UPDATE!!!!! :-))

Hello friends and people who are just interested in my well-being, ;-)

again, I have to apologize that it took me a long time to update my homepage again.

This semester is crazier then the last one… so don’t be confused about the pictures. We all like/d to party a lot and therefore you will find quite a few party pictures in my album. :-)

Further I’d like to say “Thank you” to all the people who give/gave me support throughout the whole year. Though I have a lot of fun here, I cannot not emphasize enough how important friends are when you are abroad. It is not just encouragement, sometimes it is just nice to talk to someone else than the people here (abroad).
But now you’d like to know what happened in Albuquerque and the US, respectively.

Although most of the pictures are self-explanatory, I would like to say a few things about them.

A lot of people complain about the food in the US, but I have to say, it is more often or not a problem of laziness of the people. You can buy healthy food here, too. It might be a lil’ bit more expansive in some cases, but still it is available. You can even find decent bread…

But in my case, I like to eat something from home (Germany, especially of the region where I am coming from) from time to time, thus I made myself a “Denede”. *hmmjammjamm* It was delicious.

The ski-trip OIPS organized was great. It was from the 22^nd to the 24^th of February.

The snow was crazy, I mean, I have never ever seen soo much snow and especially skied in such conditions. It was awesome. You could fall and nothing happened to you, because it was like falling into a huge pile of pillows. :-) The pictures will explain the rest.

I mentioned before that there are a lot of crazy parties going on… Here, I just want to mention a few parties which were the origin: The Skiddles Party, Renate&Maria’s Birthday Party, Social Hour in Coaches, Doctor Party. + A lot more…

A lot of people like to talk about Spring Break, but now I have experienced it on my own… and it was a great experience. I have posted a video before and here are the pictures which would go with it! :-)

A few weeks ago, one of the students here, Dave, organized a “Co-Rec Tennis-Tournament”.

We were about 9 teams and we played “2-out-of-3” (means you had to win two sets to win the game). It was soo hot when we played, wow… I had sunburn on my calves and on my head. *auah* BUT, it was so much fun! I have never really played before, thus I didn’t think we could win one set, but surprisingly we (Valerija and I) did a very good job. I was quite exhausted after that day. In the evening we had a little potluck-after-game-get-together.

On Sunday, we had the finals, everybody was so tired and just wanted to get rid of the games, but we needed a winner… so they were forced to play! *hihi* (Of course, I was already out!)

Last weekend, we went to the Albuquerque Zoo. It was a beautiful day and since most of us had a little hang-over, we enjoyed this easy-going, no-stress Sunday. I think we took a lot of good pictures! Hope you enjoy them!




Miscellanous PICs... ;-)

Bye,bye,

Ben

Springbreak 2008 - Puerto Vallarta

Hey Guys,

here is a self-made video of my trip to Mexico during Springbreak 2008. :)

Hope you like it!

cu

Benny

Tuesday, 11th to 13th Thursday 2007 – El Paso/Mexico, Carlsbad Caverns, Whitesands

One of the last days of school has begun. I was glad to finish all my class work and start my winter break. My first trip was with Doug to the southern part of New Mexico.

Our destination was El Paso which is directly on the border to New Mexico/Mexico. A few days before our trip down there, Doug busted his engine in his Jeep Cherokee. Therefore we drove down with a rental car, Chrysler 300, a really nice and luxurious car. On our way we stopped at a beautiful view in the middle of nowhere, the place is called “Valley of Fire”. Check the pictures! :-) The evening wasn’t very spectacular, we both were tired and called the night pretty early, after a good Mexican Diner.

The next day we got up at a decent time and went on our way to the Carlsbad Caverns. Massive underground chambers, overwhelming beauty and great fun – you can all find it there. Doug and I did a self-guided tour through the caves. It was a pretty cold day, but thus we were “underground”, the climate was pretty comfortable. If I remember right, we spent about 2 hours there and haven’t seen everything. We have seen “The Big Room”, “King Palace”, “The Room of the Giants”, etc. – Just amazing rock formations. Partially crazy and unbelievable beautifully illuminated by the guys who take care of those caves. Hopefully you’ll like the pictures as much as I liked the caves. Though I have seen something like a cave before in Germany, I admit that it was a heck of an experience. On the evening, I went to Mexico with Doug and walked over a local market. It looked like a Christmas Market in Germany and was directly in front of a church. Sadly, most of the stores were closed, because as soon as you cross the border you have to change the time an hour ahead and unfortunately we were already late.
After a long day on my feet, I was happy to fall asleep!

