Day 79 - Berlin

I woke up super early today so I could get ready and showered, but then I thought "nah, I'm not doing that much today, and I have almost all my stuff packed" and slept a little bit more. When I did eventually get up for real, I got everything ready, ate, and left for the meeting place. I got to the tram OK, and got off at the right stop. When I got to our meeting spot, I saw some people getting onto the bus and gave the driver my luggage so I could join my classmates. Luckily, there weren't that many people on the bus yet, so I was able to claim an entire row so I could sleep if I so chose. what was even better was that the bus was big enough that everyone could have their own row if they so chose. We waited for a few more minutes to get the stragglers, but even when we had waited for quite a while, we were still missing one person. We eventually had to stop by her house to pick her up, but by the time that 6:30 came around, we were on our way to Berlin. The ride was 6 hours long, so most of us tried to catch up on sleep by assuming various positions on the bus, and some (including me) tried out all of them: head towards the row, head towards the widow, curled on the seats, sitting like normal, etc. Any position that you could think of for sleeping was tried out. We eventually stopped at around 10:30 for the driver to take a break and for us to get food. It also did the favor of waking everyone up so we didn't sleep too long.

We ate a snack and some got breakfast before getting back on the bus for the rest of our ride to Berlin. I started to read the book Emma and talked with some people about the classes that we'll be taking next semester in the fall. However, I eventually fell asleep again and only woke up when Kristin came by to give me the money for food for the week. At that point, I stayed awake until we actually arrived in Berlin. When we stopped, we got all of our stuff out and into the hotel that we were staying at for the week before being told that we would be meeting in an hour and 15 minutes for our next activity. My two roommates and I went up to get settled into our room before going to the nearby grocery store for a quick lunch. We met up with everyone to go to a bike store where we would be taken on a bike tour of the city. Unfortunately, Kelsey wasn't able to join us becasue her foot was still hurting her and she didn't want to aggrivate it by riding on a bike for 3 or more hours.

"Alex" was the tallest thing in Europe at one point. Also called "God's revenge" because it was built by Soviet Germany (contracted out to Swedish architects), but when the sun sets, it creates a cross...something communists really didn't like

The ride was awesome! Our tour guide was really interesting to listen to and brought us to all the touristy places to tell us the historical facts of different places. We visited the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie (which is not manned by real US soldiers,) the Jewish Memorial, Hitler's bunker, and even Parliament. Yeah, you'll be sing pictures of all of those soon. After that, we said goodbye to our tour guide for now since we'll be seeing him on Wednesday and went to where we would be eating dinner for the evening. The night was spent in good company and we had a lot of fun talking to our professors and classmates. We even got to get to know Lucy a little bit better and had an all around good time.

 Where the old palace used to stand, replaced by the Communist parliament, now being rebuild as the old palace.

 A memorial to the famous Nazi book burning (as shown in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)

A school built by Frederich the Great, a very open-minded Prussian Emporer who also built theaters and churches

 A church Frederich built

 A theater Frederich built

 Parts of the Berlin Wall

 The sign by Checkpoint Charlie

 Checkpoint Charlie (not actually correct in it's placement)

 Where the wall was originally placed

The Berlin Wall (a part still intact)

A communist building close to the wall. One family made it over the wall by zip-lining from this building to the other side. Since then, bars were put on all the windows to prevent a repeat.

 Where Hitler's bunker used to be

 The Jewish Memorial

 The German Parliament. It's glass to symbolize that all the people could see what was going on in Parliament (and you can in the inner mirrors) so something like WWII would never happen again.

Our tour guide

Poor Kristin guarded our bikes while we saw the Parliament building

Group hug after the tour was over

After dinner, we went back to the hotel, passing by a group of wildly yelling Germans (weird) and getting ready for sleep. Tomorrow promises to be a busy day as we're visiting a History of Medicine Museum and a skills testing facility before another group dinner. I'm pretty excited.

By for now!
Erin Z

Day 78 - League of Legend class

Wow, this weekend has been refreshing. Exactly what I needed after the sudden avalanche of work that was put on my plate this week. I woke up today and went to the German mass. I'm so excited, because after months of learning German and living among the people, I'm catching onto some of the phrases that crop up and can even understand sentences based on what I've already heard. After mass, I went to AIB to work on my project, but was sidetracked by David playing League of Legends. Since my computer needed to charge anyway, I plugged it in and sat down to watch him. It was interesting to see the different positions that each person could play and how teamwork was such a huge deal to win the game. He explained everything that was going on, what was good or bad, and answered all my questions whenever they cropped up. Before I knew it, 45 min had passed and the game had ended. Of course, then I had to get to work on finishing up the last little bit of the power point and started to work on that.

