Day 115 - The end of a journey

Well, today has already been an adventure. I debated not sleeping last night so I would be sure not to miss my tram to the shuttle bus that would take us to the airport, but eventually decided I should get a few hours of sleep. So I set two alarms for 4 and 4:15 just to be sure that I would wake up. I woke up at the first alarm, blinked, and looked at the clock. It was 5:03! I quickly dressed and shoved the remaining trinkets into my bulging backpack, desperately trying to make time slow down. I needed to catch the 5:14 tram to be on time or I would miss the shuttle. When I reached the bottom, I looked at the clock and my heart sank. I only had 3 minutes to get to the tram stop, and there was no way I could take a 20 minute walk and turn it into a 3 minute sprint while dragging a suitcase and carrying a heavy backpack. In a panic, I knocked on the door to the main part of the house, waking up everyone. Sophie looked at me before her eyes widened and I went to Annette and asked if she knew how to call a taxi since I needed to be at the Hofgarten in 15 minutes, and if she had any money to pay for it. My whole host family was so sweet, Annette called the taxi saying they would be there in 2 minutes, and Sophie gave me some money to pay for the ride. It is entirely because of them that I made it on time to the shuttle bus before it left as I would not have made it otherwise.

I hopped on the small bus with 12 other people and settled in for a long drive. I must have fallen asleep at some point, because the 2.5 hour bus ride didn’t seem so long. Since there were like 7 other people on the same flight as me, we all moved en mass to the check in corner to check our bags and get tickets. They asked us a bunch of questions like “when did you pack your bag,” “Has anyone given you anything to hold?” “Where have your bags been since you packed them?” and a ton of others. Apparently the airport had a scare a few weeks ago with some passengers and what turned out to be a bomb, so they’ve been asking us these questions every time we pass a checkpoint. I ate some food at the airport, and waited for the plane to start boarding.

Our bags for the ones going back. It's a lot

On the plane, it was rather boring. I fell asleep quite a few times, which is a good thing I guess because I was tired and it will help me to get back into the Texas time zone. The movies that they had available were frankly terrible. The only one that was relatively decent was Jack Ryan: Shadow recruit. It kept me awake at least with the fight scenes that it had. When we landed at Dallas, we all got off the plane and waited for everyone else to disembark. The only thing I could see were the smiles on our faces, and I could tell from the way that my face hurt that I was beaming as well. We were finally in the U.S! We went through customs, which turned out to be super easy because we were U.S. citizens. Then we grabbed our bags and rechecked them before heading to our next gate. We lost two of our members as they went home, but the rest of us went and hung out before our flights. On the flight to Austin, I sat next to a sweet girl holding her small toy poodle in a holder. An actual living breathing toy poodle, not a stuffed animal. We had a great conversation that lasted the entire flight, and parted ways when we reached Austin.

 We're back in the U.S.!!

My first look of Austin

At the Austin airport as I went down the escalator to the baggage claim, I saw my family and ran up to them to give them hugs. I was so excited to be home and to see them again, and I had the whole family there too! On the drive back home, I asked if we could stop by a Mexican restaurant for my first meal back in the U.S. We had a great dinner and talked about a lot of different topics, then went home. When I got home, my pets were running out the door to try and see me. As I walked to the stairs, I saw all the papers on the stairs welcoming me home and showing all of the places that I've been to this semester. As I walked into my room, I was speechless. On all the surfaces were pictures that I had either taken or were on Facebook. They showed places that I've been to and things that I've done. On the bed was a booklet that turned out to be this blog in paper form. I asked, and there were about 300 pages that were printed out and bound into this book. That means that I've written about 300 pages over the course of this semester....and you've read them all. Thank you for continuing to read this thing and keeping me writing. I spent some time with my parents and distributed out the souvenirs, and went to bed tired. 

Aww, my parents put this together for me. They're so sweet!

I can't believe all that I've done this semester, and when I start to think about it, I feel like it's been a dream. This past semester has taught me so many things, and not just in the classroom. I'm more confident, appreciate simple things more (like understanding the people around me) and feel lucky to have the life that I've been on. This may have been the end of my journey through Europe, but I will never forget what I've done and the next part of my life will be heavily influenced by the past 4 months. I look forward to what my next journey will be.

