Goodbye

The time passed by so quickly here in the US. Unfortunately the Internship is over now... it was such an awesome time.
Today I had my last working day... and (traditionally for Siemens interns) we had a huge donut break.


I will miss you guys! Goodbye Princeton...

Friends Visit

Melanie, Harald and Uli visited us in the US and stayed in our apartment for two weeks.

We visited New York
(Empire State Building)

(Liberty Island)

and Philadelphia together.

Uli and I also crossed the Brooklyn Bridge!

Thanks for the cool time together here in the US!

Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago

In the first weekend of August we did a roadtrip to Chicago to go to the Lollapalooza Festival.



More pictures are available in the album.

Miami

Last weekend we visited Miami. It was such an awesome weekend and the south beach is so beautiful!


Pictures from Miami are available in the album.

The Center of Power

Last weekend we visited Washington. We stayed there from Friday until today (Monday) and had a wonderful time there. Guess which building is in the background....

...It's the white house! Unfortunately we didn't see our friend George W.

This is the Washington Monument. Actually it is not as small as it looks like on the above picture ;) It is a very large and tall obelisk that was constructed to commemorate George Washington. It rises above the whole city and is very impressive. There are about 100 US-flags around the monument.

This is the United States Capitol, which serves as a seat for the US government. It has two wings: the north wing is the Senate chamber and the south wing is the House of Representatives chamber.

We have seen many other sights in Washington too, but unfortunately after the second day my camera broke, so I couldn't take more pictures.

Besides all the sightseeing we also explored the nightlife of Washington...
We were at a really nice bar in the city center. There was a live band and they played AC/DC (I can't imagine why this picture is so blurred actually ;)!!

On Monday we saw a huge military parade, because the 26. of May is the Memorial Day in the US which is dedicated to war veterans and victims.

All in all we had a great time in Washington D.C.! I was really impressed by the capital of the United States.

The License to... Drive!

Today I got the New Jersey drivers license!

Compared to Austria it is relatively easy to get it... It cost only 18 bucks and I only had to do a vision test and a short multiple choice test on the computer.

Fortunately I didn't had to do a driving test ;)

Princeton University

Today we finally visited the Princeton University. In the afternoon we took a guided tour through the whole campus. The campus is located on 2 km² of landscaped grounds and features a large number of Neo-gothic-style buildings. We even saw some places where the movie "a beautiful mind" was shot.


In fact the campus really impressed me and I think that Princeton must be a lovely place to study (beside the fact that you have to pay 30.000$ tuition fees per semester ;).


Above you can see the tiger, the mascot of the Princeton University. In fact there are two tigers located beside the steps of the Nassau Hall, the the university's oldest building. I was astonished by the fact that Princeton was once the capital of the United States for four weeks (the Continental Congress convened in the Nassau Hall in the summer of 1783).

And of course - where students are you don't have to look for parties a long time ;)
The campus was all but empty today. There were parties everywhere and bands were playing :)
Some students told us that there are many parties every weekend on the Princeton campus. Unfortunatelly we didn't get in, because most of the parties are apparently for members of certain fraternities only.


All in all I really like the Princeton University and we will certainly visit the campus again soon.

Home, sweet home

Yesterday we finally found an apartment. It was very hard to find one, because most of the renters didn't want to lease it for only five month. But after around 8 appointments we finally got one after I asked for the manager *gg*

Our apartment is located at the Hunters Glen community in Plaisboro, which is just 6 Minutes away from Siemens. It seems like a very beautiful an quiet place and there is even a pool and a golf course available as a community feature.

It is a two bedroom apartment with one bathroom and it is still unfurnished. The only interior we have yet is a TV and the cable TV and Internet connection is already set up ;)
Unfortunately we don't even have a mattress yet, but we hopefully we can manage to get one by tomorrow, because today is the last night we can stay in the hotel.


It's quite cool... we have our own apartment now :)

Six Flags

Yesterday we had a daytrip to the Six Flags Adventure park in Jackson, NJ with other interns from Siemens and two au-pairs from Austria. It was great fun and we had a perfect day there.

They have the fastest and largest roller coaster in the world (the Kingda Ka)!
This ride is really awesome... it accelerates from 0-130 mph in 3.5 seconds and is about 450 feet high!
But see yourself in the below video:

The Big Apple

Yesterdy we had an orientation with the organization that sponsors our visa (CDS Int.) in New York. Fortunately it didn't last long and after that we had dinner at the 23 floor of the German House with beautiful views of the city (see picture above).

In the afternoon we had the chance to explore Manhattan. I was really impressed by all the skyscrapers... The big apple really took my breath away.

We also saw some sights of Manhattan:


the Empire State Building

the Central Park

the Grand Central Station

the Times Square

More pictures are available in the gallery.

I will definitely visit New York again! ;)

First Working Day

Today we got our rental car in the morning before we started our work at Siemens. As you can see on the picture above I got a Ford Focus. First I had big problems with the automatic gear shift, because I wanted to engage the clutch all the time and instead I hit the brake ;)... But I hope that my driving skills will improve in the next days *gg*


After picking up the car we started work at 9am... It was a very pleasant first working day and all people at SCR are very nice and helpful.

Tomorrow we are visiting New York, and I'm really thrilled to see the city and all the sky-scrapers.

Arrival

Yesterday we (Helene, Markus and I) arrived in Princeton (NJ, USA) to do our internship with Siemens Corporate Research. We will stay for five months and I hope we will have a wonderful time here in the US.


It was a very pleasant flight with beautiful views especially over Canada (see image) and New Jersey.


We are going to stay at the Holiday Inn Hotel in Princeton for 14 days and after that time we will look for an apartment.

We are starting our work at Siemens tomorrow and will hopefully get our rental cars soon.