Hi every one!
I’m sorry I haven’t updated this site in the last few weeks, but I was pretty busy settling in at my new town.
Let’s do this in a chronological way. After doing my thesis-presentation, I had three days left to get my bags packed. With a little overweight, I left from Stuttgart airport, boarding a direct flight to Atlanta, GA.
As I had slept pretty bad the night before, and just had a few short naps on the plane, I was pretty worn out by the time I arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson. The long immigration procedure and the double checks of my luggage didn’t really relax me either.
After I picked up my rental-car outside the airport, I made it to Kristi’s place rather easily, meeting her again after three years. She had invited me to stay at her place for the first few days, which was soooo helpful! (Thanks so much Kristi!)
During this first week I managed to find a nice shared flat, just about five minutes away from my new workplace, Engineous, Inc.
My new flatmates, Zack Zach and Ben, are two really friendly, laid back Americans, both from South Carolina. Ben works as a webdesigner while Zack Zach studies epidemiology. We share a nice kitchen connected to a well equipped livingroom (Cable, XBox, RC-Heli,Stereo) and two bathrooms. Amongst the amenities are a washer, a dryer, a mircowave, an ice-cube-making fridge and a really nice “Lean-Mean-Fat-Reducing-Grilling-Machine”. In the appartment block we also got a swimming-pool, a tennis-court and barbecues in the garden.
My workplace at Engineous is really nice as well, a small professional team and I got my own cliche cubicle! 😉
The last few days I was pretty immobile, as I had returned my rental car. To get to work, Ben gave me a ride in the mornings and in the evnings. As America is really organised around cars (drive-thru-everything), I was looking for a used car. Last weekend Zack Zach and I were driving around the area, looking at some offers I had found on craigslist. In the end we found a 2000 Toyota Corolla, which is said to be one of the most reliable cars over here. As I didn’t have an insurance yet, Paul (another friend), whose insurance would cover any car he’s driving in, brought the car to my place, where it sat the last days, as I was waiting for my insurance to kick in. After getting all the needed paperwork together, I took “Heart-of-Gold” (her name) for a ride and got my the registration plates just today!
Actually I just came back from a round of tennis with Ben, though I lost 0:4 it went way better than I had expected after a break of ten years or more!
Well, so far for now, I’ll try to keep the updates coming more regularly.
Cheers, Tim.
