Stardate 020070930: Las Vegas

When I was asked whether I want to go to Las Vegas for a weekend, I could say nothing but of course! When you think all those movies and tv series that are made in Las Vegas, the place seems so far away and distant. Couldn't imagine yourself there walking in the streets, going to casinos and hotels. But that's excatly what we did last weekend, we went to Vegas! Two cars of exchange students, from Austria, Spain, Germany and of course Finland ;) The age limit in US for drinking is btw 21, so quite many of the exchange students are actually not allowed to consume alcohol and therefore couldn't even go to Vegas.. Well, I don't have that kind of problems..

Las Vegas group ready to go

We rented two cars and headed off to Vegas, about 11 hours to drive. Lukily I had made some long car rides in Finland and Norway before so it wasn't too bad to drive there. And we had many drivers, so it was just fine. We left on Friday afternoon and arrived to Vegas around 3 am on Saturday. It was quite extreme that nothing had really stopped there, people were just gambling all over and didn't care about the time. But I think that's what they say, that Vegas never sleeps. And it's really true.

The way to Vegas was full of excitement (view from the front)

Some landscape from the way

Welcome to Las Vegas!

When we arrived everybody was really tired and I would have just wanted to go to sleep.. Instead we just parked in one of the hotels and went to the casino. We were told that we could get our hotel room only about noon in Saturday and it was early morning still. We stayed at the casino about two hours and decided to try to get to the hotel anyway because everybody was so tired. Luckily we got in and managed to rest a bit. During the day we were walking a lot, just going in to all the casinos, taking insane amounts of pictures and also me and a German girl, Caroline, went shopping. There was a huge outlet mall just near the strip (the main street where the hotels and casinos are). Wow, we could have spent days there :D

Me, Saara and Ansgar (from Germany)

In Vegas everything is bigger... or was it smaller?

My camera's battery died three times during the trip and eventually I couldn't even take any more pictures. I think I was all the time holding my camera, being the Japanese tourist or paparazzi, taking pictures of everything that moves. It seemed so surreal to be there. One car of people left already on Sunday afternoon, but rest of us stayed until Monday, and it was really worth it! I think there was still so many things to see, didn't even go to all of the hotels. We went to ride in a roller coaster in New York New York, went all the way up the "Eiffel tower" in Paris, went partying in Palms and Hard Rock Cafe, just enjoyed walking in the streets, with the breathtaking view of the insanely huge hotels. One thing was a surprise for me though, I thought Vegas would be much bigger. Instead it's basically only the strip with the hotels. If you go a bit further, there's really nothing to see.

View from the Eiffel tower, Paris
The Bellagio

The Paris

The hotels had the most amazing attractions, lions, roller coasters, shopping centers, gondolas from Venice, Trojan horses and much more. And everything in a huge scale, everything massive.

Inside the Venetian, people can take the gondola and go along the river

Needless to say that Las Vegas during the night was breath taking. The way they illuminated the hotels and everything was amazing. The same buildings that looked not sooo special during the day, were coming to life during the night. Everywhere huge lights, advertisement for the casinos and night clubs, streets full of people walking, drinking.. I didn't really want to gamble not to loose all my money but just for saying that I went to Vegas to gamble, I put some 2 dollars and of course lost them :P But hey, I went to Vegas and gambled!!

New York New York

Me losing my money in the Palms

MGM, propaganda

On the way back we stopped at the Hoover dam, which was amazing! Sooo huge that you can't imagine! I wonder how much power they generate with it. I think the dam is also the border for Arizona and Nevada. At least there were two huge clocks indicating the time for both states..

All together, the trip was really amazing! I still can't believe that I was really there. I had so much fun, could see so many amazing things and enjoy. The hotel was also quite nice, just in the strip. We shared on suite with 5 people, so eventually we were sleeping like 4 people in the same bed, but we didn't go there to sleep! hehe :D

From the Hoover dam

View from the way back

Stardate 020070918: Sport maniacs

Me and Saara are already known as the crazy people who walk everywhere.. Now we have made an advanced step and bought bikes. That would of course mean that we go everywhere by bike now :D One of these days we decided to go biking "a bit". We took a look at the map and eventually ended up making 30 kms or more..and during the worst time of the day! I don't think that I ever drunk so much water..

We crossed the Rio Grande river and were taking some small roads with very nice view of the mountains.