I was put in charge of the Inventor portion of the presentation, and since our design actually has two different ways to attach to the leg, I had to model up both of them. I had already made the underlying template for what it had to look like and the first way of attaching, so I only had one more to go. Unfortunately, the one that I was set to make had a bunch of moving parts that would be complicated to make in Inventor. It took me about 2 hours, but I finally came up with a plan that got the visual image across without needing to make a whole new part. After that, I watched league some more and started my application to another college. Before you freak out, this is only for a transient student application, meaning I had to make it so I could take summer classes at a school other than A&M. Now, diehard Aggies may hate me, but the school I'm applying for is the University of Texas in Austin. Yes, I can hear the hissing from here. However, the fact is this: I need need need to take Diff EQ in the summer or else I'm put a year behind due to pre-requisites for classes only offered in the fall, which is a pre-rec for one in the spring, which is a pre-rec for the year long senior project. I have a job lined up in Austin, so I want to stay there, hence why I'm applying at University of Texas. Wish me luck!

I left in time to get back home for dinner, but when I arrived, I found that everyone had left except my host mom. She wasn't feeling good because of all the pollen in the air. I guess really nice days like today (72 again...what's up with it being nicer here than in Texas?) do have a downside. We ate dinner and relaxed together until the rest of the family minus Maus came in. Maus (pronounced mouse) had already left to go back to her home, so that's why she wasn't there. After a few minutes, I got a call from my grandparents, so I left to take it. Who just so happened to be on screen but my cousin!? Turns out he and my Grandparents were in Sicily for the week for his 16th birthday and they had decided to call me after their hike up Mt. Etna and showed me the rocks they had taken as souvenirs. It was really nice to hear from them, and wish them lots of fun while they explore the island.

After that, I called my parents for our weekly Skype and talked to them for quite a while before we had to hang up. I'm starting to really miss them, but I know the perfect way to block it for now: do more stuff! And I'm about to do just that. Tomorrow I leave for Berlin, so expect a lot of pictures tomorrow and through this week. I should have internet access, so I'll still be updating daily...hopefully. For now, I still have to pack and get some sleep before my early morning tomorrow. Sorry, no pictures today. I feel bad that I have nothing new to show of Bonn, but I feel like a lot would just be repeating what I've shown before. Oh well, tomorrow is a new city with new sites, and I have an awesome camera to catch them all.

See ya!
Erin Z

Days 76 & 77 - Presenting and Relaxation

I am so sorry. I know I said I would try to update daily again and not do this two day post thing as often, but when I go home yesterday, I was so tired, I just wanted to sleep. So as you may have read yesterday, I stayed over at AIB that night. It wasn't bad as far as nights go considering I was working for most of it and got a lot of work done in the morning. I even got a 3 hour nap in at some point, which was nice. I was woken up by two of my classmates as they left at 5:45 so I wouldn't freak out if I woke up and no one was around when there should be, which was really nice of them. After that, I couldn't and didn't want to go back to sleep so I finished up the blog of Aachen and did some more work that was due that day. People started coming in at around 7:45 to finish up their work or to take quizzes early. My first class that day was signals, so with a sleep-deprived brain, that made even less sense than normal. However, I powered through it and was able to actually grasp some of the concepts that were put in front of me to learn. After that class was over, we had to work on our powerpoints for Otto Bock that we'll be presenting at the end of next week. It was actually really productive, and we figured out the layout that we wanted to present in and the colors that would need to be shown at what point. Jane was there as well, and I'm not going to lie, I had a ton of fun with her when she helped with our aesthetics of the power point. It really helped that I could throw back different ideas for how things will be placed and where pieces should go to bring the eye to where we want it. I guess when your mom is a faux painter for the majority of your childhood, you tend to pick up on how things should look and which colors or pictures go together.

What was really impressive was that at the same time we were working on our presentation, some other members of our group were working on the DHF that was due at noon that day. Our professors came over a few times and they were a little impressed at the look of our presentation, and made us present to them so they could help us with the content and points that we would have to make as well as the segue's we would have to create. That part lasted about an hour and a half because we would present, they would ask questions, we would answer, they would incorporate it into our presentation, we would take notes, rinse wash and repeat until finished. Finally, we were done for the day and although there were still some things to go over and fix, for the most part we were done. What really boggles my mind is the fact that I was as tired as I was and still put together a coherent presentation because I was kinda pushed into that position.

