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| San Diego 2006-2007 |
+++ June 2, 2007 +++ Return to Germany +++ After 286 days in San Diego I returned back to Germany. An almost 20 hours journey from San Diego to Munich, via Chicago and London, marked the final activity relating to my stay in San Diego. I have spent two great semesters / nine and a half months / many wonderful days in Southern California. There is a long list of people I have to thank for supporting me and I hope that I did not miss one of you personally during my last two weeks. In case I did, I hope you find yourselves in the following list. For this great experience, thank you Rotary, my fellow scholars and my American or international friends. I have learned a lot - inside and outside of university, shared a great deal of fun with you, and cannot wait to travel again! Stay tuned - there is more to come... |
+++ May 27, 2007 +++ Sailing +++ That Sunday I spent a wonderful afternoon on a sailing trip through the San Diego Bay to the open ocean. I had a great day and a great sunburn...
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+++ May 25, 2007 +++ Birthday Party +++
My original birthday on May 16 was ruined by last final on that day from 7pm - 10pm. Nine days later my party took place. Thanks everybody for coming!
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+++ May 22, 2007 +++ Sunset Soiree +++ Only two days after the Rotary conference I went to another very pleasant event hosted by the Del Mar Rotary Club: The Annual Sunset Soiree. Unfortunately it was very cloudy and we actually did not see the sunset but that was the only downside to this event. Everything else was perfect.
We were invited to wander around between tables loaded with delicacies and fine wine listening to cool tunes of a live band on a rooftop terrace ontop of the upscale Del Mar Plaza. Unfortunately I forgot my camera and these pictures do not show how packed the place was. And yes, the background of the pictures is the Pacific Ocean.
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+++ May 20, 2007 +++ Ensenada +++ This weekend was the weekend of the Rotary District 5340 Conference - a last chance for me to see many of the Rotarians that I have met during my stay in San Diego. The conference took place in beautiful Ensenada, Mexico, which is a coastal town located about 80 miles south of the border.
The conference consisted of many speeches and presentations, one held by us - the six scholars that attended the meeting. One of my personal highlights was an afternoon trip to a local farm. We spent the whole afternoon being served excellent Mexican food and drinking wine - sorry, lot's of wine - produced by the winery of one of the Mexican Rotary members.
I am glad that I got the chance to travel to Ensenada. Otherwise Tijuana and Rosarito would have been my only memories and they are certainly not representative. Ensenada also has a very attractive nightlife. Saturday night, some of us took of to downtown Ensenada where we first went to a famous bar, Hussong's, and afterwards to a Mexican Salsa club, Mango Mango, where we danced the night away until 4am. Overall, it was a great conference - thanks Rotary.
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+++ May 12, 2007 +++ Esperanza Work Day 2 +++ Again, I was involved with Esparanza, the organization that assists underprivileged Tijuana families in building their own home. Together with the Del Mar Rotary Club and some high school and college students from both the USA and Mexico, I helped stabilizing a house's foundation walls and producing tiles for its floor.
Tough work. Except for the concrete mixer, the only tools on the site were shovels and our hands - all manual labor. So we passed bucket after bucket, filled with concrete, through our human supply line from the mixer to the foundation walls and the forms for the tiles.
After the workday, everybody was certainly tired and almost everybody was sunburned to a degree that - in comparison - would make a cooked lobster appear pale. Talking about food, we eventually enjoyed genuine and delicious Mexican food, prepared by the family who we were supporting. A great experience!
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+++ May 10, 2007 +++ Concert & Bay Cruise +++ What a nice week! We had a great start into the week with the end-of-class party on Monday, the weather was fantastic throughout the week, I went to the beach and on Thursday, Carey and her husband Sean invited me and some friends to join them on a private listener on a San Diego Bay cruise ship.
Alternate Routes was playing some nice soft rock tunes while we were enjyoing the sunset, the cruise and drinks. Thanks, Carey & Sean!
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+++ May 7, 2007 +++ Finals +++ This Monday, one of my classes - Managment 743: Business Plan Development - ended. Uncountable hours of case study analyses, paper-writing, business plan preparation, presentations and class sessions are over. This class was probably the most time-consuming class I ever had. And its final meeting was as exceptional as the class was throughout the semester.
