2.11. - 8.11.

This is about the 8th and last week of being in the states, and it was a great experience! My last few days were all packed, so I didn't really realize that the trip back is getting closer and closer.
Monday and Tuesday I finished my project and finalized my presentation which I gave on Wednesday morning. It was quite a strange thing to present a topic in front of doctors and professors in this area. The talk was about 25' long, with people asking questions at the end which really challenged me.

So I left National Jewish after that and visited downtown for the last time. I actually went straight to the Broncos stadium, where I asked several security guards to let me enter it for taking a picture, but none of them would let me in.
But I kept asking more and more, and finally found one who would let me take some pictures from inside. And I was impressed by the size of it: it holds 77k people and it is sold out for almost every game.

So after that I went to some more shops to make my last purchases.
Thursday I went to Boulder with Urs and worked all day long in the lab, which was a cool feeling. This night I watched my first basketball game ever, unfortunately the Denver Nuggets lost their game. However it was a great game, there is something on all game long, you don't get bored at all.

Friday I went to the labs in Boulder again and continued on the work we did the day before. This night we also went to watch the new 007-movie: "Spectre" is a really good continuation of the last few Bond-movies!

Saturday morning we went to walk the dogs in the mountains and I was glad to get some exercise too as my trip back is going to take quite a while.
So in the afternoon I made it to the airport and flew back to CH via Reykjavik and Oslo (where they had problems with my ticket, so I caused some delay!).
But after all I landed in Zurich and was looking back on 8 of my best weeks ever!

26.10. - 1. 11.

This is about the seventh and second last week in Denver Colorado!
On Monday I went to National Jewish to work on my project about bacteria is space. I made quite a bit of progress, so I have enough time left before giving the presentation next Wednesday in NJ in front of all the experts and professionals.

Powerpoint for my talk

On Tuesday, Urs, Mary Ann and me went to Boulder to work in the lab (here I'm actually allowed to work in the lab being supervised by a person working here). I could help a guy doing some experiments about bacteria, searching for antibiotics. It's amazing how much work it needs to make any findings in this area!

Lab in Boulder

On Wednesday I joint my hostmother to Fort Collins to Colorado State University to attend a talk about tuberculosis. I honestly didn't understand a single word about it!! This night I went to see one of Americas most famous play in East Highschool in Denver: "To Kill a Mockingbird". It was really well done!
Thursday morning I went to NJ again to continue on the powerpoint for my talk. In the afternoon I cycled to Northfield which is about a 45' bike ride. It is an area which a lot of stores and restaurants where I bought some more jeans (they are so cheap in the US!) and sports clothes. This is where I met my hostparents for having dinner in a pretty restaurant.
Wednesday night I got invited for a haunted house (Halloween is a gigantic event in the states, the second biggest after Christmas). So when we made it to the entrance on the huge spooky tent we didn't know yet that we'll have to wait for 1.5h, just to learn that it would have taken us another 2h to get in. So we left the queue and drove back home where we spent the night watching TV.

Halloween decoration in front of the neighbors house

Saturday morning Urs and me went off for a 3h ride south-west straight into the Rocky Mountains where my hostparents constructed their own cabin about 12 years ago in the midst of the wilderness. It is a gorgeous place and certainly one of the highlights of my stay! It is absolutely quiet, with a breathtaking view to the mountains of the opposite side of the valley, which is full of deer. Occasionally one would also see bears or mountain lions.

View from the Cabin

As this area is one of the 8 places on the world following the 'dark sky initiative', no light is permitted at night which leads to a jet black sky. Lucky as we were, no single cloud covered the night and the moon rose behind a mountain, so for the first time of my life I saw the Milky Way by eye!! It was so impressive to see this far off blurry white strip on the sky! In addition we saw some beautiful 'shooting stars'.
Sunday morning we left quite early to do the drive back to make it into the ice hockey stadium at 1pm. It was my first hockey game being in a stadium, and it is really different from watching in TV. Unfortunately the Colorado Avalanches lost an exciting game against the San Jose Sharks 3:4.

The football game in the evening was the event I was looking forward for two weeks as the Denver Broncos faced the Green Bay Packers, both teams undefeated with 6 victories each so far. It was a great game which was finally won by the Broncos with 29:10, still leading the American Football Conference!

Pepsi Center

19.10. - 25.10.

This is about the sixth week in Denver Colorado. Even though I still spent the first half of it in Greeley with a very nice family! This is where I went to school as the german teacher of highschool wanted me to come to her other three classes and talk to the students. They again asked a lot of questions and I sometimes had to think really hard to find a suitable answer. So on wednesday night I was driven back to Denver and my hostfather Urs arrived some hours after me (my hostmother Mary Ann went straight on to Las Vegas to Zion National Park).

The next day I left National Jewish in the earlier afternoon to see downtown in the evening. It is really cool, with a lot of shopping opportunities and beautiful illuminated skyscrapers.

Friday I went to see the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, which is one of the best I have ever seen! They had a whole bunch of stuffed live-sized animals like bears, walrus or bisons.

I finally made it up to the very top of the museum where there was a platform with a gorgeous view on downtown with the rocky mountains range in the background!

