welcome to my life

I have committed to run the San Francisco Nike Women's Half Marathon. In fact, I am currently debating if I should run the full marathon. The hills In San Francisco are scaring me a little, so that's what is holding me back. But I may change my mind...

Training starts May, 16th and that means literally no more late nights on Fridays. Being ready to run at 6.00am on Saturdays and crawling through the summer heat in Texas for miles and miles. I am looking forward to this experience and I am looking forward to the opportunity to make a small difference in this world by raising $4,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) Team in Training.

All of us on Team In Training are raising funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma from taking more lives. I am completing this event in honor of all individuals who are battling blood cancers. These people are the real heroes on our team, and we need your support to cross the ultimate finish line - a cure!

A day later and my legs are a little sore, but nowhere near as bad as I imagined. That's good! Hope that is not going to change tomorrow as some people liked to suggest today. Running my first half marathon was awesome. I ran 13.1 miles in a respectful (at least for me) time of 2 hours and 27 minutes!

This is a good time to say THANK YOU to my whole running team! Without you all I would never have done it! Special thanks go to Ben for introducing me to this group, to Jessica for being an awesome coach and organizer, to Rob for being the best running buddy and for crossing the finish line with me! Thanks to the rest of the team: Daniela, Yvonne, Connie, Karen, Jay and Jamie for being the best running team! Hope to see you all for training and another marathon or half marathon. I am hooked now!

It's fall (or autumn) and missing the beautiful fall colours from up north, we decided we'll reclaim some traditions and went out to find a corn maze Texas style. The 4.5 ha maze was cut in the shape of the State of Texas and our task was to find all 11 cities hidden in the maze. We did so and also went on a mini hayride. All that was missing was the bonfire and apple cider, however we did have some amazing pumpkin pie ice cream instead, which was more appropriate for the 22 degree Celsius out there. I do love the Texas fall.

The San Antonio Rock & Roll Marathon is only a week away. I pretty much completed my training with the last long run of 12 miles last weekend. Someone asked me what that translates to in kilometers and I bravely converted. It's 19.2 km. It sounds so much nicer in miles. Seriously.

Most of you know that I am training for a half marathon. I'll be running the San Antonio Rock & Roll Marathon in November and have been training pretty hard or so. We have built up now to 10 miles, which we ran last week. So, in my conversations this weekend I referred to this week's run as "only 7 miles". Apologies to everyone, I wasn't showing off. It really felt like a short run!

I had a little time-out weekend as my parents were supposed to come and visit but didn't, so I had all this unplanned time in front of me. I used it well to reconnect with some friends I haven't seen much this summer and we had much to catch up on. Also, I found the time to finish my photo gallery of my Ecuador trip and I invite you all to have a look. I still can't figure out how to add captions in photoshop, so you are on your own there. My Facebook profile has a smaller selection of photos with captions. I haven't quite completed copying my travel journal notes over, but they will be there soon. Enjoy!

Last month I was able to tick another southern event off my "gotta do"-list. An all inclusive rodeo!

Not too sure what a rodeo event really entailed, I found out: bareback riding, bull riding, steer wresting, tie-down roping, team roping, saddle bronc riding, and for the kids: sheep riding.

The offered foods, was another not to be missed item: everything fried. No really! Everything fried and on a stick... Check out the photos!

The carnival filled another cultural gap: The Freak Side Show. I don't think I need to see another one.

Who would have thought that I would manage. I created a new photo gallery using Photoshop CS3 for my Vancouver photos. Enjoy!

Changing a traditional offsite event from a coffee store in London to Vancouver is a true global undertaking.

Vancouver greeted me with some gloomy weather: from laying by the pool the day before to wearing a wintercoat and scarf upon arrival in Canada - it's a bit of a climate shock. Not helped much by the demonstrative use of his gloves by a fellow traveller. However, the weather wasn't the highlight of the trip...this trip was more of a forced offsite, albeit a very pleasant one that let me catch up with friends I haven't seen in 3 years.

Rachel, thanks for taking good care of me by combining great sightseeing with a Canadian must: poutine. We should let Fritz know that we truly enjoyed his poutine.

... and it passed by so quickly that I didn't manage to update this website at all with all the fantastic happening that were going on.

I was starting the month with a camping trip with friends to Mineral Wells State Park here in Texas with the beer in the red plastic cups (oops, did I say this out loud?) and the grilled marshmallows, what else does one need?

A relaxing beach and sun bathing weekend on South Padre Island came next, and then, of course, the long awaited Austin City Limits Festival. My three faves were: Damien Rice, Augustana and Bloc Party. Everyone else was pretty much nearly as great (maybe Bob Dylan is a little past his prime), The Killers were great (we later saw them downtown), Blue October didn't quite live up to my expectations, but that may have been the sound quality. Some great and interesting others were Andrew Bird, Wilco, Spoon. And then there were plenty more...

