we visited Temple Square; the center of Salt Lake City and of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On day two we have visited Park City which was the site of the Winter Olympics 2002 and there we were able to witness some training for the next edition, although it was nearly 33 degrees. In the evening Haley and I stayed with her parents and sister while enjoying a typical American dinner: Steak and Corn. The last day we drove up to Antilope Island which is situated within the Great Salt Lake. The nature and wildlife there is beautiful and the Great Salt Lake really does its name credit. Before going back to Logan we bought some items at Walmart which in size can easily be compared to an Ikea and the supermarkt has nearly everything (next to the dvd section even rifles).

All in all a really nice week and I'm looking forward to the ones to come!