After the presentaton, I returned my bike and went out to lunch with two other girls. It was nice having lunch and talking with them out in the sunny 70 degree (Fahrenheit) weather. After lunch, I made my way back home, where I noticed that there was someone in the main house. I went upstairs to drop my stuff off and decided I would only take a small nap before heading downstairs to hang out with whoever was home. I guess I either slept through my alarm or fell asleep before I was fully able to set it because I laid down for a 45 min nap and woke up 3 hours later. I made my way downstairs and found out that Maus was back! She had a few days off of work, and decided to visit her mom and sisters for the weekend. I had dinner and hung out for a little bit, but soon went back upstairs to sleep for as long as possible.

When I woke up this morning, I felt so much better from a good 10 hour night's sleep. I got ready for the day, and was surprised when Annette's mom came in. She saw me and started talking to me in German, but a strange thing happened when I was actually able to answer her questions and tell her everything was good, my German was getting better, and I was leaving on May 6th. It was pretty cool to talk to a fluent Deutsch speaker and hold my own even if it was for only a few minutes. We ate lunch and talked for a long time. Well, they did. I just kind of sat back and absorbed the words that were flowing around me. Soon, I left to go to AIB to work on the project some more. When I was walking around Bonn, I was soaking up the sunshine of another gorgeous day. At AIB, I knocked on the window to whoever was inside so they could let me in, but no one came and got me, so I went to get gelato before returning and knocking again. This time, I was let in. I started to work on the project, but it quickly devolved into typing this blog and listening to music.

I left to go back home and ate dinner before heading up to work a little bit. Tomorrow is a rather chill day, but I'm sure something will happen that I can write about.

Bye!
Erin Z.

Ps: no pictures today

Day 75 - Aachen

So today was a long day. I woke up early so I could get ready before biking to the meeting place for our field trip today. I biked to the Hofgarten where we were meeting. Unfortunately, when we arrived there was no bus to get on to. In fact, the bus didn't come until an hour after it was supposed to, probably because the whole city was pretty much gridlocked because of the strike that was happening. Anyway, we got on the bus to go to Aachen (ah-hen) where I promptly fell asleep for the hour long ride it took to get from Bonn to the clinic.

When we arrived, we walked into the Aachen Biomedical engineering building and listened to one of the engineers talk about the different things that they were testing in their labs. This particular facility focused on the Cardiovascular System, so they had a lot of things on pumps, blood oxygenaters, valves, and other things that had to do with testing the products already being made to gather some money for the facility. After the short lecture, we took a tour of the labs, which was absolutely amazing to go through. We split up into two groups because bringing 24 people into a lab at one time is absolutely not at all possible. Our guide told us about all the different labs and what they wre testing over. We walked through a lab that was making and improving the pumping mechanism for their pulsified artificial heart as well as monitoring the effect that this had on the Vena Cava and Aorta and what the ventricle had to do to get blood up into the Aorta. It was pretty cool because they had reconstructed the ventricle and were making it contract and monitoring it. There was another room that was completely devoted to suturing the stents and valves by hand. Yeah, all of those things are done by hand in every place that makes them either for sale or for research. Another room was devoted to testing blood, while a different one was testing materials and a separate room only tested how long these implants would last (theoretically) once implanted. It was really interesting to go through all these rooms with a researcher that would explain what wsa going on in the lab at that point in time and what the ultimate goals were.

 The institute we went to

 They make these model hearts to help surgeons figure out how they want to operate

These molds are used to make artificial Aortas to test things with

After the tour ended, we hopped back on the bus to go to Aachen city center for lunch. Kelsey and I walked with a bunch of people, but soon split off to go find the stone oven baked pizza place for lunch and grabbed fro-yo on our way to the large church in the center of the city where we were meeting everyone.  On our way to the church, we passed by two different large buildings, one was the town hall and another was I think another church. They were both beautiful, and we almost stopped at them, but a quick look at our map revealed that we hadn't quite reached the center yet. When we did finally make it to the church, we walked around and enjoyed the performers that had started playing right outside the church. We met up with everyone outside of the entrance and took a tour of the Treasury of the church and eventually of the church itself. The treasury was a compilation of all the things that the emperor Charlemagne was connected to such as his sarcophagus (sans body) and some of the things that he brought back from far away countries. There were a lot of displays that held various pieces of his bones like his arm bone, the top of his skull, his shin. All of these things were recorded to be from the same body that lived during the time of Charlemagne's reign, and everyone believes them to be the actual bones of Charlemagne, though the lack of DNA and knowledge of where Charlemagne was buried makes it impossible to say for certain.