After the last three presentations, our professor Dr. Cunningham invited us to a bar for some drinks and snacks. Besides us, the bartender was probably the happiest person that night - especially when he closed out Dr. Cunningham's tab at $1,050. Good job, class - thanks professor. More pictures can be found here... After my other presentation on Tuesday in my Finance 656: Financial Institutions class, there are "only" two more final exams left during the next week. The end of the semester is close. |
+++ May 4, 2007 +++ Friend +++
Almost five months after my mother's and sisters visit a friend of mine showed up: Christian! Since I am in the middle of preparing for my finals I was not the perfect host but somehow we managed to have a great time every other day. And for all of you who know Christian, he was never the one to get bored at one place for too long a time [Allgäu - Munich - Nigeria - USA - Prague - Guatemala; and I am not talking about what he does for fun!]
Right out of his internship with The Boston Consulting Group, he enjoyed a few days in Los Angeles, California, and Ensenada, Mexico, as well as SAN DIEGO, Southern Cali - with the best G4G tourguide (German-for-Germans tourguide) around ;)
La Jolla, Downtown, PB - he's seen it all. Spring in Sun Diego. We'll both be wrapping up our studies in Germany this summer and I am looking forward to that time. Thanks, man for coming
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+++ April 21, 2007 +++Camp +++ Located only a couple of miles from Palm Springs is the Idlewild camp, where most of the other Rotary scholars and I spend three days, helping to run the RYLA conference for approxiamtely 300 Highschool kids. It was a great experience. First of all, Friday evening surprised us with two inches of snow.
The conference offered a variety of activities, ranging from guest speakers and group discussions to an outdoor ropes course. The latter was a thriller. Lot's of adrenaline, a mix of fear and bravery and, of course, fun! Swinging and balancing on ropes in the tree tops was a great experience - although it was still cold but at least the snow actually melted completely on Staurday.
I enjoyed it a lot - especially spending time with my fellow scholars since the countdown to my departure to Germany says: 4 weeks.
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+++ April 14, 2007 +++ Palm Springs +++ Sand & Snow - there is more to the dessert than just heat! This weekend, I spent two days in Palm Springs together with my Rotary Counselor Suzanne. We went to see her son David and his partner Ed in beautiful Palm Springs.
Besides relaxing at the pool of their house - like almost all of the neighborhood's houses an elegantly designed mid-century architecture house that would perfectly make for the background of a car advertising or a Playboy photoshoot - we went out, admired the impressive gardens and went on San Jacinto Mountain. Palm Springs is located at an altitude of approximately 300 meters. San Jacinto Mountain, only a few kilometers in the west of the town, rises to an altitude of some 2,600 meters, to which a rotating aerial tram took us.
Before we left, I was lying at the pool for some time, enjoying a cloudless sky and the desert's dry heat. One hour later, we stood on the mountain's peak, freezing and looking at areas that were still covered with snow right in front of us. More pictures can be fund here.
Many thanks to Suzanne, who took me there, and David and Ed, for their great hospitality! |
+++ April 1, 2007 +++ Cowles Mountain +++ Looking back - from high above - at the area where I used to live for seven months is what i did while hiking Cowles Montain. This mountain is one of the many Mission Trails Regional Parks in San Diego County. Located about 15 miles from the coast, it offered an amzing view of the nearby Lake Murray as well as downtown San Diego in the West and El Cajon in the East.
It was much clearer that day than the pictures suggest and the skyline of dowtown could be seen, only my camera was too blind to capture that. Even the far-out Point Loma headland could be identified.
As you might see on the pictures, the Eastern County area actually presents itself as a very dry, desert-like scenery. Temperatures out here are significantly higher than at the coastal areas during the summer months. Typically, San Diego's coastal areas are covered by the so-called maritime layer - no, that is not smog - a gray foggy and cloudy haze coming from the sea. The eastern areas usually do not get much of it and I woke up most of the days under clear blue sky. However, I am excited about living close to the each now - and the maritime layer burns off anyways during the day. |
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The Summer is coming back and I am well prepared: I will spend the rest of my stay in San Diego in Pacific Beach, starting April 1, 2007. I have figured out a good way to get to university from my new place. The map in the Contact section is already updated. I am really excited about moving there. The bay is in walking distance and the beach as well as the bars are very close, too. On Sunday, I spent all day at the beach, in PB, doing a little sports, chilling, and finally barbecuing. What a beautiful day! And it was good to do that because this semester is really keeping me busy. Most of the recent weeks, I have not even had a free weekend. This weekend was a nice break to that "routine" with the day at the beach being a nice finish to a more relaxing couple of days. I do not have pictures from the beach but here are a few impression from my nightly activities like an international students party I went to.