Erin Z

Day 114 - Goodbyes

Wow. I just spent my last day in Germany. I...I don't know what to think. On the one hand, I'm excited to go back home, but on the other, Bonn has sort of become my second home and I feel similar leaving to as I did leaving Texas 4 months ago. Wow. 4 months in Germany. And I had to say goodbye to everything. Why do I feel this way? Not two days ago, all I wanted to do was go home, and now I want to stay just one more day.

I woke up today and packed a little bit more. I really hope that I meet the weight limit on my luggage and don't have to pay for an overweight bag. It seems like I have more and more things that I need to fit in. I made my way into AIB for the last time today for our meeting. The day was absolutely gorgeous. I think Germany is trying to entice me to stay by having a string of wonderful weather. We had our meeting and received the photos that were put on our visas. Yes, that is a good thing as I think they Photoshopped it a bit because I definitely did not look that good that day and I don't think my eyes were ever that blue. We had to take some surveys on the trip and our various classes, and then we said goodbye to Dr. Wasser. Luckily Sarah and Kristin didn't leave and we ended up going out with them to a place that the twins had visited before. We had a great lunch together, but eventually it had to end. We'll still see Kristin tomorrow, but Sarah left and she's not taking the shuttle tomorrow, so we won't see her unless we visit her lab back in C-Stat. We also lost Kelsey who had to catch the bus to get to a plane that was bringing her to Italy so she could travel around Europe with her parents.

Last day at AIB

After lunch, we split up. I went to the REWE to grab some Ritter chocolate (do they make that in the US?) with some others. Then we headed back to AIB to wait for the others and just enjoyed the sun and the last day in Bonn. Eventually I had to leave to grab some flowers for my host family before heading home. When I got there, Marie led me into the kitchen, where Annette had presented me with some candy and a card for me to take when I left. I returned the favor with my own gift. We had dinner together and then just relaxed in the living room. Marie kept telling me to go to bed because I have and early day tomorrow, and I eventually obeyed her. I said goodnight and goodbye to my host family. Tears were shed. On the one hand, I'm excited to be home for the first time in 4 months, but at the same time, I look at the people who have been a family to me for the semester. I see Annette, who is always ready to greet me with a smile. I see Sophie who has come to be like the cool little sister I never had. And I see Marie, who has been the goofball of the family and always wants to play and talk to me even though we know so few words in common. I'm going to miss them immensely.

Tomorrow I leave for the airport at 5:30 on the shuttle bus with a large majority of the students on my program. 12 hours from now I'll be on a plane ready to take off. In 24 hours, I'll be in Texas. And in roughly 27 hours, I'll be with my family again. I've loved it here in Germany and I hope to be back someday, but I'm ready to be back home.

Goodbye Germany.
Erin Z

P.S. I have another post tomorrow that I'll write on the plane.

Days 112 & 113 - Bike rides and Grilled Cheese

Yay! I finally have some time to write about my experiences. Yesterday was chock full of things to do, the reason why I got back at 1 and only went over the two days before. It all started out with the bike ride. I woke up and got ready, leaving before my host family was up. I've been feeling really bad because I haven't seen them much due to Marie's chickenpox and then my studying. Anyway, we met up at the HBF and got our bikes so we could start our bike ride. We rode down the Rhein for about 25 km (~15.5 miles) for about an hour and a half. The weather could not have been nicer with the sun shining brightly in the clear sky and a cool breeze that took the heat away from us as we rode. Riding down the river was amazing. There were so many similarities to camp, from the sound of light waves to the scent of growing greenery as it surrounded us on all sides to the cliffs that rose up out of the river on the opposite shore. All in all, the ride was amazing and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

We stopped for lunch and had a lot of fun talking and just generally enjoying one of the last lunches that we'll have in Germany. It certainly helped that we ate outside in the sun with a beautiful backdrop. I don't think anyone ordered a single non-German thing, which is surprising in a group as big as ours. I think everyone came to the same conclusion that we can have comfort food in less than 5 days and we should enjoy the genuine schnitzel and wurst while we still can. After that, we rode just a little bit more to the Remagen bridge. It was one of the bridges that helped out the Ally powers tremendously by being one of the only places where the river could be crossed without boats. This bridge shipped people, supplies, and tanks across the river for 10 days before it finally collapsed from all the weight that it was forced to hold. Some historians calculated that if this bridge did not exist, then the Berlin wall would have been standing for months longer than it actually was. There was a museum built by one of the veterans (he was 15 when he was shipped off) that is devoted to peace and showing the history of the area. It was pretty cool.