Me and Saara

Rio Grande

No trespassing...this time we followed the rules :D

My bike

Like I told already earlier, people here are quite sport maniacs and the university has several teams of all kinds of sports that compete. Last Sunday we went to a football game...and it was really a huge thing! Loots of people everywhere and everybody wearing their own team's colors and shirts. Before the game people gather to parking lots and drink and eat. I was told that the idea is to get drunk before the game starts. People call this gathering tailgating. It has something to do with the trucks that almost all Americans have. Well, we were making some barbeque, having lots of meat and drinking beer before the game and it was really fun :D

Even the game was quite nice and interesting. I was told that it's very boring to watch but I kind of liked it for some reason :) First I didn't understand anything what was going on, but eventually learned some rules of the game.

Tailgating :P

I was told that the NMSU Aggies suck... But this time they won! People went crazy as you can see from the picture :D The game was against the team from El Paso, the UTEP team. I guess it was an important victory since the other team was from a neighbour city.

Anyway, lots of fun, lots of people and lots of new stuff!! :D

Stardate 020070912: Getting settled

After being in Las Cruces about one and a half weeks it starts to feel more home :) I know how to lock my room door, use the tap in the sink and drink enough water during the day not to dehydrate. Me and Saara (the other Finnish girl here) have been making more of our insane walk trips and I guess people really think that we are grazy! Today we walked again to Wal-Mart and bought bikes! We went quite long trip biking after that and it was really great to be able to get from one place to another in relatively short amount of time.

This weekend there will be a football match where everybody should go :P The idea is to get as drunk as possible and then see the actual match later... Let's see, I should also buy a t-shirt to support the Aggies (which is the NMSU team).

Next week we'll be going to Las Vegas with few people! Wow, it's going to be great :D We don't even have to pay much anything for the hotel and the car rental was also quite cheap.

Other things: everything is going really well. The weather is still great, not sooo hot anymore and we even had some rain for couple of days. My roommate Julia (from Spain) is really nice and I also met many other people here. "School" is really school here though.. It reminds me of high school or something like that... with all the homework and compulsary classes and so on. Everybody even calls the university school instead of university.

Well, here are some more pictures from here!

Americans need clear instructions...
Good to know I guess...

From Mesilla.. notice the rainbow!

Chili is a really local thing, they have huge fields full of chili growing!

Visiting the Space Mural Museum

An evening view

Stardate 020070907: Las Cruces, NM

Las Cruces, New Mexico, 32,3 degrees North. Let's say, a bit different place than Oulu in Finland :D First of all: the weather.. Wow! It's basically sun sun sun every single day and also hot hot hot every day :) I already discovered that I don't have enough shorts. Like today, sun shine with almost no clouds, some plus 32. What more can you ask :D

Me in the campus
Still from campus

Second: the university.. The whole idea how to arrange the buildings.. I think it's really "cute". For me a univeristy building is some massive and huge looking like some insitution or something :P But here the university is scattered to a wide area and each department has it's own tiny biulding with no more than two floors. In fact I don't think that any building in this city has more than 3 or 4 floors! Well, of course the city of Las Cruces is quite small, with only some 80 000 people living here.

More campus area with some observation towers
and the "Aggie hill" behind where we climbed

Third: sports.. Everybody does some sort of sport, football, vollyball, swimming etc etc. And there's this whole huge fuss around sports everywhere. It's called the Aggies. Yes, all the teams of New Mexico State Unversity are Aggies. Go Aggies, Aggies this and Aggies that all over the place. And I'm not kidding or exaggerating..*everywhere*. Well, for me it's something quite different.. and kind of funny too :) Plus I heard that the team itself is not so good anyway :P

Go Aggies

So, there are some things that I have noticed so far. Of course there are many others but here's something for starters. Then, what did I manage to do within these few days here.. Well, I went to all of my classes some 2 weeks late so I guess I have to catch up quite a bit on those. Also I have been a "Japanese tourist" taking pictures of everything :P I managed to go to the Wal Mart and a mall already too. Plus did some crazy walking with another Finnish girl here called Saara. We climbed up a small hill above the city one night and did some 20 kms in total. Plus we walked to the mall, which was also some 10 kms... Some more walking on the way I think! Until I get a bike or car at least :P

Next to the desert...
View of the city

A party. Yes, there are some parties going on all the time. I managed to go to one of those so far, which was a birthday party of one exchange student from Austria. Well, it's not so good idea to throw a party in this place because the police might interrupt you and take you to jail if there are some underaged people involved. So it happened that suddenly a policeman came and pointed a flash light to everybody's face and told no one to move. Then he went around and checked everybody's ids. Quite funny :P Nothing else happened in the end except that we had to finish the party.

There would be many other things to describe but I'll leave to another time then!

My home
A panoramic view of the surroundings in Las Cruces