Day 55 - Mexican food and Oboes

Today actually wasn't that bad. The first class was signals where we had our small quiz, but it was more like a group working together on homework because we could use our partners, the book if we had it, the powerpoints of the lectures, our notes, even our own homework that we had gotten back if we so chose. I came super prepared, bringing my book, computer, homework, notes, anything and everything that had to do with this class. We got our question done and had to present it to the rest of the class and make sure that they understood the methods we went through to get our answers. After that class, we had a little bit of time before we represented our ideas. This time, we started our presentation right off with showing the new and improved play-doh model that we made with a little bit of my scarf pushed through to show how it would fir onto a leg. We brought up pictures of the 3-D model as well as tests showing the distribution of weight to make our point get across. The rest of the class was able to ask us clarifying questions that helped us to direct our presentation and make sure that everyone had a firm understanding on the basis of our idea. They even threw out new ideas that could be integrated into our design. Actually, that happened quite a bit throughout all the presentations, and we ended up with two radically different socket ideas with some sub-ideas that fell into either of these two categories. It was really interesting to see everything falling in place and to experience the huge influx of ideas building on each other like we were a real, professional design team. Well...I guess we are a real design team now that we have something to work towards that may be used on people. Wow. That's a pretty cool feeling!

Anyway, after we split up into two different types of socket groups, we quickly jotted down and drew out our ideas while they were still fresh and exciting. These groups will probably be really fluid, and our teacher even said that we could "borrow" people from other groups to give expertise in their area or for a service they're good at. I can already see it: I'm going to be doing a lot of 3-D design work in Inventor for all these groups. But it's alright because Inventor is fun to play around with and want to strangle when it goes wrong figure out all the features.

After the quick meeting, we went out to lunch. Somehow, even though everyone left at different times (some as far as 20 min apart) we all made it to the one Mexican food place in Bonn. Don't get me wrong, it was absolutely fantastic food, but it was just really funny that on the day before we leave to the rest of Europe on Spring Break, we don't get any German food to last us the week, we go get Mexican food. It was fun to talk with the people I was with, and soon we all finished up and made our way back to AIB.

 Austin and Aaron at our table

 Hanging out in the Mexican food restaurant

 Everyone else eating delicious food

Class was done for the day, but I still needed to contact people and print out the cruise tickets so we can have an easy time boarding. While I was doing that, everyone came back from lunch, and enjoyed listening to our own personal Oboe player Austin while he played (without sheet music mind you) all sorts of music from movies to games and famous pieces of work. It was quite relaxing. Soon, I had to leave to go home and say goodbye to my host family before going over to a friends house to sleep over. because I got back so early, I had a little bit of time to write this up, so it's not a full day's account. However, I can guess what's going to happen: Kelsey, Johanna and I will get together, eat sweets, watch Frozen (yay!) and sleep before waking up super early tomorrow for our plane to Milan, where we'll have an awesome time before the cruise. I don't know if my hotel will have wifi, but I know the cruise won't, so today will most definitely be the last day of the week I post.

Have fun this Spring Break!
Erin Z