Days 95 & 96 – Perfume and Paris

Ach! I thought I fixed the skip a day and do double posts problem. It’s not exactly the best thing for a daily blog is it? Although, the fact that I’ve managed to hold on this far and do mostly regular daily updates really surprises me. I thought it would fall by the wayside long ago. Anyway, yesterday was pretty cool. It started out with learning more about the GI tract in Physiology as we finally moved on from the urinary system. After that was done, we walked into our main room and made different topical creams similar to how they would have been made by Hildegard von Bingen. We all gathered around as we made a Marigold cream that had been mostly prepared the day before, helping to strain out the leaves and bits of flower to get to the scented water and wax solution they had been sitting in. We then split up into 3 groups to make other ointments, one from mint, one from violet, and one from another plant I can’t remember. I got put into the mint group. We started to mix most of the ingredients together, but we were missing one really important component: beeswax. So we sat around for about an hour as we waited for one of the student workers to come back from the beehives with fresh wax.

It was a little bit boring, but we managed to get through. When the wax came in, we added it into our mixture and heated it up in a water bath until everything was dissolved into one liquid substance, which was when we added the mint scent. We put in so much of the mint that it filled the entire room with its smell. After folding in the mint extract, we poured the mixture into the small containers that were waiting to be filled. Now came the fun part. As we waited for the solution to harden into the cream it was destined to become, we came up with more and more ridiculous names. Finally we settled on our final versions and wrote down what our new lotion would be called. Each of us had a different name, most pertaining directly to our names (mine was Erin’s embalming cream so you get an idea of how crazy they eventually turned out) and we slapped the labels onto the containers. We happened to be the first ones done, so we wandered around the room smelling the fragrances that wafted up from the other groups and sometimes dropping in to bother them for a little bit. After a while, everyone was done with their cooking and we started to clean up.

And that was class for the day. Our mint cream came out to be a little bit on the liquid-y side, but it still smelled heavenly, so now it’s sitting on my desk purely as a source of perfume. Hmmm. Not much happened after that as I mostly bucked down with everyone else to finish up the signals and Design homework due the next day. It didn’t help that we had a signals quiz the next day. Everyone remembered the abysmal scores of that quiz, so we tried our hardest to at least make a better average than the last one. Eventually, I went home to spend some time with my host family and pack because the net day we were heading to Paris! Late that night, I was able to call my friend Claire and we had a great conversation about traveling, her research, and Biomedical Engineering. I probably won’t be able to see her in person this summer because she’ll most likely be in Great Britain doing her research for her Ph.D., but it was wonderful to talk to her again.

Today, I woke up and got ready for school, packing away the last few things for my weekend in Paris before heading out the door to face the day. It started off rather easy with Physiology again, followed by Signals and the quiz we were all dreading. Before class started, all you could see from the top of the room were the tops of heads as we all bent over our textbooks to frantically cram in some last minute knowledge that we were sure we would need for the quiz. When we actually received the quiz, we were surprised. Instead of math problems filled with Greek letters, we were given a bunch of fill in the blank questions. The rest of the class after the quiz flew by in a haze of moderate confusion (much better than the severe confusion in previous classes) until our class was done. It was officially the end of our class day and the start of our Easter weekend.

We went out to get lunch and generally hang around until we had to leave to get to the tram bringing us to the train that would bring us to the train in Cologne. You think your transportation problems are hard when you go on vacation? Public transport waits for no one, and we actually had to wait an extra half hour because we couldn’t get the ticket to the train to Cologne before the doors closed and the train rode away. It was no big deal, we still caught the train to Paris before it left the station. On the train, we sat around and played cards, talked, worked on homework, wrote blogs, and slept.

We arrived in Paris not long after, got our 5 day metro passes, and tried to figure out where we would be staying for the next 5 days. We arrived at the right tram stop, but were a bit confused as to where exactly the apartment was. Luckily our host saw us and called out to us. I guess it’s not hard to miss 8 young adults with suitcases standing lost only a little ways away from where they’re supposed to be. She showed us around the apartment (which is adorable by the way!) before leaving us to do our own thing. We left to go into Paris proper for a bit of the night and met up with our last two members under the Eiffel tower. We enjoyed the view and walked along the river, just watching the city go by. A big part of going to Paris is actually seeing Paris, so I get the feeling we’ll be walking a lot in the next few days. After a while, we got hungry, but the only thing selling food that late at night was the tourist trap by the tower. We were desperate (it was midnight and we hadn’t eaten since lunch) so we bought some crepes before heading back to the metro to catch a tram before they stopped for the night. We were lucky and caught the very last tram of the night to our stop.

Tomorrow is more time in Paris, and Melissa and I wanted to go to the Montmartre Basilica for Good Friday mass and we might be going to the Louvre or walking up the Eiffel tower. I really don’t know, but I guess we’ll figure it out tomorrow.

Till then,

Erin Z

P.S. Apparently everywhere I go, the places don't want me to upload the pictures on here. I'll be taking a lot of pictures, so I'll just upload all of them when I get back into Bonn. Sorry you can't see the awesomeness of the Eiffel tower in all it's glory right now!