After the classes became more stressful, I also did less sport and ate more, but I think that is the normal exam stress. Of course, chocolate is very important to be relaxed during preparation for the test. ;-)
I had one hard week with three midterms and I spent some hours in repeating all slides and doing the in class exercises again. All the work has been awarded; I was very satisfied with results. And now I got a new push for the next content. But now some details to my classes:

• Computer Systems
  We learn a lot about the basic component and history of the computer. All what we learn with the theoretical we can also try practical at some PCs. And I like it to hold something in my hands and it make it also easier to remember the facts later. The Midterm was an open book test, and that was completely new for me. Maybe it sounds easy to do an open book test, because the most results are in the book. Fact is you will not have the time to look every point up in the book. You can only use it if you have really no idea, otherwise you will not have enough to finish the test.
• Database Concepts
  

The first weeks were not too stressful, but then it becomes busier. I have every week round about 13 hours in the class, 5-10 hours for assignments and preparation for the classes and 5-10 hours for my project. The rest of my time I spend with other international students and US friends. One really wonderful point is that we have here a wonderful nature with nice lakes around Little Rock and we did some trips.

Only two hours drive away from Little Rock is Memphis and that city has a lot to see. We stayed with 8 people in a nice hostel in the center. Of course, we visited the house and museum of Elvis Presley; I think that is a have to do when you visit Memphis. Also we were in Sun Record Studio where the Rock n Roll began and enjoyed the Beale Street. And I do not tell too much when I say that the nightlife in Memphis is great.

The first classes were very nice, we had an introduction and the professors show us the syllabus. I also planned to work on a project. By my employer I worked in the data mining area and I would like to improve my theoretical Data Mining skills. I asked my Professor of the class “Data Mining Concepts & Tech” if she knows an interesting project. She suggested me a social networks analysis and mining project. They have data from a massively multiplayer online browser-based strategy game called “Travian” developed by the German software company Travian Games. The funny thing is that all the tables in the database are in German and so I can sometimes be the translator.

My adventure began. The international office of the UALR organized for the exchange students a mentor. The mentor is a student of the UALR who help the international student during the first time at the university. I arrived 9:12 pm at the Little Rock National Airport, but without my luggage. The personal form the airport said that they will send my luggage to the hotel during the next days. My mentor, his name is Andrew, was so nice a pick me up from the airport and brought me to my hotel. Of course not without showing me a nice pub named “Flying Saucer”. At the next day Andrew shows me the Campus and some places in Little Rock and how I can organize my study in the online system of UALR. After two days arrived my luggage and I could also move into my apartment on the campus. The campus at UALR has lots of trees, some nice new buildings, art sculptures and a good atmosphere.

Also if is not direct part of my exchange program, I would like to tell you something about my impressions from my trip on the west coast before I arrived in Little Rock at UALR.
My exchange program started on the 18th August, so I used all 30 days and flew with a friend of mine on the 19th July to Los Angeles to do an unforgettable road trip. We planned to be unplanned, so we booked only the flight, the rental car, and a Hotel for the first two nights. We thought it will be better to be flexible and to stay at the places that we liked. Of course that had also sometimes disadvantages but I will come to that point later.

I hope that you (especially the students from the FernUni Hagen, because they have to do similar procedures) can use my planning experience to improve their own. And I think this will be a long article.

The basics rules:
1. Know what you want.
2. Start early enough with your preparation.
3. Make everything written.

What courses should I choose?
As a student form the FernUni Hagen you want that the FernUni Hagen accept all your credits that you do during your aboard study. Here is the first question. What are credits? At the FernUni Hagen we know that one course has normally 10 credit points (ECTS) but did you know that the Universities in the USA do not have our credit points? They work with credit hours. You can compare the credit hours with the “Semesterwochenstunden” from our old Diplom system. And one credit hour is between 1.4 and 2 ETC (that depends on the university). If you see that you need in the USA 125 credit hours to get a bachelor and you need at the FernUni Hagen 180 ETCS than you have a relation of 1 : 1.44. Here a link where this theme is discussed (http://transatlanticker.twoday.net/stories/1108597).

This year, I was given the unique experience of studying aboard. Before I begin to talk about my experience I would like to tell you a little bit about myself.
I am 26 years old and I am from Muenster (NRW). I started studying Business Informatics in 2008 at the Fernuniversitaet Hagen. I think the reasons for why I chose to study at the FernUni Hagen were typical reasons for a distance student. I did a lot of background research on different distance universities and decided that the FernUni Hagen was a perfect fit for me. I love my job (a programmer at an IT-service provider) and I strive to learn more than what is needed for my Job so as to build a good basis for the rest of my carrier. An added bonus of the Job was of course the salary.
In 2009, my employer gave me a chance to go to the United States (North Carolina) for 2 month to check on the R&D of another software developer’s company and their product as possible solution for them. It was my first time in the USA and I had a great time. After this trip my fascination for the USA grew.

Hello and Good Bye,

This is my last blog post for the ICACE summer research trip to Germany for 2011. It has been a fun and interesting summer filled with traveling and project work. I finally made it back to the US a few weeks ago. As far as the project was concerned, we accomplished what we set out to do. We had a working mobile and web applications for Daniel's server. Of course, there will always be room for improvement but we have a working prototype. I'm glad to have contributed to this project. It was interesting learning about REST development and work. In the end we ended up using MySQL, PHP, Javascript, CSS, HTML for our web application.

Hello everyone!

Traveling
My college mate, Clint, and I have done tons of traveling, especially in the first week, starting at Lisbon, Portugal to Faro, Portugal and ending at Seville, Spain. We had a great time getting to know each place, filled with walking around the city and sightseeing some famous places and tasting some of the local food. We have settled here in Faro to work on our project that deals with wireless networking between a Texas Instrument watch with a few sensors such an accelerometer and wireless nodes at the University of Algarve. While at the university, we got to meet some professors and students in the Electronics Engineering and Information Department. They were very welcoming and helpful. Last week, we stayed in the dorms and also met some students from all over the world, including Germany, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, and India. This week, we moved into a hotel, where we will be staying at for the rest of our time here. Some of the things we have done here in Faro are visiting the beaches and we got to experience the Motorcycle Event that Faro holds every year.

Project