Outlook: Good?

Last weekend, I visited Lindsey again. We made some real American style cinnamon rolls!


Yesterday, I had a couple internship interviews, and was taken out to dinner by Morgan Stanley. All in all, it was a pretty good experience.

Today, there was a big convention on campus, and companies came and set up their booths. I spent about 2 hours cruising around and talking to the ones that interested me. Tonight, Barclays is taking me out to dinner, in preparation for my interview tomorrow.

For the rest of the day, I'm going to take care of little projects that I need to finish up.

Ziemers

Just so I don't forget, I did manage to meet up with the Ziemers last Thursday. After meeting up with them at the train station, I gave them a quick tour of St. Gallen, showed them my apartment, brought them up to the university, and then we had a bite to eat. We just missed the cutoff for the "real" menu, but had some tasty mustard-chicken pita bread pockets.

It was fun seeing them, especially so far away from where I usually see them. They were going to be adventuring up in the Alps this week, so I'm sure they're having a great time!

A new week

Nothing all that drastic has happened lately. Classes are going well. There are just two extra classes I'm on the waiting list for, but it's not that big of a deal if I don't get them. Classes here, with very few exceptions, run in 45 minute blocks with a 15 minute break in the middle. It's really nice when there's, say, a 3 hour long class, because it's really three blocks of 45 minutes with two 15 minute breaks.

Somehow, I have spent almost no money at all this week, which is good. There have been a lot of company presentations recently, and they tend to have an "Apertif" or an "Apero" afterwards, which is generally an open buffet of nice, Swiss food. I've slowly been adjusting to "European" sized portions, which, although smaller in size, are generally tastier and better in quality than jumbo XXL American portions.

In more exciting news, I have an interview next week for a summer internship in London. There's a dinner the night before, which will be a good chance to get to know the company a little better, and maybe get a good feel for what exactly they're looking for.

Chaos in my course schedule

Today, I managed to get all of my "contextual studies" credited, as well as a few electives, thanks to my classes at the U. This, of course, wrecks havoc on my current class schedule, but will save me a lot of headache in the long run. I'm in the process of getting my Korean class to count for my 3rd language, which will be another HUGE time saver.

With all this new free time (which might not actually turn out to be free time, depending on my how my waiting list situation looks), I might be able to be more active in student groups. There was a student group fair this morning (conveniently during my first class until about an hour after it), so I got to visit most of the groups and check them out. There are some pretty interest ones, and some of them are even free! The ones that aren't free generally give you lots of "free for members" stuff, have members-only events (sometimes guest speakers), or have special connections to getting internships.

Some of them sound pretty neat, and sound like they'd make for a great opportunity to meet some new people.

Anyway, my biggest concern at the moment is my schedule. I'm on the waiting list for a lot of courses, and I've got a list of professors to go talk to, so I can see if they can give me special permission to be in their class.

The Studentenschaft (Student Union) has a list of student jobs that I could take, but there might be better things I can do with my time. We'll see how that turns out. It would really be nice to have at least a little bit of steady income while I'm here, directly in Swiss Francs. Either way, I have enough of my own projects to keep my busy for a while...

My other big thing right now is the internship search for next summer. Yeah, it sounds like it's a way out, doesn't it? However, it seems that most companies are starting their recruiting phases in the next few weeks, so I'm going through the offerings at the career center online and looking at what's going on, who's coming to campus, etc. I'm planning on dropping by the career center this week or next week to have my CV looked at, etc.

That's all for now!

Recent adventures

The past few days have been jam packed. Let's rewind a bit, and get a little recap (with pictures!).

Last Weekend

Last weekend, I went to Longbridge, which is an English camp modeled after CLV in Switzerland. The experience was great, and was a lot of fun. On top of that, Melanie managed to stop by and work the weekend on her trip through Europe. The kids, especially the boys, but some girls too, loved baseball and American football, and since I was one of two Americans there, I ended up playing a lot of sports that weekend with Swiss kids. It was a blast!

Wednesday, September 9

On Wednesday night, I took the train down to St. Gallen for our orientation the next day. It was my first night in my new apartment, albeit in the living room and not my own. Luckily, I was able to bring 3 suitcases full of clothes and other miscellaneous things to lighten the load for the weekend. My apartment isn't too close to city center, but since St. Gallen is a relatively small city where nearly everything is in walking range, that's perfectly OK.





Here's where my new apartment is located:
As you can see, my address is:

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Sonnenstrasse 34
CH-9000 St. Gallen

If anyone ever wants to come visit, just let me know a bit in advance, and I'll let you know how my schedule looks!

Thursday, September 10

Before orientation, I opened up a bank account (yes, a real Swiss account) and got some things with my half-fare-and-free-after-7-PM train card sorted out. I still don't have a Swiss cell phone, since they're pretty expensive and I'm still scoping the market out. I took a few pictures of the city while I was out and about.