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+++ February 3, 2007 +++ CrabFest +++ Unfortunately I forgot my camera when I went to the Point Loma CrabFest - a unique gathering of the Portugese community of Point Loma. Imagine a nice big community hall with an adjacent bar, crowded with jolly people, all waiting for one thing to happen: the arrival of big plates loaded with enormous amounts of Dungeness Crab - DELICIOUS! After plenty of shellfish and fine drinks, a special kind of auction started. Baskets filled with food, drinks, and toys, all prepared by Portugese ladies where auctioned. That night, I saw the world's most expensive cookie jar and I am sure the new owner will enjoy every single piece of her/his jar of $600 treats. |
+++ January 31, 2007 +++ Job +++ After a wonderfull Fall semester with only studies to focus on I am now back to the world of business. It took me a while to find someting appealing because my visa restricts me to working on-campus or in university-related jobs. In order to get a little more involved and gather some professional experience abroad, I have finally found a promising internship opportunity with the business consulting program CCAT via the university's Entrepreneurial Management Center. CCAT is a public-private collaborative partnership between academia, industry, and the US government, providing support to technology start-ups for accelerating the development and application of advanced technologies. I work on a very interesting project for a San Diego-based venture in the sensor network industry. I am looking forward to this great experience. |
+++ January 22, 2007 +++ Back to School +++ The spring semester has started and I am back to school. Classes last semester were good and I am looking forward to my new classes this time: MGT 741 Business Plan Development, FIN 656 Financial Institutions, and ACCTG 620 Financial Reporting Analysis II. Except for my personal and academic benefit that means that I will be online more often again than during the last weeks. Hope to see you on (and talk to you via) skype before I start with my studies in the morning! To all my German friends I wish good luck with the upcoming exams during the next weeks! |
+++ January 6, 2007 +++ Cocktail Party +++
To "increase motivation" for the upcoming semester, I invited the other Rotary Scholars to a cocktail party at my place. With hindsight, I do not seem to have lost all of my skills as a bartender. The drinks turned out to be not as experimental as I thought first - all guests survived. Drinks served that Saturday night ranged from Mai Tai, Piña Colada, Planter's Punch, Sex on the Beach, Gin Fizz, and Gin Tonic, to beer as well as wine. I had good guests ;)
Thanks for coming everybody - I am ready for the new semester now.
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+++ January 5, 2007 +++ Esperanza Marketing +++ In November I joined a group that helped Esperanza International with painting the dormrooms at their housing facility in Tijuana, Mexico. It was a great experience and I will join Esperanza's actual projectes, the organization, financing, and assistance in housebuilding for underprivileged families, soon. Now I felt ready to help represent - at the San Diego Town & Country Convention Center.
Together with Father Ted Brown, one of the initiators, and Dan Henderson, the President of Esperanza International, I hosted an exhibit. We started at 8am, which is an improvement compared to the meeting time of 6am the last time. ;) I am looking forward to further support Esperanza and to report to you about what is going on. |
+++ January 3, 2007 +++ Visitors +++
From December 26, 2006, until January 3, 2007, my mother and my sister visited me in San Diego. We had a lot of fun - the weather was great, we went to see so many places and attractions like the zoo, Sea World, Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institute, my University, Fashion Valley, Downtown, La Jolla, Point Loma, the beaches, Tijuana, Rosarito, and many more. And we had a wonderful New Year's Eve. Whereas I was occupied 24/7 with being their tour guide, they had a relaxing time ;)
We took all the pictures with their camera: more than 200! Everybody who wants to have a look at what we did is welcome to show up at my place, have dinner, a drink and then a look at the pictures with me...
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+++ December 24, 2006 +++ Christmas Dear friends, 'tis the season and I wish you all a Merry Christmas! I hope you can enjoy the holidays together with you families, friends and loved ones. Again, I wish you a...
