rhyme wrote:
"adjustment". What an understatement!
I have a funny story about that. My first winter there, I had to drive to pick up a friend. I got there about 20 minutes late and she asked what the problem was. I said, well, my windows had ice and I couldn't see so I had to wait for them to defrost. She started laughing and said I needed to get an ice scraper. For those of you that don't know, it's a thing that you use to brush and scrape the ice off your car. Everyone in the cold weather states carries them in their car. I had never seen or heard of one before.
Regarding soccer, I'm not sure. Most Big 10 (the conference they are in) schools have extensive sports programs, but my impression is that most good college soccer programs are in the ACC (North Carolina, Virginia, etc.) and the Pac-10 (UCLA). Generally speaking, college soccer is not much of a spectacle. For those of you not in the US, I will personally rank the importance of college sports like this (along with the percentage of the sporting conciousness they occupy):
1. College Football: 55%
2. College Basketball: 44%
3. Everything else: 1%
Hockey is really big at Michigan, and certain schools have storied histories in various sports, but generally it is humorous when people try to talk about how great their college swimming team or wrestling team or baseball team is. Nobody cares.
A few other top B-schools have sporting traditions. UCLA is a big name in basketball, of course. Football at UCLA is a problem because the Rose Bowl is about 40 miles away, and the trip will take you 2+ hours from campus on game days. If anyone needs another reason to go to Stanford, the campus golf course is open to students. That's where Tiger Woods played, of course, and Michelle Wie will be playing there in the fall. Duke has an extensive basketball tradition, but everyone else in the country will hate you. Cal has had some football success lately. From time-to-time Virginia looks as if it will challenge in football and basketball, but they always seem to come up short. Northwestern is part of the Big 10, but they are generally a doormat in most sports. The Ivy schools compete among themselves (after all, the Ivy league is in fact a sporting designation) but their games are largely a joke to the rest of the country.