First week in Portland

After my first week in Portland it is finally time to let you know a bit about my life here. My journey from Frankfurt to Portland unfortunately took longer than expected. I hereby thank the wonderful airport in Chicago where flights are always on time. However, I have to say that they actually might have the best immigration officer in the US. He was very nice and could of course speak a little bit of German “Guten Tag! Wie geht es Ihnen!”, but for once it was more than evident to me that he must have German ancestors, because his name tag clearly stated his family name “Schmitt” (not Smith (!)). After a nearly 24 hrs trip I finally arrived in Portland and was greeted by plain blue sky after the heavy rain falls in Chicago and Adrian (a future classmate from Germany) who helped me getting to the hostel. I attached a picture from my hostel, where I already spent a week and will spend another one as I cannot move into my new apartment before October 5th. I can tell you that by the end of next week I will know every possible way of snoring (for women).

The first three days I tried to get myself organized. My achievements so far include:

• a new bank account
• a new cell phone number: 503.820.9040
• successful class registration
• and most importantly an apartment. I found out that a good way to get to know a city is running around for hours searching for an apartment. Unfortunately I was so focused on signs saying “Apartment available!” that I forgot to take any pictures, but I promise I will do so in the future. After three days of searching and calling, I found quite a nice apartment and it is right in Downtown close to Powell’s (Yippee!). Below is a picture from my apartment building.

The rest of the week I was busy with the obligatory student orientation. My firt impression of the university was quite good. The campus is very green and thereby compensates for the sometimes grey, 80s style university buildings. During the student orientation all the MBA students (full and part time) were put together, so I only had the chance to see my cohort (about 35 students) that I will be studying with for the next two years once. Next week we will go for a beer to one of the local breweries and then I can tell you more about my future classmates. Classes will not start before the 29th September. I have to take the chance next week to do some sightseeing, because I already see my life dominated by books, case studies and team projects till the end of the term beginning of December.

In a nutshell I finally have the feeling that I arrived and from what I can say till now I’m happy that I was placed in Portland. It is a very nice city and I can only recommend everyone to come and visit me. You will love it. By the way, I'm just looking out of the window and see the first rain fall in Portland. Let's see how many will follow. ;)

First impressions