Test Week and Spontaneity

This week really only consisted of a lot of tests, very little sleep, and finishing up our first pitch to enmodes. On Monday Lauren and I had our differential equations test that we missed last week. Tuesday was a full day of classes and homework, and then studying for our German final and the physiology test on Thursday. Wednesday we had our German final, which was maybe the only test I felt really confident on. I definitely want to keep up with my German throughout the rest of the semester, and after the program—I’ll update you if that actually happens. The rest of Wednesday including procrastinating studying for physiology. At this point in the week I was exhausted, and Lauren and I still hadn’t completely planned spring break. Thursday we took the test—I didn’t think it was awful, although I definitely wish I had started studying a little earlier. I can’t describe how fast time flies over here, and there never seems to be enough time in the day to get everything done. Lauren’s dad also arrived in Bonn on Thursday, and he took us out to dinner Thursday night to a fantastic restaurant. I had gnocci, which has easily become my favorite meal. As long as its covered in cheese.

Friday was one of my favorite days on this trip. I was actually kind of nervous for the presentation, as this was the first presentation to an actual company. It was cool to see everyone’s solutions to the problem we were given. I’m excited to get into our larger groups and work toward a final solution.

After enmodes some of us were hanging out at the AIB doing homework that was due Saturday night. Lauren and her dad were planning on going to Amsterdam on Saturday, so I jokingly asked Emily if she would want to go to Amsterdam today, right now. Except she actually said yes, so we frantically found a train ticket for 15:00 that afternoon, booked a hotel, and another train ticket back to Bonn on Sunday. It was about 13:00 when we finished booking everything, so we both ran home to pack to make it back to the train station on time. After a small ticket fiasco, we were on our way to Amsterdam!

The train ride is a story in itself. We had 5 different trains to catch—we had 10 minutes between connections for the first two, 5 minutes for the third, and 3 minutes between the fourth and last. The first two connections went smoothly—the connections were just one platform over, and our trains arrived early, so we made it onto train 2 and 3 with time to spare. Train 3 arrived just on time, but our platform was a few over, up and down a few sets of stairs. We had to run but we made it. Train 4 arrived late- very late. We were positive we missed our next train, and even if by some miracle we didn’t, the platform was 4 or 5 down. But apparently God was actually working some miracles, because our next train hadn’t left yet, and it was moved to the platform directly opposite ours. So we made it to Amsterdam without incident (just a little bit of running). 

After a stressful week, a little bit of spontaneity was just what I needed. Amsterdam turned out to be one of my favorite weekends.