Is a building built in the 19th century old?
For Americans yes, for Europeans probably no.
When an american friend of mine told me about the old house with the nice museum they have been to, we begun to talk about this question.
Since I love old cities I began to rave about Rome where I had been to last April. Finally she stoped by my room to see some of my Rome pictures. The shocking experience for me came, when a friend of her who had come with her didn't want to believe me, that the colosseum in Rome still is the Colosseum that was built almost 2000 years ago. For him it was impossible that a buliding could last 2000 years...

Today is the big election day. I'm very curious to see what it will be like today!
The last weeks you could see a lot of posters and signs everywhere promoting the candidates.
In contrast to Germany, where just the parties itself put up posters next to the streets, here people put up signs in their gardens. In Germany no one would like the randomly passing people to know what party he or she is voting for.
At my home university groups with political interests aren't supported at all. Even our amnesty international group didn't get accepted. Therefore I was surprised about seeing the ut democrats and the ut republicans promoting their party with many events and all over the campus.

Downtown Austin got crazy for Halloween.
While my friends in Munich tried to find a club that wouldn't turn off the music at midnight because of the christian 1st November holiday it was hard for us to get onto a bus to downtown, to make our way through the big dressed up crowd of people and to get into a club without having the security guy in the entrance to pay some extra money.
And a good Halloween costume doesn't have to be scary (that's what most Germans still think).

Now, that I have been here for one month and a half I made a lot of different experiences. I want to tell you about some of them:

One thing I have to mention again is the airconditioning. Why do people here in Texas, who are used to high temperatures outside, feel confortable having their rooms cooled down to 66 F?
I'm living in Coop and we were 4 people who shared an airconditioning together, which can be regulated from the hallway. Since we were 3 Europeans and one American we got a little fight about the right temperature. One night Eva, one of my suitemates stood up in the night four times to stop the airconditioning blowing with 50 F at her bed and waking her up all the time. And then she even wated for the American guy in front of the airconditioning to
and taped here airconditioning in here room. But still it was too cold for us and to hot for our american suitemate so that he even mooved to another room. It must have been very important for him. Now we are keeping our room at lovely 77 F. Probably unbeleavable hot for you Americans, isn't it?

Drive throughs at Mc Donalds or other places are something worth to write about too:
Some times when we were coming back from a party after midnight we wanted to get something to eat. But almost all fast food places close at 12 and just leave their drive throughs open. But what is the problem about walking through a drive through? We don't know. But they seem to have a problem with that: So we had to wait for a car coming and asking that people for giving us a ride through the drive through...

Yesterday I was surprised about the defintion of healthy and unhealthy food: A guy in our kitchen had two slides of white toast and mayonese on it. So I aked him why he didn't put something else on his toast. He told me that he is vegetarian and therefore he didn't know what else to put on it. I was proposing cheese, but then he told me that cheese is so unhealthy! Cheese is unhealthy? I have never heard about that before. He explained it to me by the too high procenture of fat inside...

Now I've been here in the "Wild West" of Texas for one week and I like it a lot: The huge campus is very beautiful with its tower and all the big trees everywhere. A very big difference from my University in Munich (Germany) is the very new sport center they have here. As a student you don't have to pay at all to use the gym, for playing volleyball or basketball, to use the cardio machines, to play squash in one of ten squashcourts... And the best things are the big pools they have outside: One big leisure pool with lies in the water and one big pool with lanes for swimming. You rather feel like being on vacation then on campus!

Because of the hot hot weather having the chance to get into a pool from time to time is worth a lot. I'm even now beginning to like the airconditioning they have in every building, although it feels like they want to get the temperature down to the freezing point! You always have to take a jacket or pullover with you even though you cannot stand wearing long trousers in the Texan sun.

The people here are very very friendly! We wanted to get a special option for a prepaid mobile phone, but then it turned out that it wasn't as good as the man in the shop made us believe. So we got very angry and went to the shop to get our money back. In Germany you have to be very rude to get anything back, so I was rude to this man too. But now I regret that: He was so nice and apologized for telling us the wrong things. It was no problem to get the money for the already used mobile phones back.