 The backdrop to our lunch

 It was wonderful outside

Half of the bridge. The other half held the museum inside

Then we started back. While the ride up was really nice, the ride back was not as calming. The bike seats had almost no cushion, so whenever we pedaled, our rears would chafe against the seat. No joke, people had bruises today because of the seats. It also seemed a lot longer to get back, and at one point when I saw that I still had 8 km left until I reached Bonn, I comforted myself with the fact that at least it was a shorter distance than my leg in the marathon. I returned my bike and went to the store to grab some cheese for my grilled cheese sandwiches that I would be making for my family on Sunday before heading to Old AIB for the farewell party. When I showed up, half of the group from my program was either asleep or sitting bonelessly on the ground in an effort to minimize their pain from the ride. The party was a lot of fun and we had a ton of fun singing along with the band that was playing while we ate German Barbeque. Unfortunately, my host mom was not feeling good, so she couldn't come to the party. At the end, we watched the presentation with all of our pictures in it and laughed at the clever things that made up a majority of the presentation (thanks Austin!!).

 How we all felt after that ride

We had some people sing "Ring of Fire"

When the party was done, I went back to new AIB and played Catan with two of my classmates and Sarah. Yup, we got out teacher to play a strategy game with us, and she beat us. It's official, it matters not who you are, my teacher is better than yours. Anyway, we used that time to relax and use up time before the Rhein in Flammen, which was a fireworks show on the Rhein. I don't know why it was that day, but it was and we wanted to see it. I went with three others and we all hopped on the tram going towards the show. When we got to the stop, we got off and were confused on where to go due a lack of general movement in one direction. We ended going off to a side and just started looking for the Rhein so we could see the show. When it started, we were still a ways away, but with a new beacon showing where we needed to go, we ran in the dark until we found a good spot. The show was awesome, and was made even better by the fact that the bank we sat on wasn't completely overrun by people. When the show ended, we walked back to the tram stop, and were immediately glad that we had split off. The amount of people who were coming from the opposite direction was astounding! Luckily we arrived at the tram stop at the right time and were able to get into the line fairly easily. Once on the tram, I waited until my stop came up, said goodbye to my friends, and walked home. I got back at about 12:40, which is why I only covered two of the three days yesterday. I had no time to write during the day and I was tired at night.

 I got some pretty cool photos

 Just look at these things!

 They're beautiful

I love fireworks

This morning, I woke up to go to the last German mass of the semester at the Munster. Unfortunately, I was late because the buses were late. It was alright though, because I still made it to mass. After mass, I hung out at AIB waiting for someone to take the keys from me. I fell asleep at one point because I woke up to someone knocking on the window wanting me to let them in. Then I went back to my host home and had strawberry short cake with my host family while watching Harry Potter  und der Halbblutprinz on TV. Then I made grilled cheddar cheese sandwiched because my host family had never had them before. They said that they liked it though. All in all, it was a relaxing day. I was able to call my Nana on her birthday, which was nice, and I've started packing. Wow. Tomorrow's the last day I'll be in Germany. I've spent 113 days here. Wut?

Expect a post tomorrow on my last day, including my last Doner, my last AIB meeting, and my last day with my host family. I expect tears to be shed.

Erin Z

Days 110 & 111 - May Day and Karaoke

Alright, so as everyone might have noticed, I'm now on a 3 day stint with no posts, so here's what I'm going to do: I'll do May 1st and 2nd now, and today and tomorrow in tomorrow's post. The reason for this is the fact that I feel bad leaving this blog hanging for 4 days, but it's 1 am here and I want to go to sleep. So a compromise is in order. The first day was about May 1st, otherwise known as May Day around here. For those not familiar with the tradition, a guy chops down a tree and decorates it for his beloved. Then he puts up the tree in front of her house and guards the tree all night lest some other guy come by and steal his tree and therefor his beloved's heart. At about 3, if the girl's father likes the guy, they'll bring out some beers to keep the guy going. They get more beer if they come back two weeks after May Day to take down the tree. Of course, I had just gotten back from working on the DHF and studying for Signals, so I went right to sleep, missing the entire ceremony.