 The fiddler and Guitar performers outside the church

 Kelsey in front of the city hall

 The church. It should be noted this picture and the one above are across from each other.

I literally turned around from the city hall to take this picture

 The cross that's the most valuable thing in Aachen

 Charlemagne's sarcophagus he took from the Romans, which was then taken by the French during their revolution where they put flowers in it (destroying the DNA) before giving it back.

Charlemagne's skull in in the head of this display.

 This holds Charlemagne's shin bone on the bottom, and 3 relics of the Passion: a piece of the cross, a thorn from the crown, and a bit of the nail.

Again, they were determined to be around the time Jesus lived in, but we can't know for certain.

This display held Charlemagne's arm.

After the treasury, we walked into the church, which was covered from floor to ceiling with mosaics of patterns and important biblical events. When Charlemagne ordered this church to be built, it only took 10-15 years to make it, which was remarkable for the time period. Behind the gate leading to the choir and alter area, we saw a gold leaf shrine that was said to contain the bones of Charlemagne, from the same person who's bones were in the treasury, though due to the scientific constraints I said before it's impossible to know without a doubt that they are Charlemagne's. There was also a shrine further up front that contained 4 pieces of clothing: Mary's robe, Jesus' loincloth and diapers, and one other piece of clothing that had to do with His passion to the cross. These are available for the public to view every 7 years, and this year at the beginning of June just happens to be one of those times. Again, it's impossible to know for certain, but when these were evaluated, it was determined that these pieces would have come from the same time period and place that Mary and Jesus would have lived in, so I'm inclined to believe it. This church was full of symbols, so there was one other thing I wanted to touch on. There was a bible holder made of an eagle with a bat on it's back. The eagle was one of the only things to fly toward the sun without being blinded by it, so it was seen as a noble animal, while the bat was the universal sign for evil. The thinking was that when the bible was placed on the eagle's back, the evil would be sandwiched between two good things and contain it so that no one would be tempted by evil.

 First look at the ceiling of the church. Keep in mind this one and all the following are mosaics.

 Can you imagine trying to make this?

 I love stained glass windows

 The eagle's front

 The eagle's back. The Bible covers the bat.

 I'm just in awe of the amount of work that must have gone into this.

We left the choir area and went up to the special tour only area. Why was it special you ask? It contained the throne that Charlemagne may have sat on. Charlemagne ordered it built, but it's unknown if it was actually a place that he sat during mass or if it was placed as a symbol that God would sit there on the 8th day when He came back into the world. We do know that all the emperors after Charlemagne sat on this throne because in order to be named emperor, they would have had to be crowned on this very throne. Naturally when the church became public, everyone wanted to sit on the throne, but because the city wanted to preserve this artifact, they stopped people from sitting on it and the throne is only able to be seen if you have a tour guide who can bring you up there. Otherwise the throne would have broken long ago from the constant pressure of people sitting on it.

 The throne emperor's were crowned on

The "impenetrable barrier" that was enacted to keep people out.

Once the tour was over, we walked around for a little bit and sampled the local chocolate cookie called printen. It's special to Aachen, so it was quite the treat to try it out. Think a cinnamon and orange cookie covered in chocolate and you have a close approximation to what it tasted like. After a little bit of time, we met back up and walked to the bus, where I again fell asleep on the ride back to Bonn. When we arrived, I got my bike from old AIB and biked to new AIB where a lot of people were meeting to work on our Design History File and meet with our adviser later in the evening. When we met with the adviser, she did a group meeting with the 5 BMEN majors still at AIB. She told us what classes we would need to take next semester (we don't know because they change the degree plan at least once a semester) as well as the classes we would need to take over the summer to get caught up with the regular schedule. Thankfully nothing too bad, just Differential equations as a big one and Organic Chemistry if we didn't want to take it next semester. After the meeting, we all got to work on the DHF and didn't get done until after 2 am. People started leaving after about 12:30, but I didn't want to go home because I just so happened to be wearing all black and due to the strike there were no buses running that could take me home. that means that I would have had to bike home in the dark at 2-3 in the morning, wearing all black. Yeah...that wasn't happening. Instead, I stayed at AIB with some others who were in a similar situation overnight. Hey, I had to sleep at school at some point in my college career, and the couches were comfy so I wasn't to concerned. Also, school ends really early today, so I plan on going home and sleeping after class.

