Charity Weekend

Charity weekend was a success! This fun weekend started on Saturday with The Big Event. It was the first time AIB had participated in The Big Event and I think it might have been Big Event’s first time to go international, so being able to take part in this inaugural event was super exciting! Plus partnering up with the other universities here and spreading the Aggie idea of selfless service was great. For my project I was partnered up with another Aggie from the visualization program and two Aggie alumni who are stationed in Germany to do some yard work for the Beethoven guest house. We quickly started talking about school and our experiences in Germany and back in A&M; we connected easily and I enjoyed talking to them. Also the area surrounding the guest house was absolutely stunning! Overall this Big Event was a great one, and I was happy I got to take part in it and give back to community here in Germany! Sunday was the Bonn Marathon! I knew I wanted to run in the marathon when I first got to Bonn and was determined to train for it so that I could at least run the half marathon…yeah, that didn’t happen. Since I didn’t train and knew how incredibly out of shape I was, I decided to run in the relay with three other bioscience kids. In my defense, I volunteered to run the longest of the four legs of the relay which was 7.5 miles long (and the longest distance I’ve ever ran). So when Sunday came along I was excited to run but afraid of how hard running 7.5 miles would be. I think most of my friends were on the same boat because no one had trained and everyone was expecting to walk most of their portion of the marathon. However, we all did a lot better than we expected; most of my classmates and I managed to run our entire leg in a somewhat reasonable time! Besides the fact that we all surprised ourselves with our running ability, the marathon was super fun! The entire city was blocked off, music was blasting at different points along the marathon route, and there were tons of people there that were running and cheering others on. I especially appreciated the beautiful scenery and people cheering me on during my leg of the marathon because both definitely helped distract me were very encouraging. This whole weekend was yet another highlight of this study abroad!

Some of us before the marathon

Robert, Coach, and Tessa after the marathon