First impression of cincinnati university

Hello all,

on Saturday we arrived in Cincinnati. The first culture shock - I knew this from the last time in US - is the air conditioning. Outside is the temperature about 40 degrees C, and inside feeled about 10 or less degrees - in the airport, in the car, what picked us up in the morning, in the room in the dorm, in the classes, in the shops. The best prevention are to have every time summer AND winter clothes with you, and to turn it on and out and on and out and...

The university surrounding is very impressive, they have an own stadium for the university, such big as our stadium in the town. There is a very wide landscape and all is belonging to the university - very impressive with very big buildings. The area behind this is like in an American film, small houses with a lot of concrete. The people are sitting at the street in the sun with big Ghetto blusters, and the children are playing there. You can see a lot of impressive cars in the streets, also a lot of Honda (this is my brand too). Here you can see only very great/big things or small/poor, the middle is missing, I feel.

The air outside is stuffy, but yesterday in the evening we found a small garden - ALUMNI GARDEN - only three minutes from the dormitory, where was very nice to sit there with a book and to relax for some hours.

On the first evening we got a nice backpack from the University of Cincinnati. The most interesting thing inside was a small pin on a small paper, but more interesting some information about the university on the paper, where it was pined up. The University is the biggest employer of the Cincinnati region with more than 3 billion $ turnover last year. About this dimensions German universities can only dream, especially about the funds from industry. This tells nothing about the landscape surround the university, but these are very impressive facts for me.

An other thing, we have seen today, are the flags, the American flags. In Blue Ash near every private house has an American flag outside. This would be unthinkable in Germany, with the exception of the soccer world championship.

The people are very friendly here, very open, very interested, and I guess, the three or four weeks would be to short, to learn to know about all, what is interesting.
That's all for today. To be continued...
Lili