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
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