Orientation was pretty straightforward, got some information booklets, got my university account activated, got a tour of the library, etc. Part of campus is under construction, but I don't think it wil bother me too much.

Saturday, September 12

Saturday was, for those of you who don't know, my official move in day. This day was full of life changing experiences for me. As you may know, I've been staying with Lindsey in Freiburg for the past couple weeks, which is about 160 kilometers (about 100 miles) away. After some research, we decided that the cheapest and best way to get my things (clothes, and things that I got from her like a bed, desk, closet, etc) from Freiburg to St. Gallen was by renting a car, which I had reserved a week or two ago. I called in on Saturday morning, admittedly way too late, to ask if they had any cars with an automatic transmission. The two that they had were rented out. At this point, keep in mind that I could probably count the number of times I had driven a manual on both hands. I was a little nervous, but quite confident.




Originally I had reserved a station wagon, but when we expressed concern that it might not be big enough, we were offered a moving truck for the exact same price. We couldn't turn down such a good deal, so we took it. My stuff probably wouldn't have fit into the station wagon, but the transporter was definitely bigger than what we needed, regarding both storage space and sheer vehicle size. While I was adjusting to the feel of the truck and getting used to shifting its gears, Lindsey seemed to be on the brink of a heart attack due to fear and nervousness. I, however, did manage to navigate it back to her apartment.


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After packing everything up, but before leaving, I ran into the city to pick up my new glasses, which I had ordered the week before. It turns out my eyes are great, but I have a slight stigmatism, taking some of the clarity out of my vision and making similar looking symbols like "8" and "9" and "B" and "O" all look quite similar. After accepting glasses-insurance (10€ per year, but giving a deep discount on the lenses), and after forking over 11€ for the lenses (the glasses, eye exam, fitting, etc was all free), I walked away with my new glasses. Just for the people who don't know, the exchange rate makes 1€ ~ $1.45 ± 1¢ right now. So, all in all, it was a really really good deal.





The drive from Freiburg to St. Gallen started out pretty rough, since almost immediately after exiting Freiburg, the Autobahn goes winding through a mountain. After managing to squeeze through that, I had started to get better adjusted to the manual transmission and the boat of a car that I was driving. Lindsey slowly became less worried. The Autobahn was a little bit treacherous with that thing, since in 5th gear it would comfortably go 100 km/h (~65 mph), and at that point I didn't want to try 6th gear, while Germans were whizzing by at probably up to 200 km/h (~130 mph).

After safely reaching St. Gallen and finding the way to my apartment, we began unloading the van, piece by piece. After countless trips up and down the stairs (I live on the 4th floor), we managed to find a parking spot pretty close by. Lindsey dozed off a bit while I went about unpacking and putting my closet together.

Sunday, September 13

Today was filled with lots of unpacking, furniture construction, organizing, and sorting. I have now met Sämi (Swiss) and Katharina (German), and only have Jérôme (Swiss) left to meet, although we spoke on the phone before I officially "got the apartment". After a long day's work, Lindsey and I (mostly Lindsey, since she's way better at organizing and at handiwork) got my room into pretty good condition.







The drive back went much better than the drive there, since I had actually figured out how to drive a manual correctly and had figured out how to control the van. After giving 6th gear a try to keep up with traffic (we barely even hit 120 km/h, ~75 mph), I could definitely see how it would be fun to drive on the Autobahn with a real car, and not the clunky sloth that we had. Even leaving automobile velocity out of the question, it was a gorgeous drive with some really impressive German and Swiss landscapes and scenery.

After dropping off the van and saying by to Lindsey at the train station, I caught the last train to St. Gallen from Freiburg. Luckily, with my Gleis7 card (free train travel in Switzerland after 7 PM), I can travel this stretch as much as I want.

I still have a few things with my visa to take care of, mostly regarding money and showing them that I have enough to survive living in Switzerland while I'm studying, but that shouldn't be too difficult. Just takes time. Luckily, Brian Holmes, a friend from high school who I ran into in Freiburg a couple of years ago, is working in Munich, where I have to go to pick up my visa. We're planning on climbing Zugspitze sometime soon, but we're not sure when we'll both have time...

I've got a few other things to worry about, like buying a proper lighting fixture for my room, getting an octopus plug, maybe getting one or two more adapters from the US plug to the Swiss or German plug, etc, but I should have it all under control.

A Weekend in Switzerland

I spent my last weekend at an English camp in Switzerland, near Basel. It was a lot like Waldsee, but it was bizarre to have to speak English with the kids instead of German.



Here's a picture of us playing baseball. It was an extra popular activity for the kids.