When I woke up the next day, there were trees everywhere down the street with hearts in them displaying a girl's name. I went to AIB to study for the hardest test of the week. I'm dead serious. It was a national holiday and I went to school to study. Even the building wasn't open! I met up with some people, but we couldn't get into the facilities because it was locked. Luckily our teacher came in so she could answer any questions we might have and was able to let us in. Over the course of a few hours, more people started trickling in, but we didn't have the heart to study. Instead we realized that we were the only group in the building that had bars on the windows. It was like they were afraid that we would do something stupid, but not anyone else. The conversation devolved from there, and soon I was grabbing my camera so I could take the most accurate picture of our day possible.

 A May Tree on my street.

The most accurate picture. There we are, studying, on a national holiday, longingly looking through the bars at the sunshine beyond our reach. It cave our teachers quite the laugh.

After showing our professor, we actually got down to studying a little bit. That only lasted so long though, and we decided that we wanted to see what was at the market place by the church. Right beside the church there were a lot of tents showing off handmade crafts and selling them. There were all sorts of cool things like stone carvings or handmade garden iron artworks. One person got an Ocarina that looked just like the Ocarina of time, another got a cool tie and a stamp with his first initial on it as well as some wax, a third bought some earrings as souvenirs, and I bought a present for my Nana. Everything was handmade and beautiful. Eventually we had to leave so we could study more.

Just one example of a guy doing his craft

The rest of the day was spent studying. I left that building at about 12:15 am and caught the night bus to my home. I woke up the next morning and left to go to school to study for my last final. I quickly went over all the things that I thought would be important, and when 11 came around, I sat down and started the test. Let me just tell you, signals really stinks when you don't really know what's happening, or have only and inkling of where to go and what to do. I turned in the test and went to the other room so all of the people who had finished could talk about it in true college student fashion. We conferred amongst ourselves, and all came up with different answers, which struck me a absolutely hilarious and I just had to laugh. When the time limit was up, we bombarded Sarah with questions and generally talked over each other for a bit before leaving to eat at the Mexican food place. Yes, we had Mexican food in Germany, and no, it wasn't as good as back home, but they had half-priced drinks and decent food that reminded us of home a little bit.

After that, I went to the craft fair and got myself a pair of twirlers that I will probably use to distract me whenever I'm bored. Lord knows that I borrowed Robert's twirlers for hours a day for over a week, so I think it was a good investment to get them relatively cheap over here. I also got an ocarina...and have since become obsessed with it. It's a transverse ocarina with 9 holes and a limited range, but the last few days have been a blast trying to figure out all the kinds of songs that I can play on it. Then I went back to school to work on the DHF that was due that night, mostly to focus on formatting and making sure the references were in the correct order. At about 5, a whole bunch of people from the other groups burst into the next room over (only separated by a curtain) and we got rather angry at them because they were so loud and we were still hard at work. It turns out that they were given permission to be there because our last final was technically done at 1 that day and no one knew that we still had a project to turn in.

Eventually they went away and we continued working until 6 when karaoke was finally set up. The karaoke system we used was good (a game) but the mics that we were given were super sensitive, but not sensitive at all...at the same time. It was weird to handle. We had an absolute blast though singing Disney songs and all sorts of oldies. Eventually we switched from the gaming console to the computer and just pulled up karaoke YouTube videos, which turned out to be just as good if not better than the game for the simple fact that there were no restrictions and everyone could belt out if they wanted to instead of giving the mic to one or two people. We sang for hours and eventually had to wrap everything up at about 9. Now at this point, you'd think that I'd go home right? Nah. Instead I played with my new ocarina and watched as a group of people played Catan while everyone else watched South Park and sipped at their drinks.

 Dr. Wasser can really get into these things

 Everyone else got excited too

And of course we all got crazier as the night went on

At about midnight, a group was going out to get more drinks and tried to get me to join them. I almost said no and was planning on catching the first night bus, but then I thought about the fact that it was officially summer and all my classes were done, and decided "why not? I won't be able to do this for another 8 months at least" and left with them. By the way, I'm officially a Junior, so I can do the Junior wildcat, which means I can finally whoop without getting into trouble with the upperclassmen. Anyway, we left and came back a little bit later, watched some more videos, and had a great time just hanging out. Eventually I left, but it was way too late to write anything and I ended up falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

The next day was chock full of stuff, so look forward to that tomorrow.
Thanks, and Gig 'Em. Whoop!
Erin Z

Announcement...whoop!

I'm sorry to do this to everyone, but due to the fact that today was the last day of school and I'm in the midst of celebrating, the last few days will be posted...whenever I have time. Hopefully tomorrow, though we have a ton happening. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Erin Z