Coming to Nebraska!

With the blink of an eye the relaxing part of the summer was over. After a week of sun, rain, sand and fun I found myself on the train to Zurich airport, slightly hung over and nowhere close to realizing what laid ahead of me. My mom sponsored me breakfast and accompanied me all the way to the check in. Fortunately, I had managed to pack just enough but not too much, so that I had no trouble checking my huge bags.
After two stop-overs in Frankfurt and Chicago, a good hour in line for immigration and a total of 24 hours door-to-door travelling, I finally arrived at my friends' Christine and Taylor's house. Compared to other trips, this one went rather smoothly. I had bearable seat neighbors, isle seats on two out of three flights and I managed to sleep quite a bit.
Christine welcomed me warmly and understood that I basically headed straight to bed.
The next day, a small marathon of office visits followed, since international students have to check in with just about everybody on campus. In addition to the student procedures, my teaching assistant (TA) training started. The TA training kept me busy most of the week with interesting lectures such as "principles of college teaching", "campus safety", "identifying a troubled student" and my favorite "cheating and academic integrity". Basically, I underwent a staff training which was quite informative, but also mostly a formality. The instructional videos that were made in the eighties could also be considered a historical attraction. ("Hi this is Troy McLure, you know me from previous movies like"how to use the college library" and ....")
The courses offered a good opportunity to get to know some people from the School for Arts and Sciences, mostly chemists, physicists and such. In between the lectures, I tried to run to all the offices and get my formalities done. I also had a small meeting with the head of the school of biological sciences, Al Kamil. Al and Alan Bond are my supervisors for my doctoral studies. Similar to me, they are two crazy guys who love their birds! They are the reason why I am moved to the middle of nowhere.
Anyway, Al and I had a good first meeting and slowly but surely I also ran into my other colleagues from the UNL Center for Avian Cognition. Of course I visited with the blue jays, the pinyon jays, the Clark's nutcrackers, the monk parakeets and the azure-winged magpies. All these species are studied here, in order to find out a little bit more about their cognitive and social abilities.
Friday was dedicated to the official UNL international student welcome, where several speakers informed new students about all the opportunities and services on campus (we have free lawyers, medical service, dentists...). This was fun because I met plenty of other foreigners from all over the world. In the evening we went to a few bars, including the Watering Hole, the all-american bar with horns and old plaques on the walls and also the best chicken wings in town. Since I am still a guest at Christine's house, I spent significant time looking for a place to stay this week. I saw some nice expensive places but also some really nasty cheap places. A forties-style apartment with wooden floors and lots of beautiful wood bars and built-in dressers ended up convincing me, so I will be moving into the place on Wednesday (pictures will follow). The place is only a 5 minute bikeride from campus in a nice quiet neigborhood. Today (Sat.), I am going to pick a free bike that is offered by a Lutheran church near the campus. Of course I will make a point of wearing my "Viva la evolucion" t-shirt. I'll let you know if anybody picks up on that.
Tonight, Taylor and Christine are throwing a big Karma party to introduce their house to everybody and to bless it with a good vibe. I'll try to take some pictures and to keep this blog updated from now on.