First week in Flagstaff

After our road trip was over and I arrived in Flagstaff, the next day our 'Orientation Week' started, in which there were no classes yet, but everything from the cafeteria system to waste separation was explained and shown to us. Really great support for all international students!!

Now a bit more about NAU, my dorm and Flagstaff.

Northern Arizona University is one of 3 state universities in Arizona and has about 27,000 students, which is about one third of the total population. The campus has been impressing me since day one, the university is really a city within a city, there is everything here. The sports facilities are particularly noteworthy, the Recreation Center and the brand new Olympic swimming pool, where 12 gold medals from Rio were won.

As students, we can use everything for free, from fitness to all sports fields like squash, tennis, etc. Each major has its own college, and I am attending the W.A. Franke College of Business.

Also worth mentioning are the dining facilities. On one side, there are 2 main cafeterias, the Union and the du Bois Center, where the all-you-can-eat principle is applied, which makes a meal quite expensive (between $8 and $10), but it's definitely worth it. There are several different show kitchens and buffets, and you can also take everything home, like fruit. Surprise! The taste is unexpectedly good, but things often repeat over time and I also like to cook for myself. On the other side, there are many restaurants and all kinds of fast food chains (Pizza Hut, Denny's, Sushi, Mexican, etc.) on campus. There, you can also pay with the meals from your meal plan (a kind of meal subscription with about 250 meals).

Furthermore, there is a huge library and a bookstore, of course with an integrated Apple store.

My dorm is the Campus Heights or International House area. The dorms, since almost everyone lives on campus, make up the majority of the university. As is customary in the USA, I share the room with my roommate Zane, a half-Australian/half-Japanese guy, who has turned out to be a stroke of luck and has already become a good friend/fun guy.

The dorm has several smaller buildings with apartments, and in the heart of Campus Heights is the International Pavilion, a meeting place for all dorm members and various events. The special thing about the I-house is, as the name suggests, that almost exclusively international students live here, which has been really cool so far. Each apartment has a large living and dining area, a double room, and a single room, which is usually occupied by an American or international tutor. This brings us to my second roommate Anthony, a Native American who originally comes from the Navajo Indian tribe. He, too, is just great, and almost all the roommates have been well put together.

Through the Orientation Week and living together, I have already made some friendships with people from all over the world, and we international students do a lot together, as you will see later in my blog.

Flagstaff itself is a rather small city, with a really good student pub district and restaurants in downtown. Due to its proximity to the Grand Canyon, there are also some motels and hostels. It is also worth mentioning the altitude of 2000m, which made us all tired pretty quickly at the beginning, and alcohol also has a much faster effect up here. I like to compare the area a bit with the Allgäu region in Germany.

Still in the course of the first week, there was already the first proper home party, which, as so often, reflected all the clichés of Americans with beer pong, etc.

As a conclusion to my first weekend here, there was the first joint self-organized trip of us international students to Sedona. There, we had a relaxed afternoon by the river and in the evening, another magnificent view of this incredible American nature, which amazes me every time. I would like to give a special thanks to Timo, a German student who has been living here for 13 years and organizes so much for us international students, from parties to trips like Sedona.

To be continued...