Berlin

Wow, the week in Berlin was stressful. We were supposed to have a lot of time to look around the city, but it ended up being just a whole lot of working on the project. I understand that it needed to be done, and I can take a step back and look at it objectively enough to see that we really needed to work on the presentation for Otto Bock that happened at the end of the trip, but I would have really have liked to see the Olympic Stadium, walk up Alex, meander through the Jewish memorial. Instead, I had a great time in the gardens of the world, but had to leave early so we could meet up and work on the project. out of the 4 days we were there, 3 of them were spent on improving the presentation, with the first night being the only night without the prosthetic project, when we didn't have a good grasp of what we wanted to do or see. On the bright side, I was able to see the Gardens of the world , which was really nice.

I went with three other friends to the Gardens of the World. It took a while to get there, but it was absolutely worth it to see the beauty that was before us. It helped that that day was absolutely beautiful without a cloud in sight and the sun made the surrounding air warm. We enjoyed the smell of spring and walked through the gardens along whatever path suited our fancy at the time. When we saw the cherry tree, the four of us immediately headed over to take pictures of the blossoms that were just starting to fall in a light pink dusting of petals. We walked for a while, stopping at a park to relive our childhood for just a little bit at the awesome playground before flopping on the warm grass and just enjoying the sunshine. We could have lain there all day, but because we only had about 45 minutes until we had to leave so we could get back to the hotel on time, we reluctantly got up and continued our journey. When we got to the Chinese gardens we admired the waterfall and koi pond, but the thing that drew our attention was the tea house. Of course we had to stop for tea; it was a tea house in the middle of an idyllic Chinese-styled garden! The tea we got came in a small compact ball that expanded as the water was allowed to seep into it. It was fascinating to watch the ball expand into a flower over the course of a few minutes. When we left, we only had a few minutes to see whatever else we wanted to see, which meant that we had to skip the labyrinth that was laid out only a little bit down the road. It’s a shame too; it looked like a super fun maze to run around in.

The Otto Bock presentation kind of took over the entire week, but at least when we actually got to the facilities it wasn't that bad. It was pretty interesting when one of the engineers actually showed off his own trans-femoral prosthetic limb to give some real-life examples of why things work. It was even cooler when he grabbed his ankle,and literally twisted the entire limb up so it was at a 90 degree angle up with the bottom of the foot facing towards the ceiling. After this lecture, we were able to get up and present our own ideas for a minimized transtibial socket. We actually did really well considering we all knew that we were presenting our crazy ideas to real engineers who knew what they were doing. At last though, the project was done, and we don't have to do much more with it. just do some paperwork for the design class. But it's done and we don't have to keep stressing out over it.

Erin Z