There's nothing going on this weekend, though I almost went to the black forest with some people. It would have been a whole lot of fun, but I haven't been sleeping well and I need a little bit of time to reset myself after all the stress of this week, so no traveling for me. As of the end of this post (I wrote half last night) the sun is coming up and people are about to come in, so...

Guten Morgen!
Erin Z

Days 73 & 74 - models and STRIKE! (part 2)

SO sorry about not posting yesterday. I'm really trying to get back into a daily posting routine, but when life suddenly points at everything you could possibly have on your plate and says "that's all due in 2 days," it's a bit difficult to find some time.

Yesterday was pretty nice as our teachers all went to Dusseldorf for a teacher meeting. The only thing we had on the schedule was to meet with Professor Jane Brucker so she could help us out in our presenting. Before we started in with Jane, Frederike came up to us to make sure that we would still be able to get to school through the strike the next few days. It turns out that I'm 3 miles from Bonn, and 2 miles from Bad Godesburg (the nearest station that would be working.)  Because I'm so far away, I would either need to walk for about an hour or more, catch a ride from my host mom who works in the opposite direction of where I needed to go, get a cab, or get a bike. I decided to go with the bike option. After all, I have a bike back home and have a lot of experience with biking places. How difficult could it be?

After I told Frederike how I would be getting to and from school, we followed Jane over to the back table where a bunch of craft supplies were, and she showed us all the different things that we could use to make a model of our prosthetic. We got into groups and started in on the model, but after only a few minutes, we realized that model making was no one's strong point and our leg looked too skinny and misshapen. Instead, we started doing our own thing and made a 3-D model in inventor and a 2-D drawing of the internal view of the body because we're including osseointegration in our design. At the end of our time period with Jane, she reminded us that we were presenting with our power points the next day. There was just one problem: none of us had known that and spent the last 3 hours trying to make a model like she wanted. When we brought this up with her, she just said that we should have known and it would have been smarter to work on the presentation if we were so far behind. So that was added. There was also the small fact that the test over the material that none of us knew was going to be the next day. Oh, and we still needed to finish up the models that we had started. Yay.

I went out to lunch with a bunch of other students and had a great time, but needed to leave early so I could get my bike from AIB. Luckily there was a bike that was working at a satisfactory level, so I planned to bike home to get the rout in my head while the sun was still out. Then I would take the tram back to AIB and leave the bike at home and stay out late studying and working before catching the night bus before the strike started at 3 am the next morning. For once, my plan actually worked out. The only thing was the fact that the bike was a little small for me, and I had to get used to biking in the bike lane...on the roads in the middle of traffic. I made it home and only had time to say hello to my family before leaving to go back to AIB. I spent my time there looking up hostels to stay in because the lady whose apartment we were going to rent was banned from the site we were using. At 7, I took a break to watch a movie, but I was so restless that I left only an hour into it to study for this test. Let me tell you, I've never been this concerned for a test, and I'm pretty sure everyone was getting aneurysms because of the stress we were putting ourselves under. At midnight, I caught the night bus to go home, but couldn't sleep and so looked at more places we could stay in Paris. Why do I always take the night bus? My regular tram is a 20 min walk from my house, and as safe as the neighborhood is, I don't really want to walk it at night if I don't have to, so I take the bus that drops me off a block from my house.

Today, I had to wake up extra early to make sure I would get to school on time because today was day one of the public transport strike part 2. So I biked. Everyone else must have had the same idea because there were packs of bikers going into Bonn today. On the bright side, my commute is about the same time-wise, and I get to see the sights of Bonn as I get closer to the city center. It was rather relaxing actually. I got to school much earlier than I anticipated, but used that time to go over signals material before my Physiology class. In Phys, we actually had a lecture instead of working in our groups, but it was probably poorly planned because most of us were stressing so hard about the test and the power point presentation later that day. Next came the worst of the day: Signals. I was actually able to put something down for every question but the bonus, but there was definitely a portion of the test where I blankly stared at the page...and earlier people were saying they would need to tie me up in the corner so I wouldn't blow the curve!

A really interesting building I saw on my commute

After that hour and a half, I worked on the model some more and one of my teammates worked on the power point. We worked through the next class period and right through lunch, but we got something on the paper that we could present to the class. Physiology lab was the last thing on the agenda for the day, and that was mostly presenting our prosthetic and getting feedback from the group. It seems like everyone is almost done with their designs, we just need a little bit of external input on how to fix potential problems. After the presentations, we improved the power points a little bit more before people started to drift back home. My group finished up before starting on the Design History File due Friday (it was moved back from midnight tonight.) When my computer was almost out of battery, i packed up for the day, but was reminded that we still needed a place in Paris. I looked for a bit, but it was starting to get late and I wanted to get home before it got dark and being seen would be harder. I went home and ate with my family and just acted a little goofy with them before settling down on the couch for a bit before going to bed.

