October  11, 2000:

I had my first midterm at UPenn today, and this in the amazingly interesting subject of statistics.  The last couple of days I have basically been studying my ass off, but that does not help much when you are presented problems of this sort:

"You have one red ball, and also a green banana. If they mate, is it likely their offspring will be a Romanian gymnast in the Special Olympics? Show your answer mathematically."

That was the easy question. Anyway, as I am here as an exchange student, I luckily do not have to transfer back the statistics credits if I do not want to. I am doing much better in my other classes though, well, perhaps with the exception of legal studies. The language of law is very complex, and will probably remain beyond the limits of my comprehension, forever!

Two weekends ago, my friend Mike invited me up to Connecticut for some parties. Unfortunately, I could not go. Yet, last weekend my dad came on a visit, and we decided to go and stare at the Amish. The latter are a religious group of around 20-30 000 people that live without electricity, the internet and everything else that makes life fun. They dress conservatively, and seldom marry people outside their close family. Anyway, I try to respect these people, and thus decided not to take many pictures. I think it is important to remember that the Amish are not running a zoo, this even though they probably would be very good at it.

We also went to see Gettysburgh and the South Mountains, so I hope to put up some pictures from there later on. Western Pennsylvania is really beautiful during autumn, and people are additionally, in contrast to Philadelphia, nice!