The next day I made it into the museum again, although I didn't visit the museum, but the iMax, which is a cinema-like hall with a huge screen (about 15x25m) where they show spectacular documentaries. I watched one about the 'secrets of the ocean', and I really felt like being in the sea at watching it. After that, Urs and me went to see the Colorado Symphony which performed an evening full of Strauss.
Sunday morning we went to the Wildlife Refugees park near Denver to see a herd of bisons and many many prairie dogs. In the afternoon Mary Ann arrived at the airport, so we picked her up and had a fantastic dinner. I spent the rest of the night with watching American Football, although the Denver Broncos had a free weekend.
Now I'm looking forward to the last two weeks of being in the states!

12.10. - 18.10.

This is about the fifth week in Denver Colorado, whereas I only spent 2 days in Denver. On Tuesday night, I moved to Greeley, which is about 2h from downtown, to stay for a week as my hostparents are in China for work. My temporary hostfamily has two children (Ana, 16; and Nora, 12), two cats and one huge grizzly-like dog, who has a pretty suitable name: Oso is spanish and means bear!
On Wednesday I visited the German classes in the highschool of the town when I had to answer a lot of questions! The students wanted to know everything, like what the biggest difference from home to the states was, how the mountains are like, what I think of american football and and and... I really had to think hard when they started questioning about the political system in CH and how it is called.
On Friday, we (the sister of my hostmother, Ana and Alexis, a friend of hers) went to Rockie Mountains National Park for a hike.

As it was a mid-semester holiday and schools were closed, the park was quite crowded; it was beautiful though. In the national park,  I saw animals I have never seen before: one of them were chipmonks (I actually spotted some on Mt Evans) of which one jumped on my lap! The other wildlife animal I discovered was a crowd of elks which were literally huge!

Sunday we went to downtown for a wedding and spent the night watching football (the Broncos won their 6th game in a row!) I'm already looking forward to their next game as they play against the other undefeated team so far.

05.10.-11.10.

This is about the fourth week in Denver, CO. The highlight of this week was the concert of the Jerusalem Quartet on Wednesday night which was just indescribable!
My host mother Mary Ann was in Cabo Pulmo for a week of scuba diving, so it was only Urs and me and the two dogs (one of them ate my wallet!!) at home. I could go to the labs in Boulder on Thursday and Friday which was very interesting and informative. We prepared and analysed some testing about antibiotics.
On Saturday, I was at the Red Rocks, a huge outdoor amphitheatre-like stadium (pic). It was quite impressive, there is space for about 10k spectators.

In the afternoon, we harvested the veggies from the garden,; it was a lot of product (pic shows about one fourth).

Sunday was football day, the Denver Broncos won their fifth game in a row and are still leading in the American Football Conference. I would actually love to see a game in the stadium, but the ticket range is from $300 for the cheapest and some thousand dollars for the more expensive seats, so unfortunately I cannot afford to watch a live game.

28.09. - 04.10.

This is about the third week being in the states. And it was the most exciting one so far. On Thursday afternoon, we drove up on the highest passable street in North America up to the top of Mt Evans. On the way up we passed some beautiful yellow-turned aspen trees and a bunch of bighorn sheep.

 The top of Mt Evans is at 14'300 feet, which is about 4'348m (compare: the elevation of the Matterhorn is about 4480m) and the temperature was at about 45F, so quite freezing. From the peak one could see for hundreds of kilometers far into the Gr. Plains. It is way above the tree line, but yet full of wildlife. We saw Chipmonks, Pikas, Ermines, Ferrets, Mountain Goats, Bighorn Sheep and Murmots, which were really large! As we drove up with the truck and two dogs in it, we finally ended up sitting in the open back of the truck as there was almost no space to sit inside.

On Friday noon, I went off for a 7h road trip south to Santa Rosa, New Mexico, to get dive certified in the Blue Hole. The blue hole literally is a hole in the midst of the desert with a depth of 81 ft, a surface diameter of 60 ft and a bottom diameter of 100 ft, so it is bell-shaped. The water was extremely clear; standing on a small platform at about 25 ft depth (where we had to show the skills we learnt the previous weekend) one could see more than 60 ft down to the bottom of the hole. The feeling being underwater and being able to breathe is just awesome!!

20.09. - 27.09.

This is about the second week being in the states. The weather is still great, all day at about 88°F. Tuesday night, I watched my first baseball game ever, and the game itself is sooo boring. But is was an huge stadium and so quite an impressive atmosphere!

On Wednesday morning I joint my hostmother who's a doctor to some case conferences at a near university. To be honest, I didn't understand anything at all as it is doctors presenting interesting medical cases to other doctors. The powerpoint slides are packed with abbreviations, numbers, technical terms and latin names of diseases. However the second guy presenting this morning was a doctor who has been in Sierra Leone to treat people having ebola. This was about the best talk I have ever heard: He told about the time in Eastern Africa, how he helped patients and how he finally got ebola himself! It is medically proved that he was one of the sickest doctors who could be cured from ebola. One thing that impressed me most was when he showed pictures of his left eye turning yellow as a side effect when the actual ebola virus could already be killed.
Another highlight was the scuba diving course I did this weekend. I actually decided to participate only two days before about doing it. Now I'm looking forward to next weekend when I will be going to New Mexico to do my certification dives!