Another relaxing beach weekend took me to Miami to meet up with old friends. Have a look at some photos from this action packed month.

The other day, I read this blog on someone commenting on crazy Austinites walking and running around in the heat which we've finally got. Well, now I am one of those crazy people running in above 30 Celsius most days of the week.

In the tradition of keeping Austin weird, Austin hosted the Red Bull Flugtag this weekend. There is probably no better place on Earth ready to host this event. I mean, seriously, who else would think a vacuum cleaner can fly?? I would re-name this event though into Dropping-Stuff-Into-The-Lake-Tag; where is the Red Bull Event Marketing Team? A crazy event with long lines for the beer of course and everyone baking in the heat. But fun. :)

It was a good training ground for the ACL next month, the Austin City Limits. I'll be going to this 3-day event of great live music, Bjoerk, Bob Dylan, The Killers, White Stripes, Damien Rice, Blue October, Muse, Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, Joss Stone, to name just a few. I am still debating whether to go and see Damien Rice or Blue October, they are on at the same time...

After 2 short years of hard work and sweat, laughter and tears, won baseball games (Tigers) and lost football games (MSU: go green, go white!), countless beers, not to mention the cheese and wine, some (not too many) nights that I worked through and making many new friends, I finally made it.

I graduated with an MBA!

Not sure yet, if it's time to cry or laugh, but here are some photos that show all the emotions of the past month.

Today I am finally graduating from my mba program.

After two years of hard work, it's about time... ;)

On this especially cruel morning (snow outside after I walked around in shorts and t-shirt on Sunday), I have something that made me smile. No, In fact, it made me laugh out loud!!

Google maps are fantastic. A friend recently sent me something that I just had to try out.

As you all know, Google gives directions. Now, I tried to get directions from my home town Oer-Erkenschwick, Germany, to my new home Austin, Texas, USA. Google Map gives me awesome driving directions until you come to point 37 on the directions list...

I am not giving the fun away here. Try it!! It will make your day!! Google Maps

03 oct 2007 follow up - oh well, yes, oh well... Google took away this fantastic little teaser: you can no longer swim across the Atlantic (5000 miles) to make it from Europe to the USA. In fact, you can no longer make it from Europ to the USA fullstop. That's sad.

I never told you that I saw Joschka Fischer (the former German foreign minister) who was holding a lecture on the EU in Ann Arbor (which meant a day out in enemy territory…). After nearly 2 years of meagre discussions on international business, it was refreshing to hear a passionate, still factual lecture with a political twist. I quote:

“Redefining the U.S.–Europe Relationship after 9/11: Why Does it Matter?

Bringing his intimate knowledge of Europe and the European Union to American audiences, Fischer explores the challenges Europe faces in the 21st Century, the increasing importance of the E.U., why its enlargement is one of Europe’s greatest success stories and how Europe’s future is inextricably linked with that of the U.S. With thought-provoking analysis, he shares an insider’s knowledge of modern Europe, how its trends directly impact U.S. organizations and why they matter. A captivating speaker, he brings considerable insight to a discussion of the trans-Atlantic partnership between the E.U. and U.S., especially on global security issues.”

A news feature on Joschka Fischer’s speech in German (Süddeutsche Zeitung).

Each year our MBA program holds a charity auction to collect money for Cure Search, which is the National Childhood Cancer Foundation.

This year I went in to bid for a number of activities, only to come out with a bidding win on a whole set of other activities. It looks like I am going to have wine and appetizers with the Dean, fun at a minor baseball game and last but not least, I got hold of the KitchenAid blender of which I heard crushes ice amazingly!

I am glad to know that I not only gave money to a good cause, but will be able to make the best frozen margaritas when I am down in Texas.

So I woke up this morning in the full believe it's finally spring time. I mean, come on, I went on spring break already, got my first tiny little sunburn (more like some colour really...), brought out my spring clothes, had my spring hair cut... and then what???

I woke up this morning and it's white outside: snow! Which means - since we had snow as early as October this winter - winter has been over 5 months now. Undoubtly too long!!!

I will go out now and do a spring dance, maybe that'll work. :)

Welcome to my new website. I thought it’s about time I changed my design after 2 years. Bear with me through the progress while I am updating little bits at a time. I am also looking for a new photo gallery, so your suggestions are always welcome.

This is the last semester of my MBA program and it’s been a ride. Finally, I have got a little more time on my hand, with fewer classes this semester and a signed job offer in my pocket. For those of you who don’t know yet, my next endeavour will take me back to Austin, Texas.

Spring break just happened and I have been on a great trip by train all the way from East Lansing to San Francisco, well over 2.500 miles. It’s been a blast and I will show you all my photos in a short while. I need to cut down from my 800 pictures I have taken to make it manageable to view them.

Watch this space for new photos to come up soon and more design changes to my website.