Winter Extravaganza

For Reading Week I joined the Outdoor Club, actually Yuval and Dan, for a trip to Silent Lake Provincial Park. We stayed there for 4 days (3 nights), being taught all the secrets of winter camping. This included sleeping in a yurt, quinzee (kind of like an igloo, but less room inside), and for some in a wall tent. The trip also featured soap stone carving, snow shoeing, wilderness first aid, navigation, and - last and maybe even the best - dog sledding. The survival skills I've learned even include lighting a fire in the cold and chopping wood ;-) We had a great trip with a nice group and perfectly prepared leaders. As usual, I've got a lot of photos (>200) and I've selected some for you to view in my photo album.

Snow Day!

It sounds incredible, but today McMaster University is completely closed due to the amount of snow! No exams, no library access, no food courts - because of 30cm snow. This is called a snow day and seems to be quite common, as Canadians do not use snow plows as much as we do, but just use salt to get rid of the snow.

I heard that Austria does not have a lot of snow right now, so I thought you'd like to see some pictures of Hamilton in its white dress - please visit the photo album! We also have temperatures down to -18°C, which turns out to feel like -32°C because of the wind! *brr*

Start of Term Two

Greetings from Canada! The new term has started and campus life goes on as well. I've founded an indoor soccer team for the intramural championship of McMaster, called Team Europe. So far, we've won two games and only lost the first one, so we're improving. I also went to the bowling afternoon of the International Office, joined some parties of my friends, learned how to play Poker and Guitar Hero, and watched the McMaster Marauders Basketball Team on the road to the play-off. See the campus life photo album for some pictures. After some weeks of hard decision-making, I've finally figured out the courses I want to take. It's quite hard to do that, as the university seems to cancel courses just as they like. For instance, I was sitting in a lecture hall and half an hour after the planned start of the lecture the secretary came and told us, that the course won't be given for that term - great :-| However, my courses will cover neural networks, medical image reconstruction (for MRI), and biomedical instrumentation, so I've got lots to do!

Christmas Break in Austria

As the first term in Canada ends already before Christmas, I was able to return to Austria for two weeks. Of course, these two weeks weren't really a break but there was a lot to do! The photo album tells its own story: my mum and my brother Christian picking me up at the airport in Munich, playing icehockey with the Omicron team, visiting the Christmas market (hot wine included), some winter hiking and skiing trips with my friends & family, tobogganing at Berguen (longest track in Europe), New Years Eve in our cabin in Furx, chocolate fondue in Hard (one of my Christmas presents), and finally driving carts in Linz. Leaving Austria after such a great time was very hard, especially as Julia is staying there this time and I've got to continue alone over here. However, we knew that before and we're both looking forward to Easter, when we'll go to New York!