Thursday, the 13th of December, we made a trip to Whitesands. It rained last night and therefore the sand wasn’t as pristine as it could have been, still it looked like a huge area where god grabbed a pile of sand and thrown it onto a piece of bare, flat piece of soil. Now, it seems like snow in Russia, besides the mountains in the distance.
When we entered Whitesands, we went to the tourist information first and collected some info for me and a piece of plastic I used to slide down the hills. :-)
That was my trip to the Carlsbad Caverns and Whitesands. In the afternoon we drove back to Albuquerque, because I wanted to be home on Friday.

Friday, 14th of December – Christmas Reception UNM-Hospital

On Friday, I worked in the morning and prepared Doug and myself to go to the Christmas Reception of the UNM-Hospital. The reception was in the Albuquerque Museum of National History. I just took a few photos, but it is definitely a place where I wanna go over during the next few months. A section of the museum is dedicated to the stars, a planetarium. Somehow I feel gravitated to it. I love places which open your eyes about the stars! J (besides, you can imagine they connect you with people around the world; especially when you’re far, far away)
The food was great and the people were all in a cheery mood, which I really enjoyed. Of course, the fact I would be on the beach in a few days helped me to enjoy it even more.

Saturday, 15th to 23rd Sunday 2007 – Dominican Republic / Punta Cana

My long planned and desired trip to the Dominican Republic started on Saturday. I flew from Albuquerque to Detroit to meet with my fellow colleagues from my exchange program. Arne, Lukas, Tobias and I left to the Dominican Rep. on Sunday morning around 6 o’clock. Since I have lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico over the past few months, I haven't got any contact with snow and thus I was surprised how much snow in Detroit has fallen. Due to that fact, we had a delay of 1 ½ hours and it was nerve-wracking until we finally found out that our connection flight in Ford Lauderdale would wait for us. At this time we were just glad to be on our connection flight. Nobody wasted a thought on our luggage. I mention our luggage, because we received it two days later. Although we were a little depressed and were already giving up the thought to getting our luggage back, we still enjoyed the great weather and the incredible surrounding. I mention it in almost every blog, sorry, but please take a look at the pictures! I have never seen such a beautiful beach and such clear water. I was swept off my feet. Besides these things, the hotel was very nice. They even upgraded us from our previously booked hotel (Barcelo Bavaro Beach Resort – Casino) to the same hotel chain, but this one was called “Barcelo Bavaro Beach Resort- Beach”. Through this upgrade we had just 30 feet (14 Meter) to the beach and were perfectly located for the in-hotel parties. The first evening we went to a restaurant on the beach and afterwards we checked out the dance club of the resort. By the way, the resort is totally surrounded by security check-points, so nobody needs to worry about ones’ safety.
On Monday we slept till noon and were just trying to find a way to get our luggage back. We called the airport five times and bothered the customers service in the hotel a few times. In the late afternoon we decided to go to a nearby store and buy us a few things, like trunks and toothbrushes. The next day we lucked out and our luggage arrived and all of us were more than happy to change clothes and finally start our vacation. In the evening, party was mandatory!! ;-) During the next days we played a lot of volleyball on the beach and were enjoying ourselves. Playing volleyball on such a beautiful beach was like being in paradise where nothing is bothering you. GREAT.
The next day we were looking for a palm tree which grew in a diagonal way, so we could climb on it and take cool pictures. *hihi* (sounds childish, but looks great)
I cannot tell you how much fun we had on our party-tours through the dance club. We met so many people that our volleyball matches the following days, were often between guys we met the previous evening. *g*
Besides party and relaxing, we were driving speed boat and went snorkelling in the coral reef, right in front of our beach. Wow,… Amazing!
Sadly, most of our underwater pictures were blurry, but on some you can see how nice the underwater world is. Going along with that I am even more frustrated that I cannot learn how to dive. *schnief* Well, that’s life.
After this gorgeous trip, it was though to get back to the cold weather of Denver.

