Week 5
This week went by more similar to a typical week in College Station in that it was mostly class and schoolwork. There were no major parties like in Karneval or personal trips on the weekend. But, I am coming to realize how much these types of weeks create a sense of stability and sanity for me and are therefore incredibly necessary to make all the excursions more fun and impactful.
The one programatic excursion that we embarked on was to BayComm: the Bayer community communication center. This is a building in Leverkusen (near Cologne) that Bayer uses partially for research and laboratories but mainly for community interaction and image management. Here they have a large lecture hall where lectures, meetings, and scientific movies are played on weekends for the public. There are interactive exhibits on DNA, cardiopulmonary physiology, and the food crisis. Bayer is attempting to educate the public on the need for science to solve some of the major crises facing the population currently such as overpopulation, food and water shortage, healthcare accessibility, etc. We also got to see how countries differ with packing tablets. For example, Germany prefers to have ibuprofen as 400 mg tablets in blister packs within paper boxes while in the US they are sold as 200 mg in plastic bottles with twist off lids. I thought these differences and the reasons surrounding them was interesting. I was told, in Germany the pill bottle would never be accepted because it reminds the public too much of gum containers.
The most impactful part of the Bayer experience for me was the Leaps Initiative that the company is implementing to help solve ten seemingly impossible medical problems. In order to this, they are funding start ups and helping them research and guiding new minds to think on their own in order to make strides towards solving these conundrums that one day might be trivial. One of the problems that I remember was to give sight to those people born blind. There were ten equally hard or harder problems on this list and I was astounded by the amount of vision and foresight that this program must've taken and how it reflects the intended future of medicine that Bayer sees. As a large and influential pharmaceutical company, Bayer may have some guidance over the directions in which the medical development industry heads.
Other than this trip, the week was fairly typical. It snowed a lot and the busses did not come to Heidebergen for more than 2 hours so I had to miss a history of medicine lecture. Other than that, I am feeling relatively stable and comfortable where I am. Small issues arise here and there but I am becoming increasingly able to handle them on my own. Also, I have developed friends and enjoy spending time with everyone on the trip with me. I miss things from home of course, but I am loving my time here and wouldn't trade it for just about anything.
During the weekend, Camella and I went for a hike through the forest outside our house. We had assumed there would be trails but we couldn't find a substantial one. Also while in the forest, we witnessed people in costumes (including one in a bunny costume) performing what looked like "first aid" on a person laying (unconsciously?) on the forest ground. But the "first aid" was to wrap the passed out person's ankle in ace wrap. Overall, the situation fully confused me. We excited the forest near Gielgen and went into a different section of trees back there. While in this section, I noticed all the trees were planted in perfectly straight rows and there were large gaps between some rows. Here in many cases large tire tracks, looking like they originated from a vehicle the size of a tractor or tank, went perpendicular to the direction of our hiking trail. This also fully confused me.
I guess in conclusion, this was was usual with some surprisingly confusing events sprinkled in.
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