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Well nothing too exciting has happened in the past few weeks since I last made a post. Christmas presented a great opportunity to meet up with people I hadn’t seen in a while, which was nice before returning to Miami.
Coming back I flew via Lisbon, not the most convenient route I know, but seemed to work out cheaper with an overnight stay. This was my first overnight stay at a hotel alone, and was definitely an interesting experience considering I didn’t speak a word of Portuguese. Anyhow I got 1 hours free internet usage which surprisingly flew by, so the rest of the night was spent watching MTV – the only English speaking channel on the network. You can’t imagine how much fun ‘Teen Mom’ and ‘Made’ were for 6 hours.
On a quick side note, the next part of my journey obviously involved flying, this time with TAP again in an airbus though not as big as the model that I flew back to Germany in (only a brief stop there) at Christmas. I definitely recommend flying in the Airbus A380 if you get the opportunity, it’s got a nice clean interior unlike the conventional aircrafts that look 30 years old. Lufthansa were definitely the better of the two flight operators though more expensive. The flight home included warm towels before meals (couldn’t quite work out what this was for, whether to wash your face or clean your hands ;D) , surprisingly they also offered about 4 servings of alcohol throughout the entire flight which included free glasses of champagne… I know exciting stuff. I was also surprised that the food they served came with metal knives and forks, rather than the usual plastic. On a more technical note I believe that the Airbus (A380) had ethernet ports under the seats, though I was stupid and put half my laptops usual equipment in my hold luggage so I couldn’t experiment with any of this… In comparison the TAP flight was on a much older Airbus model, they didn’t offer warm towels or champagne, just small seats and cramped leg room – not much fun for 8 hours. So to conclude: Lufthansa are definitely the recommended airline!
Since I’ve been back I’ve met up with friends from the previous semester and been eating out quite a lot; frankly the dining hall needs improving. On a quick tangent, I started having salads, sandwiches and other healthy stuff as I guess I realized that burgers, pizza and fries (oh and a variety of meals originating around chicken) wasn’t the healthiest of diets; though what can you do when that’s all they offer!
Classes this semester are looking to be very interesting being: Computer Networks, Web Design, Games Programming, Software Engineering and Information Systems. Definitely a wide spread of topics that seem to touch on areas I’m interested in, particularly the networks, web design and gaming (I mean programming.) The end product of the classes should involve making a website, a functional 2D game, a web server (the thing that dishes out files over the internet) and dissecting a a real business project using UML and such (possibly building it) for Software Engineering.
In other news UM (University of Miami) haven’t lost a single basketball game yet in the season, out of 6 games, and are currently #14 in the NCAA after beating Duke, the #1 team, 2 weeks ago. The atmosphere at these games doesn’t quite match the football season which only runs fall semester but I guess that’s because tailgating is the most fun part which doesn’t happen for basketball 🙁 Anyhow the basketball games are a different environment and are on campus, so within walking distance. The mens basketball players are doing amazing so congrats to them and needless to say the cheerleaders at half time are equally amazing 😀
To wrap up; I’ll keep you posted when some exciting stuff happens. At the moment I’m investigating visits to the Mardi Gras festival in New Orleans and / or a cruise to the Bahamas at spring break. Feel free to comment on which you think would be most exciting, and give me some ideas on where might be fun to see whilst over here (Las Vegas, LA, San Francisco, etc.)