Autumn light

Autumn! Or Fall as they call it here. Some nice sunsets and the leaves are changing, and it's getting much colder to be standing around as the sun goes down, that's for sure...

Mr Strader gets his shot

Let it snow

So a week back I posted on Facebook that DeKalb's winter so far had been, well, a bit weak. To be fair, for the last 18 months my colleagues have been warning me about the bitter cold, the mountains of snow, the general bleakness of winter here and it just hasn't been the case.
Today it started snowing, big flakes of it, resulting in a couple of inches on the ground by the time I was heading home. About time!
So here are a couple of views of Davis Hall for you to enjoy.

Davis Hall

The view from the second floor

The DeKalb Navy?

Strange ships have turned up in various small ponds and lagoons around DeKalb, and I snapped a few photos with my phone to share them. The first ones I noticed were in the West Lagoon at NIU campus, and consisted of what appear to be small submarines.

Submarine in NIU West Lagoon

Nobody in the Geography Department seems to have any idea what they are, apart from the Department Chair who suggested they may be an art project. Other ideas were some sort of monitoring equipment, or to keep the geese off. While the geese don't get too close to it, it certainly doesn't scare them away.

Out by Lowes however there are more of them in a small retention pond, and they seem to represent a small navy... in the photo below you can see that one is partially sunk.

Possibly the result of a battle, or an aggressive goose

Large Battleship on patrol by Lowes. Submarine in the background.

So the art project seems to be the most likely option, although why there are only submarines by NIU is a bit of a mystery. I would expect less people would see them down by Lowes where they are below street level and beside a car park. There seems to be some sort of tugboat in the Lowes pond as well, I couldn't get a good photo but it is painted red in parts.

Getting my Illinois Drivers Licence

OK, I haven't done a lot of driving over here so far, a bit of local stuff and some cruising to Chicago and back. Luckily I have my navigator ;), by far the worst part of driving in any new place is finding your way around and when it's on the other side of the road trying to concentrate on navigation is just one more undesirable distraction.

So far I have been just using my NZ drivers licence, as far as I can tell according to Illinois law it is perfectly legal as long as I have a valid visa, so on my F-1 I am good to drive with that for at least a couple of years. However it is also a requirement to have insurance, and the insurance company demand that I get an Illinois licence within 30 days, or be in the process of getting it.

To get an Illinois Drivers Licence however you need a Social Security Number (SSN). If you're unfamiliar with what this is, it is a magical number that is required to do most things in the US, but if that number gets in the wrong hands then it can cause problems (think credit issues linked to you via your SSN). It is not just a tax number (like the NZ IRD number or the NI number in the UK).

As a foreigner I have to apply for a SSN, and this can take several weeks. You may be able to spot the potential issue here with my drivers licence... Anyway, I could apply through the university, a Social Security representative turned up to go through all the paperwork of the hundred or so of us in the line and told me I would have mine in a few weeks.

In the meantime I was reading through the Illinois road code - as Illinois has no licence recognition agreements with any other countries (or indeed other states from what I can tell) and requires you to sit the full test. I was a bit nervous, I haven't sat a driving test in years and this was in a foreign country driving on the other side of the road. I think I have it down pretty well but who knows what I would need to do - parallel parking for example is pretty rare here and I haven't done one while driving on the right. As an aside I am surprised how much less flexible I seem to be looking to my right through the back window than when I had to turn my head left to do it. Seriously, I am a good few seconds slower at orienting myself in the car as well, I guess all those years of practice have made it second nature and now I have to learn a new side!

In the end it was a bit of an anticlimax. I turned up and took my number, waited,  handed over all the documentation, proof of address, passport, visa etc and went over to a little booth to sit my exam. 20 questions on basic road code (about a third was "what does this sign mean") and I was back to the desk to let them know I was done. I then just had to wait until a driving examiner was available.

The driving test was super basic. I mean, all I really did was turn left and right and do one three point turn. I also had to pull over at one point and then tell the instructor how I would turn the wheels if I was parked on a hill. No parallel parking, no hill starts (no hills), not even driving on multi-lane roads. I did clear up an argument for the staff though, they were evenly split over whether we drove on the right side or the "wrong" side of the road in New Zealand

So now I have a US drivers licence in the state of Illinois. One definite benefit is now I have a State ID, invaluable as otherwise I had to use my passport for everything. And I have only driven on the left once so far...

Red sky at night... Shepherd's delight!

An amazing red sky tonight, unfortunately I didn't have anything other than my phone at the time and I don't think it did the colour of the wispy clouds justice, they were a deep purple/red.

Luckily I managed to get home and get my camera in time to catch some of the sunset near home.

Shabonna Lake and Wind Turbines

So this weekend I decided to go check out Shabonna Lake, which apparently is a bit of a local fishing spot*. I texted my mate Stephen, who was keen to come and show me around, so today we cruised over there to have a look. There was a cool wind with a bit of a bite and most of the trails were closed because of hunting season but we got a few photos.

*They have Muskie, Crappie, Bass, Walleye and Catfish - interestingly you're only allowed to keep a Muskie if it is over 48 inches long!

Cloud formations (well, I was with a meteorologist)

Autumn colours mostly gone

Wind turbines in the corn fields

The wind turbines are pretty big

DeKalb Cornfest 2011

DeKalb Cornfest! Music, cars, plane rides, food stalls, carnival rides and those shooting games that you almost win, topped off with corn eating competitions - apparently this is quite the DeKalb event. We had a beautiful day for it anyway.

Plymouth Fury

Dodge Chargers

SS Chevelle

Yes - chocolate covered cheesecake - on a stick!

Corn eating competition