A little bit more complicated than just attending the graduate housing ginger bread house building party is: making ginger bread with a ready mixture like this:
Well, it was not too easy, because we ended up with a very brittle dough so we added the tenfold amount of water ;) (just one order of magnitude, shouldn't matter too much ;)). So we couldn't make any cutting of shapes any more, but we had one huge ginger bread instead:
It was still stable enough that we could have build a house, but it was so nice, warm and ready, that we just started enjoying it. The next level will be actual self-made ginger bread, but I will have to translate the ingredients or that and it's not too common to bake huge amounts of ginger bread in the US.
At the UCSB we live in a quarter system, i.e. there are no semester as most German universities structure their academic year, but quarters the year is divided into. This week was the last week of the fall quarter, so the final examinations were written. But unlike most German examinations, the graduate courses have a "take-home-final", so you get for example 24h for this homework. There's nearly no written 2-3h examination any more (that's the "undergraduate level of testing").
Comparison of the image of a cell nucleus once with a confocal microscope (left) and once including light form all heights (right). wikipedia
However, somehow I was lucky, and had "only" two presentations and one report to turn in. That was even the week before the finals' week :) So I've got more time to focus on research and next week I will get training on the confocal microscope which is a vital instrument in Biophysics: You can travel through your sample and focus on "slices". Often this microscope is combined with a fluorescent microscope so that only certain, dyed parts are illuminated and light from other slices (which are not in focus) is not included in the image.
Since we were lacking real "Lebkuchen" (or ginger bread) we took honey crackers to build a "Lebkuchen"-House. It was super fun, but the house didn't survive too long... But for our architecture we won a 5$ Starbucks gift card, yay! And if we want to build another one there are actually sets you can purchase at the supermarket (you might run into real Lebkuchen and not our pseudo-Lebkuchen substitute).
Once upon a time, there were tuition fees in some counties in Germany and it was a huge debate and I can remember a lot of demonstrations until the fees were abandoned - yearly fees of about 1300 $. And in the US so many people pay the tenfold or even hundredfold amount per year! Most students start borrowing money on student loans so that after four years of undergraduate studies you've already collected a lot of debts to pay back. But imagine, you've started studying for some time and realize you are not going to make it or something happens and you don't graduate - there's still this huge amount of money left. As far as I got it, that will cause a different pressure on you to finally graduate. (Unlike in Germany where you "just" can skip or switch the subject - one year or even more does not matter too much.)
However, there's of course a movement against the fees, called the "Million Student March" - and again against this movements there are the really conservative voices, e.g.
Why I stand against the Million Student March
It's really fun to read ;)
Today I've been to a Fulbright Lunch which was attended by a lot of international Fulbright scholars (not only students, but also professors and their families, postdocs,...). It took place in Santa Monica at a house on one of the hills from which you have got a beautiful view on the ocean and LA! Every scholar also brought a national dish from their country. It was super interesting and awesome!
Here are more pictures: http://masterusa-lotta.blogspot.de/p/impressions.html
"Oh my goooosh, snooooow!!" - when we came close to Yosemite (after about 871429 hours of bus drive) we saw a not negligible amount of snow in the forest around us! It seemed to be another planet, not California. There were just some cabins around, no large buildings, no supermarket... and no signal! We had free wireless Internet access at our hostel, but I am not sure if Internet is the most important thing if you go hiking ;) I was more worried about not being able to call someone if any accident happened.
[The facts: The International Students Association of the UCSB organized a trip to the Yosemite National Park for four days leaving on Thanksgiving morning (Thursday), then there are two days of hiking in Yosemite and one day for driving back.]
After exploring and understanding the hostel (do not let children sleep on the upper bunk bed - I'll sleep at the bottom ;) ) we had a huge Thanksgiving Dinner on Thursday. It seems to be that you are not supposed to be able to stand up easily afterwards. Even for vegetarians there was a lot. The dessert would have been a meal for itself (pumpkin pie, apple pie, cream).
But you should have some space for "S'mores" afterwards at the campfire! Marshmallows are melted on a wooden stick just above the fire and then stuck between two crackers and chocolate. The name "S'mores" = "I want some more" is kind of understandable ;) (If you're not too tired by the bus ride and maybe didn't have Thanksgiving Dinner beforehand)
The next morning started with an awesome warm breakfast (no muffin & coffee-style at all!) - that's probably the latest point where everybody stopped thinking about calories. But then again - 1.5 h bus tour to the hiking path in Yosemte NP.
And it was absolutely worth it! We started with the small hike and saw some beautiful nice small stream, a huge amount of snow and the motive for the characteristic Mac desktop background! At the "top" of the path we took there was a smaller, short path which led to another water fall and these falls go a few hundred of meters downwards...
This was all so impressive that we finally concluded that the modern digital technologies are so advanced that everything still seemed real.
