Holi

When I first heard of the Holi festival I had to think of some wannabe-60/70 generation revival, but it turned out to be a very nice event where everybody throws colored powder at everybody else.  Holi is a Hindu spring festival in India and it's meant to celebrate the begin of spring, all the good things in the world and love. If you'd like to read more, wikipedia knows it.

There was one Holi event yesterday and one today - we ended up participating in today's event because it was meant to be the "undergraduate" one, i.e. more party ;) Both events were directly at the beach so we could wash of the color immediately afterwards - but we didn't and walked around as smurves on the beach.That was fun since a lot of people recognized where we had been and commented "That was fun, eh?". Fortunately, after intensive scrubbing the color goes off your skin and I don't feel any damage to my lungs. I got a pair of white shorts and a T-shirt colored for free... and a sunburn, I guess, but that might be some rests of color as well ;)

Spring

Just going for a brief run really made my evening:

Or running on the athletics track:

Quite a few people were still around and on the beach. Today we had the first free barbecue outside the Engineering building on campus. The line was huge, but we got typical American burgers and hot-dogs - and finally water melons.

Translating

I think I have mentioned the orientation week for international students and the "translation" of American phrases we have learned there. Some of them were:

"How are you?" - "Hello."

"Let's have lunch sometime!" - "Mh, you're a nice person, and we might have lunch... some time... not now!! Maybe in... like... a few months?!"

Probably the same happens in Germany, but if you have to understand another language and deconvolve the meaning with some cultural code, it's not alway straightforward what people mean and I was thankful that I talked to others about it.
There are theories about why Americans try to be very polite; one of them says that so many cultures have to live together without conflicting that you try to be friends with everyone. At the same time, a lot of people come and go, so you have to have an easy, open and friendly way to communicate (and to make new friends).

Continuing the phrases from above:

"I'll think about it." -  99% for "No!"

"You might consider doing xyz." - "I encourage you and you actually should do xyz."

"I don't support it." - "I am absolutely against this."

When you tell someone you study physics and you get the reaction:
"Ooooh...". -  "Mh, that's difficult, let's switch topics. But no worries, I won't be too social with you."

"I would love to go!" - "That's nice; I might consider to go."

"I'm okay." (Be careful: This is not "I'm fine", thus usually, something is weird or stressful - that's an important one!) - "I'm not okay."

"This is interesting / has a particular property." - "It's wrong or off or it doesn't taste well."

"We should go and do x sometime!" - (That's similar to the lunch-date:) "We might do x sometime, but ... mmh..."

"Your handwriting is beautiful!" - "Yay, I can read it!!"

Whale watching

Santa Barbara is now in whale season, i.e. whales give birth in the South near Mexico, swim up to Alaska and pass the Californian coast, including Santa Barbara. They are not faster than a walking human being, so that's like us hiking to Alaska from California! We tried to see the whale today, but I am not convinced that this is a whale:

Nor are these:

Thus, we saw dolphins and sea lions and some small fish in the water. There are also seals around, but sea lions have got larger fins.
Fortunately, we were allowed to re-use our tickets since we didn't see whales :) But I am already happy about the dolphins.

Visit days

What do you think about a free flight to the US, free lodging and a few days full of science talks and sight seeing? That's what's happening during graduate student visit days. Universities invite the admitted students (about 60 in our case) to stay with them for one or two days, talk to professors and other graduate students to convince them that the visited university is the only right one to choose.

 Unfortunately, the visiting students will not enjoy this nice sunny campus view since it started raining today... absolutely unrepresentative! 

Thus, each university tries to show off everything they have. For example, last night, the prospective Physics graduate students were invited to a famous ice cream store in downtown and today we had a poster session, talks and lots of food. And in a few hours the famous prospectives' party is going to take place at a graduate students' home. 

Most people will leave tomorrow and might be traveling to the next university. I met people who had not been home for a month to visit every university they had been admitted to. Some even already know where they are going to accept the admission, but still travel around since it's travel costs and everything is paid.

All admitted female students will enjoy an extended program with the "Women in Physics" organization at the UCSB: we prepared a brunch, sight-seeing/hiking and a dinner tomorrow for those.

Questions you might be asked

It's a prejudice that Americans are bad at geography. You might be confronted with the following dialogues or reactions in Germany as well, however, it's kind of funny to see what Americans think about Germans and other cultures:

- "Do you guys in Germany like Angela Merkel?" (I mean, that's not funny, it's an interesting question, but it seems like German politics would reduce to Angela Merkel ;))

- "Do you listen to songs in English in Germany at all?"

- "But there are universities in Germany, why did you come here?!" (Taking into account that there are no tuition fees in Germany, there's a point to think about it)

- "You're from Germany, I see! I know somebody from Sweden!" (or: "Ah, so you're from Europe!" - there's the US and there's Europe ;))

- "Yeah, Schnitzl and Leyderhousn, isn't it?"

- "I've been to the Octoberfest, I know!!"

In addition to that, there's been a brief dialogue a Pakistani friend told me: He was talking to an American fellow student and he just attended university in Pakistan.
So he asked: "How did you come here then?"
He said: "I took the camel."
She: "Oh, really?!?!"
He: "Well, first I took the camel to cross the country and then the donkey to get across the ocean."
She: "I see, that makes sense." ;)

Another Turkish friend of mine made up the "camel traffic" since he was talking to another American friend about the public transport in Turkey. So, be careful around 5 pm since that's the rush hour and even your BMW camel might get stuck, so catch the late-night-camel line or an early one ;)

Fulbright Enrichment Seminar

My fellowship organization (Fulbright) offers seminars about a variety of topics to its scholars. From Thursday through Sunday, I attended a seminar called "Democracy in Action - US Politics and Elections" which took place in Atlanta - that's when I found out that the US is pretty large and it took me 15 h to travel back from Atlanta to Santa Barbara.

But it was absolutely worth it! We simulated the US presidential election process and elected our own president, went to an elementary school and talked to children about different cultures and we were invited by host families to spend an evening with them and have dinner. On top of that, 131 Fulbright scholars from 61 different countries were the participants of this seminar! So I talked to people from Indonesia, Pakistan, Mongolia, Laos, Azerbaijan, ... It was awesome and a fantastic experience.

Conference room before our presidential debate.

The entire seminar was supported by the International Institute of Education / US Department of State, so even our travel costs were covered. 

Stage for the presidential candidates.