Getting settled

 My new flatmates are really, really nice! They are

1. TJ, PhD student in theoretical particle physics at SCIPP
2. Carina, his girlfriend, PhD student on solar cells
3. Tia, first year grad student, who just moved here from the east coast 6 weeks ago. She plays the violin and is also a vegetarian.

When I moved in, TJ and Carina had just come back from hiking over the weekend, too. Tonight the four of us went out together to an icecream parlor.
The apartment is quite big. TJ and Carina share a large room, but Tia and I have our own smaller rooms. We have a rather huge living room with several sofas and a well-equipped kitchen. My room luckily contains a little bit of furniture.

Today I went on campus by bus with Tia. The administrative coordinator of SCIPP welcomed me, showed me the office I am sharing with other visitors, among them an exchange student from Poland and introduced me to many people. My supervisor will only arrive next week, though.

I found the "Bike Co-Op" (cooperatively owned, non-profit bike shop and help to repair your bike, run by volunteers) on campus and was lucky enough to rent a bike for only 25$ for the entire period of my stay.

The campus is very large, steep and green, basically in a forest and from some places with a view on the Pacific! Even mule deers live here. Cycling downhill downtown was a pleasure (but through the hills which are even a mountain lion habitat!), however, uphill will be a challenge with my single-speed bike...
I found the music center with practice rooms! Maybe I will take my viola to the institute to practice there. But today I could play a bit in my room.

In total, I must say that all people I have met here so far are really friendly, open and willing to help, e.g. my flatmates, people in the institute and the bike co-op. I guess I will not fully feel "at home" here by the end of the 5 weeks, but I am pretty confident that the next month will be nice and interesting!

 

Santa Cruz

On Sunday evening we arrived at Santa Cruz in my new shared apartment. We went to a bar in the evening and walked to the beach in the morning before Alissa and Peter left.
Santa Cruz is a nice, little students' town, famous for hippies and surfers. There are broad bike lanes, colourful houses, solar systems on the roofs, it is located directly at the beach and the huge campus is on  a steep hill. The city makes a nice impression, I am sure I will enjoy living here during the next month - not least because of the bright sunshine all the time :-)

Seal and pelican at the pier:

 The beach. Cows look different here, their longer horns remind me rather of buffaloes.

Yosemite Day 2

 Early in the morning, the valley is still full of fog - and smoke: there are regular fires needed by the forest to recreate.

 These mule deers are not shy at all!

Steep hike up to Vernal and Nevada Falls! They were already very impressing, but in spring they have even much more water.

Yosemite Day 1

Hiking in the Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountains is gorgeous! The landscape is stunning and really diversified owing to the elevation ranging from 4000 to 10000 feet (over 3000m!). Watch out for black bears and mountain lions (= Puma)!! That's why you should never ever leave any food in your car or tent overnight, but store it properly in dedicated bear boxes.

We arrived on Saturday morning after a long drive over curvy mountain roads. The guide book says that the majority of tourists never walk more than half an hour in the park. Although I have to admit that we enjoyed indeed some magnificent views while driving through the park or stopping at several of the vista points, it was clear that we wanted to explore more by hiking around. Our first walk was in Sequoia Grove. Sequoias are huge and up to several thousand-year-old redwood trees with amazing diameters, amongst the oldest and hugest living things on earth!

 Later on, we drove higher and higher and reached Tuolumne Meadow, a plateau lined with steep rocks. We saw squirrels and mule deers very close by!

Despite a heavy hailstorm (I was wondering how this could be in sunny California?!) the sun came back and we stopped at a beautiful lake. Peter even went swimming.

We spent the night in a tent on a camp ground directly in the national park, made a campfire, stored our food properly and woke up at sunrise.

Flight

Everything started on Friday, September 23, the longest day of my life = 33 hours due to the 9h time shift between Central Europe and the Pacific. First, I flew from Hamburg to New York which took 9 hours. Luckily I had a seat at the window so that I was able to enjoy the view on the East and West Frisian Islands before clouds covered UK. While the flight to Chicago last year crossed Greenland, this time I only had a glance on its southern tip, but at least I could see snow-covered rocks at the horizon. Most of Canada as well as New York were hidden in the clouds.

We arrived with a delay of 45min so that I missed my connection flight to San Francisco :( The immigration officer did not only take fingerprints of all my fingers of both hands, but he also wanted to know all details about the purpose of my stay, including how many hours per week the exchange program would comprise. After I had told him that I would be a visiting student without any fixed courses, he stoppped being so strict, but made jokes instead and told me I should not run my heart out while trying to catch the connection flight which was about to leave in 25min. Amazing to realize that small talks are even common during the passport control at the airport.
2.5 h later, the next flight left. I did not see much during that 7h flight, but still the Rocky Mountains! Then I arrived very tired at San Francisco where my friends Alissa and Peter picked me up. Good to meet old friends in the New World!

Particle Physics in California

Hello again, this time from Santa Cruz in California! Finally I am continuing my blog "Particle physics around the world" even though I am not a summer student at the moment. However, the autumn in California is far sunnier than the summer in Hamburg... But first of all, why am I here? In the context of my master thesis at DESY Hamburg on the phenomenology of elementary particles, I am now spending 5 weeks at SCIPP (Santa Cruz Institute of Particle Physics). I hope I will be able to learn a lot about theory from Howie Haber, the professor who supervises my project here. Another reason for my stay is to start a new cooperation between the physics departments of the University of Göttingen (my home university) and the University of California, especially the campus at Santa Cruz. I am here as the "guinnea pig", which is not the most unpleasant task, though :-) This blog will be about my activities, experiences with the Californian way of life, trips, and I guess only to a lesser extent on physics. I will try to update it as regularly as possible, but as I realized both in Finland and at Fermilab, the more activities there are, the harder it is to report everything ;-) I hope you will enjoy the pictures and stories. Feel free to write comments. Cheers! Elina

3 forms and 0 guns

Weapons and the controlling, personal data taking state - here were are. Not only big cars, also these two prejudices seem to have a germ of truth.
Yesterday I went rock climbing with two Mexican neighbours. In the big parking area in front of the entrance of the sports center we were the only ones by bike. When we entered through the glass door, I was glad to hear that I would be safe inside. But crazy that such a sign is necessary!! Once inside, we were asked to fill in a form with our personal data in order to be allowed to use those sports facilities. Just one time wasn't enough, at the rock climbing section we had to do this again (and again we passed a glass door with a remarkable notice). And a third form needed to be signed when somebody explained us the rules of climbing.
Ufff, but finally we could start and it was a lot of fun :-) In fact, it was my first time of climbing at all and at the end, my arms just couldn't any more...