Tomorrow is our field trip to Aachen, so that will be very interesting. hopefully I can get a post up tomorrow and not skip another day.

'Till then,
Erin Z

Day 72 - Living in Paris

Today wasn't very exciting, but it was rather full. It started out with a meeting about our upcoming trip to Berlin and Dutderstadt, where we will be touring and presenting for Otto Bock. It was nice, and gave me something to look forward to amidst all the planning of our project that's still going on. After that was our History of Medicine class, where we got into our groups and worked on our prosthetic. My group seems to have the basic ideas down, today was mostly about figuring out how to attach the device onto the residual limb without discomfort or introducing structural instability. Wow, I really feel like a prosthetic designer with all this brainstorming on how to fix the various problems that could possibly crop up. It's really fun to think that I'm getting a taste of what I could possibly be doing in my career. My design teacher was also impressed with our use of models to convey our ideas and the fact that I've kept every single scrap of paper that we've written on for this project, which is a good thing because we'll have to turn in a Design History Folder to her at the end of the project for our Design class.

After our brainstorming hour, we had signals review for the test that we'll be taking on Wednesday. I'm a bit concerned because I didn't remember a lot of the stuff she went over in much detail, but I feel like everyone else in the class is at that point as well, so at least we'll struggle together. At the end of that class, we took advantage of the fact that Sarah was an engineer to ask her questions on how to make our designs better or if she had any ideas on how to fix a specific problem.Well, one of the groups did. I had a really fun conversation about politics (revolving around Russia and how concerned we are with that whole mess) that eventually morphed into terraforming other planets and how we could do that as well as which planets were best suited for each kind of method. Yeah, we're a bunch of scientists that are just having a fun conversation. Actually, when Sarah heard what we were talking about, she got this really happy look on her face and told us that we were awesome, which was frankly the highlight of the day. That right there just shows how much we like her because that spot was previously held by getting free food, which as all college students know, is a really big deal.

Anyway, after that class was technically lunch, but a lot of us still had food left over or were still full from the food we had gotten earlier. All the people who were going to Paris started looking into where we were going to live over Easter weekend. It took almost 4 hours, but we finally settled on getting an apartment close to the Eiffel tower and splitting it among the 8 of us for four nights. The last night will be spent in a cheap hostel close to the central station because our trains on Tuesday are going to be really early. This gives us the benefit of being close tot the station as well as not having to make the owner of the apartment get up at an ungodly hour because we had to catch the 8 am train back to Bonn. I'm really excited for this trip, I think it will be quite the experience.

After fixing up the living conditions, I left to get home because it was already getting a little late and I wanted to eat dinner with my family. When I got home, I ate and spent some time with them. I even learned a little bit of a dance that Sophie was teaching Marie, so that was fun. Soon it was time for bed, so I went up to my room to write this post. Sorry, there's no pictures today, and probably not even tomorrow because the teachers will be gone and we'll have a work day all day. Oh, and apparently public transport will go on strike on Wednesday and Thursday, which really stinks because our test is Wednesday, and we're supposed to go to Aachen on Thursday. I'm sure we'll all get in though, after all we still need this grade and we definitely want to explore another region of Germany.

Gute nacht!
Erin Z

Day 71 - What a hike

Today was tiring! Now I know why Germans are all so skinny, they climb mountains for fun! I woke up early today so I could meet everybody that was going on the hike on time. It turns out that due to the construction, I had the choice of either getting there a half hour early, or arriving only a few minutes late. Because a lot of problems with the buses have come up recently (like them being late) I decided to go with the safe bet and just arrive early, which would give me time to read my book. So I got ready and left before the rest of my family was even awake and arrived at the train station to wait for a bit. It turns out I needn't have worried because Rainer, the guy who would be leading us on our hike, was late. Since the train we were taking wasn't supposed to leave for another 20 minutes, we decided to wait. And wait. And wait. By the time the train we were supposed to be on had left, we were getting a little worried and irritated because we couldn't seem to get ahold of anyone. Finally, Rainer showed up and was really apologetic about being so late, saying that he would make it up to us later.