Monday, 24th to 27th Thursday 2007 – Denver, Colorado / Christmas, Skiing, Snowmobiling

Denver, what to say, great place to go skiing and this time, after the few inches on Thanksgiving, there was a few feet of it. But first, I arrived on the 24^th of December and Doug was so kind to pick me up (with my luggage *jjippppiii*) at the airport. On our way back to Scott’s house we stopped at a liquor store and another store to buy a honey baked ham and a few other things. This Christmas was different from the ones I celebrated with my family at home. BUT, please don’t misunderstand me, I was aware that it’ll be different, but it was different in a good way!! We relaxed on the 24^th and on the 25^th we unwrapped our presents. I didn’t expect to get anything, however I got three 15$ itunes-cards. *free music* Besides that, Doug invited me to go snowmobiling on the 27^th. So, it was a very generous Christmas for me. On the 25^th, I also tried to help Joelah with stuffing the turkey and preparing the sides. I like cooking and Joelah has such a nice personality that it is just fun to hanging around or cook with her. Later, everybody was involved in putting up all the dishes and chatting with each other. Again, the diner was great and I have overeaten a little bit. The chill out time after our diner helped me to regain my drive to go out to watch the movie, “I am legend”. The movie was definitely worth seeing. Soon after we were back home, we went to go to bed in order to be fit for skiing and tubing the next day. Another day in Denver dawns and trouble started with the attempt to get the jacks from the RV off the road. To make it short, I got to ski and it was fabulous, although it was just 2 ½ hours. At night we went tubing. Most of the time, I like to be in control of what’s going on, but tubing and how it works was plain fun. And if you consider go tubing, you should go with friends, because in a group it is much more fun. The evening of the 26^th, we spent at the lodge of Doug’s friend in the mountains around Denver.

The morning of the 27^th was a cold, but clear day. We left to the snowmobiling rental early in the morning and changed our clothes to be good prepared for our cold trip into the snow. After a short introduction of the snowmobile itself we started. The acceleration was amazing, like in a motor-bike, just on snow. :-) We had to be really careful, because, we drove on the paths with about 40-50 miles per hour and they work like normal streets with a two-way traffic.
On the meadows we had soo much fun, because we finally could push the envelope a little bit.
I took a few pictures and made one little video to give you an idea what it is like to drive such a powerful machine. *hihi* Because of the freezing weather we took a break in the snowmobile rental to warm up again. Warmed up and with a hot chocolate in the stomach we started the last 3 hours of the fun. On the last meadow, I finally found a small ramp which helped me jump a little. *jiipiii* Well, the day went by so fast and after this strenuous fun, I was more than happy to fall into my bed and sleep. But my trip wasn’t over… the next day, I went to the airport to leave to Chicago.

Friday, 28th December to 02nd January Wednesday 2008 – Chicago, New York

My trip to Chicago was a disaster. I don’t want to elaborate it into detail. In the end, it took me about 9 hours to enter an airplane which then took me to Chicago. At 11:30pm I arrived in my hostel and about 1h 30min. later I met my friends from my exchange program. Shortly afterwards all of us went to bed. The next day, I met Tobias and his friend Stefan. Before leaving Chicago, we visited the Sears tower and the millennium park with its huge reflective bean (sorry, I don’t know the exact name for it!).
Our drive to New York took us about 14 hours. After 9 hours we made a stop in a hotel. A funny incident was that another participant of our exchange program woke us up the next day. He had some doughnuts (also written- donuts) with him and was traveling in the opposite direction with his girl friend. He came from NY and drove to Chicago.
Our hotel in New Jersey, Newark was pretty good. One problem we encountered was to get from Newark to Manhattan in a cheap and easy way. On the first day, we went shopping to an outlet nearby which offered quite good bargains. The next day, the 30^th of December 2007, we went to Manhattan to see the Time Square and the Hard Rock Café. There, we talked to a bar tender what she would recommend to do on New Year’s Eve if she was in New York. She told us about the New Year’s Party of the Hard Rock Café. That sounded pretty good, but it would have cost us 225$. Though there would have been an open bar and food, it would have been a lot of money. After we were back in the hotel, Tobi and Stefan checked different clubs in Manhattan and finally found about four clubs which were interesting. On the 31^st we went into the city on a little detour of about one hour, because the Holland Tunnel was closed or congested. On this little detour we found an amazing few on Manhattan (see pictures). At about 10pm we finally arrived in a club called “Lotus” and there we spent almost the whole night. It was much cheaper and offered the same deal as the Hard Rock Café. I haven’t slept during that night and therefore was slightly tired the next morning. All of us slept in the car for a few hours, before we started our small bus-tour through Manhattan. We went to the financial district, Chinatown, etc.. Later that day, the final visit for me, we went to the Empire State Building. The weather was freezing cold, but great because there was no cloud in the sky. I think my pictures came out pretty good. That was my trip to New York. The 2^nd of January 2008 was again just for traveling. I arrived in Albuquerque in the evening and was happy to be “home” again. :-)

Thank you for your interest in my little vacation, hopefully I described it enough for you and the pictures supplement my words well. Ben