... from Ocean Beach, San Diego, CA, with this self-made "Christmas-Photograph". |
+++ December 18, 2006 +++ San Francisco Four days in San Francisco. Tired feet, hundreds of photographs, a flood of impressions. I love that city. It's variety is unbelievable: Golden Gate Bridge, China Town, Fisherman's Wharf, Alcatraz, Union Square, Embarcadero, Cable Car, lovely small houses, giant high rises, the skyline hotels, bars, excellent restaurants, museums, shops and malls, steep hills, big streets, great public transportation, friendly people... And so much more! Have a look at selected photographs! |
+++ November 30, 2006 +++ Autumn in Southern California +++
We are not so slowly reaching this year's end. The season is changing and so does the sentiment of the people. First preparations for Advent become increasingly apparent: in the parks, the malls, the streets and the homes. But it is not Christmas yet and there has been another event worthwhile to be mentioned. Thanksgiving. The annual celebration of the outcome of man's agricultural and industrial work, the harvest, taking place on the third Thursday of November of every year. Everybody knows that the traditional way of celebrating this event is for the families to gather and have turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans and an many more fine things like pumpkin pie. I was invited to a Rotarian's Thanksgiving dinner. It started with him reciting a speech by Abraham Lincoln addressing thanksgiving in a time of (civil) war - a historical speech with contemporary implications. Then followed a delicous dinner and afterwards we spent the evening playing a thanksgiving trivia game.
When I usually think of Autumn, falling leaves and soft yellow, red and brown colours come to my mind. There is no such thing in Southern Cali! While the northern and Eastern parts of California might have an Autumn that I am used to, San Diego's palm trees do not lose their leaves or change their color. It becomes cold a night but during the day it is still wonderfully warm and sunny - or why do you think is this La Jolla lifeguard watching the beach?
In the photograph they might be to small to be found, but there are people surfing and swimming out there in the water. In November. And at land, I witnessed the preparations of an outdoor marriage - a typical scenery at the beautiful beaches of La Jolla and Coronado or the great Balboa Park. Dear visitor, these are the colours of Autumn in San Diego!
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+++ November 11, 2006 +++ Farm & Gala +++ Last Saturday again was occupied by Rotary activities. To be more precise by two - two that could not be more different! On Saturday morning, I went to the Borden's Ranch, a farm about an hour north of San Diego. The Uptown Rotary Club had organized a fundraiser that basically consisted in persimmons picking.
Right, we raised money by picking fruits - persimmons (lat.: Diospyros Kaki; dt.: Kaki ) - very delicious and sweet exotic fruits. The results were 500 lbs of fruits - not bad for a morning's work. I brought home a whole bag of these tasty tomate-sized, pale-tomato-colored, "that-are-not-tomatoes?-fruits".
A few hours later the San Diego Rotarians - around 450 of them - gathered in the Sheraton Harbour Island to celebrate the Paul Harris Gala. Guess who joined...
Dinner was execellent, the speaker was great and dancing was fun! "Rotary, there is something I wanna tell you: representing the current Ambassadorial Scholars in San Diego, I want more of that..." |
+++ November 4, 2006 +++ Esperanza Work Day, Tijuana +++ 5am, Saturday, November 4: alarm rings: it was time to get up and time to team up with some members of Del Mar Rotary Club and Interact Club, as well as some High School kids, my fellow scholar Nils and his friend Gerrit, for a work day in Tijuana. We were painting the dorm rooms at Esparanza, an organization that assists underprivileged Tijuana families in building their first home. The dormatories are used for service clubs, church groups, student groups when they come for a week to assist with the home building. All in all 40 people helped with the project and we had a lot of fun!
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+++ October 31, 2006 +++ Halloween +++ On Saturday, October 28, 2006, one of my classmates in the Entrepreneurship class, Adam, invited me to his Halloween party at his place in Del Mar, which is about 25 miles north of San Diego. When I came there I could not believe my eyes: guestlist, security guards, a live band, bartenders, catering, a waterfall at the driveway to the house, a pool, a pool house, a cinema in the basement, a club room and a WONDERFULLY SCARY decoration in the garden and some of the rooms. I felt like I was in a film studio...
Unfortunately the pictures do not capture the atmosphere, but you have to have a look at them! (In the San Diego & Halloween photo album.) Shortly after my arrival, my camera's batteries were depleted so I could not document what happened when the 100+ beautifully disguised guests really got the party going, but believe me, the live music and a costume contest were an awesome deal of fun. What a great house and what a party - thanks Adam & Jen! |
+++ October 23, 2006 +++ Death Valley & Yosemite Park+++
On Friday morning, we left San Diego for a tour through two beautiful national parks in California. The first stop was Death Valley, a desert with salt lakes close to the state border of Nevada. After a night in the middle of nowhere (Bishop), we headed to Yosemite National Park, a giant park around 200 miles east of San Francisco.