We got on the tram that would bring us across the river and once we got off, started our trek. We hiked up some of the steepest inclines I've seen to reach the Drachenfels. It was at the very top of one of the hills and has a tragic history as well as a legend. The legend states that there used to be a dragon in the castle that was slain by a brave knight, but I'm more inclined to believe the tragic story. It tells of a beautiful woman who loved a man named Roland. His love was so great, that to prove it, he went to Jerusalem to fight in the crusades. Years passed and the news of Roland's death reached the maiden at the castle. Saddened by the loss of her love, she decided that if she couldn't have him, she would have no one and joined the monastery on the island in the middle of the river down in the valley to become a nun. After a few years, Roland came back to be with his love as his death in the crusades was only a rumor. However, his love was already a nun and could not marry him any more. There's a house halfway up the hill that overlooks the island and the monastery, and legend says that Roland would sit at his front porch to try and see the woman that he loved but was never allowed to marry. The name Drachenfels comes from the type of stone that the hill is made out of called Drachen, but the dragon story is more fun than unfulfilled love.

This is where we were heading...with my camera zoomed in as close as possible

 A beautiful house half way up the hill

 From the top of the hill...so pretty!

 This wall was huge! Look how small that person is next to that monstrosity

And a picture of all of us on the hike

After seeing some beautiful views of the surrounding areas from the Drachenfels, we descended slightly for a bit before we continued our hike. Let me tell you, I thought the inclines were steep before, I wouldn't be surprised to find that we were walking along a 60 degree grade for some of the time on the rest of our hike. We walked all 7 hills (not all to the top) before we decided to go over a hill instead of spiraling around it. At the top of the hill, we found what used to be a military stronghold until they decided that living at the top of one of the tallest hills in the region was not that smart because food and water aren't in ready supply and decided to leave. Now it's an embassy for visiting diplomats (I think) and you can even rent out the place for weddings because the grounds are so pretty.

 The embassy/wedding place

A denser part of our hike

From then on, we descended the hills to get to a monastery that was secularized during one of the wars for our lunch. By the time we arrived, it was 2, and we had been walking for the past 4 hours. Rainer had a video on his ipad that showed the history of the monastery and how it would have looked before it was gutted for the stones that it was made out of. We sat down to eat at the restaurant on the grounds, and it was here Rainer made it up to us for his lateness earlier. He bought all the tables a bottle of white wine and showed us how it was supposed to be mixed with mineral water to enhance the taste. All in all, the meal was fun and I enjoyed the company that I had at the table.

 The only thing remaining of the monastery is this front dome

The cherry blossoms were in full bloom

At the end of the meal, we left to go to the tram that would take us back to AIB, and thankfully it was a gradual decrease all the way to the station. I got off with some others to go to AIB to wait for about an hour for the 6:30 mass. It was rather relaxing to just sit for an hour before going to mass, even if the entire thing was in German. At that point, it was getting to be a little late, so I went home and spent some time with my family before going up to bed.

Tomorrow is a meeting over our week in Berlin next week and a whole lot of classes, but Tuesday is going to be a work day due to the fact that our teachers are all going to a meeting is Dusseldorf. Hopefully we can get our Otto Bock project done before we leave for Berlin because we present at the end of that trip.

'Till next time!
Erin Z

Days 69 & 70 - Concert and Fussball

Heh heh. Sorry about not posting anything yesterday. I thought about doing the first half of the day before the concert when I had a huge chunk of time, but after the concert I went out with some friends, and when I got back I didn't want to write. Then I woke up early today to go to the game and... why don't I just tell you.

Yesterday was a great day. even though my first class was the early block, it was the only class of the day and was actually rather relaxing. Yes, that signals class was actually a little relaxing, but it was mostly because we took the material a little bit slower. OK, and knowing that it wouldn't be on the upcoming test helped a great deal too. Seriously though, yesterday's lecture was over filters, which was still confusing, but our teacher went through it slowly and painstakingly made sure we understood the theory when we were confused. After the class, we sat down with her and came up with the most pressing things we needed to know or work on for our presentation at Otto Bock. She's been so helpful to us in this whole design process, which I guess makes sense because she's also our design teacher. Anyway, we jotted down a few questions before vacating the room so the Pharmacology class could take place. I don't know if I've put this down yet, but the Pharmacology teacher's daughter is taking classes here in Germany (she's 14) and guess who her German "buddy" who's helping her out is in the school? My host sister Sophie. I thought it was pretty awesome.

Anyway, the next few hours were spent doing the Signals homework due on Monday with 2-3 others. When lunch came around, all the girls plus David went out to eat, but the lone guy decided not to eat at the Chinese buffet we were eating lunch at, so we had a fun girl's lunch for what was probably the first time since being here in Germany. When we got back, my homework was done, but I didn't want to go home to an empty house and leave just when my family would be coming in that night. Instead, I stayed and continued to watch the modern day adaptation of Pride and Prejudice on YouTube. It's really good, and the small videos do a good job of taking the period romance and putting it into a modern day context that kept me captivated.

After almost finishing up the series, I was invited to play an awesome strategy game called Catan. Although I was a newbie, I caught onto the game pretty quickly and even though my bad placing decision at the beginning was costing my team a lot of resources, I had a lot of fun. After only a short amount of time, we were called away to do a video regarding the Big Event. For those who don't know, the Big Event is a school-wide service project where the stdents of A&M gather into teams and do service projects to help give back to the community. In a few weeks, we'll be participating in the first ever international Big Event and there will even be some Aggie Alumni who are living in Germany that will come and help out. It's kind of a big deal, so we did a little video acting all excited. Then we walked to the old city hall and did another, different video saying Howdy from Bonn before walking to the Beethovenhaus (Beethoven house) where we were invited to listen to a string quartet because one of the projects is helping out the house. We did one last little video in an interview style before heading inside to listen to the music.

Beethoven's face. As I'm sure I've said already, Bonn loves it's celebrity

The quartet was from Indiana University studying music abroad. They performed different pieces from Mozart, Beethoven, and Bartok. Can you believe it? I can say that I listen to Beethoven at the Beethovenhaus, the place where Beethoven was actually born! The music was really good, and the players were entertaining with how much they got into playing their music. By the time they finished the concert, we were all entranced by the way that they all seemed to unconsciously sway together according to the rhythm of the music. After the concert, we went back to AIB. Not to study this time, or even to regroup before going out to the bars, but to finish up our game of Catan. Yes, we went back to play a board game, we got weird looks when we told people that.
When our interrupted game was done, we decided to go to Maya to have some fun at the bar before coming back to play another game of Catan. Unfortunately, by the time we left the bar, I was the only one who didn't want to spend the rest of my night at a bar and would rather go back to play another game. I could even see as clearly as if it had already happened that people would continue to stay out and not want to play by the time they were finished with the Bonn nightlife, and I would much rather go home than stay out all night. With that in mind, I grabbed the guy with the keys to AIB so I could get my stuff and caught the second night bus back to my home. When I got in, I just wanted to sleep, hence why I didn't post anything yesterday.

Today, I slept all the way up to my 9 am alarm (a first in a while), at which point I needed to get ready for the day and so didn't have time to write anything for this blog. Today we went to see the Fussball (aka soccer) game between F.C. Koln and Aalan. I met up with everyone for the 11 train, followed by a tram crammed with hundreds of people. Yes, hundreds as in more than one hundred people were on this tram. We finally go off at the stadium, where I bought a Koln Fussball scarf to root for my new favorite soccer team. I'll have so many random pieces of clothing from Germany when I finally get back, first the two infinity scarves, a Karneval costume, then my host sister's clothes, now a Fussball scarf...I wonder what else I can accumulate over here.

 Look at us in our new scarves

 A look at the Koln side at the start of the game

The full stadium

The game was a lot of fun, but in the end no one scored. There were quite a few times that Koln almost got in a goal, but by the end of the game, even the most sympathetic fan was getting frustrated from the countless too high, too far right, or too far left shots that were made. I was going to go back to Bonn to play Catan with some people, but a lot of them wanted to take advantage of the bars in Koln, and I didn't want to start out drinking when it was only 3. Instead I went back home to chill with my host family and eat dinner before heading up to my room when it was time for them to go to bed. I watched the last of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and even found out that they started another adaptation for Jane Austin's book Emma. I want to read the book before starting it though so I have a background of what's happening. It's good though because I can watch the spinoffs of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries while still getting to read a classic book. Though I should probably finish Dracula first...I think I've almost successfully gotten myself back into literary classics. My Lenten promise not to read any more fan-made stories online is probably helping big time with that.

 These guys waved their flags the entire time! Talk about dedication

The final score. It's super sad

Tomorrow is the hiking trip. Truth be told, I'm a bit concerned because we're meeting at 8:45 and not getting back until almost 5. Don't worry though, I'll charge my camera tonight so there will be lots of pictures about it.

Tchuss!
Erin Z