We spend the night in a Motel in Fresno. On Sunday, on our way back to San Diego, we took Highway No. 1, a coastal highway along the Pasific Ocean. We passed Santa Barbara, a beautiful city between San Francisco and Los Angeles and watched an amazing sunset in Buenaventura. Enough written, enjoy the photographs...
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+++ October 15, 2006 +++ Pizza, Salsa & Balboa Park +++ After a relatively relaxed week at university but several Rotarian activities including my first official presentation at at a Rotary Club, a dinner at La Jolla Marriott and a nice pizza party at our scholarship coordinator's house, I visited Balboa Park on Sunday, October 15. Balboa Park and its installations were mainly set up in the late 19th century. It is a beautiful area with several museums, international houses, a botanic garden and a big zoo.
Strolling through the park was the ideal activity for a lazy Sunday that followed a really exhausting Saturday night. On Saturday, Marco, another Rotarian Scholar from Italy and his friend Mira from Spain, both excellent dancers took me to a Salsa Club in Tijuana, Mexcio, where I was taught my first Salsa, Merengue and Bachata "lessons". The atmosphere and he people were amazing! All latino music, people and temperament!
The pizza party before the dancing was fun, too. Don, our host did everything for us to have a great afternoon including plenty of pizza, fruits, vegetables, cheese, wine and beer. Dear visitor, please meet the 2006/2007 Rotary Ambassadorial Scholars in San Diego (and some of their friends):
First row from left side: First: Marietta (Brazil), third: Ayako (Japan), middle: Nils (Germany), then: Marco (Italy), Rocky (Japan). Second row from the right side: Floyd (Southern Korea), me, second from left side: Yusuf (Tanzania) and in the middle: Don, our coordinator. |
+++ September 9, 2006 +++ University +++ The second week of classes is over and I think I did a good choice with my classes. For those who are interested, I am taking a Securities Analysis Class, an Entrepreneurial Finance Class, an Entrepreneurship Class and an Accounting Fundamentals Class, all graduate except for the latter. And this is where I study (center, library, major way):
University is like a small town within San Diego, offering restaurants, stores and sporting facilities to students. |
+++ August 29, 2006 +++ Housing +++ Finally I have found my permanent accomodation. It is a nice gated complex about three miles from university. We have a spa ;)
I am going to share it with another german student. She will stay for one semester. Finding acceptable housing (at an acceptable price) was harder than I had imagined - especially for one person alone. Most rooms in existing flatshares were in a really bad shape. Since university had not started yet, I had no idea if I could find another "homeless" student to share an own appartment with. I am pretty happy with this solution. We have a brandnew kitchen (except for the dishwasher) as well as a spanking new washer and dryer in our recently refurbished apparment! Move-in: September 1, 2006. Guest Welcome! NOW I am ready for San Diego! That is how we moved:
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+++ August 27, 2006 +++ Beach +++ After almost one week of preparations and an adventurous search for housing, I decided to spend the weekend's afternoons at the beach. The weather was terrific and the Pacific (aka Big Water) is amazingly cold. San Diego is a wonderful place and as organizational tasks get accomplished I begin to feel pretty much at home here. |
+++ August 25, 2006 +++ Rotary +++ This Friday I joined my first Rotary Meeting in the US as a guest of Point Loma Rotary Club, the Club of my host counselor Suzanne. I was introduced to the club and its very nice members. Besides an interesting program and a good lunch, I was lucky to win this meeting's drawings of lots. |
+++ August 22, 2006 +++ Car +++ My temporary host and scholarship councelor, Suzanne, who is providing me with unbelievable support, has helped with my US bank account, showed me parts of San Diego and arranged several contacts. One of them has already helped me with renting a car. Did I say it was a car in "pre-pimp my ride" shape? It just looks better on the picture... (www.dirtcheapcarrental.com)
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+++ August 20, 2006 +++ Arrival +++ After approximately 19 hours of travelling I have finally arrived at quarter to nine in the morning CEST, quarter to eleven at night, Californian time. No terrorists, no incidents and (almost) no sleep. |
+++ August 18, 2006 +++ Farewell Party +++ San Diego +++ Aug 2006 - June 2007 +++ Time: August 18, 2006, 8:00 pm Dear guests: thank you very much - what a wonderful night... Don't believe me? Well, have a look... |
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| Last Entries |
| Days of Preparation 484 from scholarship application on April 25, 2005, to the departure on August 21, 2006 |