Final Week, Finals Week || May 2, 2018

Welcome to finals week! Well, the end of finals week. Four tests in and I still have one more to take the day before the program ends. Yippee.

Now that school is winding down, thus begins the process of packing and the realization that the end of my time here is just around the corner. Cheers to the last time I grab a scoop of gelato during a break between classes, cheers to my last game of ping pong at the AIB, and cheers to seeing the beauty of the Rhine twice a day. Cheers to the Blossom graffiti (yeah, the powerpuff girl) along the bus route, cheers to Gilgen's bakery, and cheers to Bonn Cen-tral Sta-tion. Cheers to Haribo, Beethoven, and the cherry blossoms that are already fading. Cheers to Friedensplatz, my favorite four cheese pizza, and all the butterkeks a girl can eat. Cheers to Pützchen Kloster, the long walk from it, and the funky curtains in my bedroom. Cheers to Bonn, my host family, and my life in Germany. There are so so many more to cheers to, but this will suffice for now. I may not have experienced the last of all of these things just yet, but that doesn't mean it isn't coming. Which isn't all bad because I've found myself appreciating every little thing I do here more and more in the meantime.

April 27

Class excursion to Remagen. We took a train most of the way there then walked the rest along the Rhine. The weather was nice and the river beautiful, as always. Once we made it to the site of the bridge of remagen (no longer there as it was destroyed) we took a tour of the Friedensmuseum, or peace museum. It was nice but nothing special. Following the museum we had a group lunch, complete with gelato, then headed back to Bonn. All in all I wasn't a huge fan of the excursion and at this point I'm so continually exhausted that I would've actually preferred just staying at home and sleeping all day. 

Once I got back home, I packed up some of my things (so far all of my shoes and miscellaneous items/souvenirs are ready to go and filling one half of my suitcase) in the hour or so of time we had, then the whole family headed to AIB for the farewell party. The food was good, the band was good, and I really really enjoyed looking at everything the visualization kids had put together over the course of the semester. I think the best part of the night for me though was Madeline. "Lexie! Drink more beer! / Here, I'll get you another one. / Why haven't you finished that yet?" Or maybe Mitchell on stage while the band sang Love Shack. Both were pretty solid entertainment. After we left AIB a big group of us went to Tacos and then to N8 to finish out the night.

April 28

Today Renate and Uwe took us to visit her cousin. She didn't speak much English so there was a pretty big communication barrier, especially because our german knowledge is also very minimal. But we got to see the beautiful paintings she makes and her garden was absolutely spectacular. And large! They also gave us both a necklace to keep as a sort of memento of our time in Germany. After we left, we stopped for a rather large bowl of gelato before Ibk and I headed back to Bonn to meet up with Corey and do some gift shopping. I wasn't all that successful and still haven't gotten things for most of the people I was wanting to, but I did end up with "die coolste Anti-Langeweile-Schnur" aka the coolest anti boredom cord and boy it did not disappoint. Viel spaß indeed! Corey came back home with us for dinner, but on the way we decided to pop in for our last pommes döner at the usual spot behind the wall. Boy oh boy, I'm going to miss the Döner. And that wall. And Bonn. And the Rhine. And Germany. And Europe. HELP I want to stay forever!

April 29

Ibk and my's adventure around the neighborhood.

April 30

Rhine Cruise and the most fun final exam in the history of final exams.

May 1

Today was a good last day. Well, most of it was. I went to bed around three and then woke up around seven to continue studying. Yes, I leave tomorrow and still had a final today. I should've just slept a normal amount of time, though, because the studying I managed to get done was completely inconsequential when I was handed the exam. It sucked. But once that was over I was finally able to ENJOY Bonn to the fullest. For less than a day... Oh well. After the exam and exit interview, Ibk and I headed to Izzie's for lunch. It was nice to meet her host family after all this time and they were super sweet. And the food was sehr lecker which is always a plus. After that Ibk ran home while Iz and I went back into town to look around the flea market. I'd gone through part of it already on Saturday, so I already had something in mind that I wanted to purchase. It's a small art piece that depicts one of the most iconic bits of Bonn (to me at least)--the wall!! It's part of an old castle/fortification gate, but I just call it the wall. It makes me feel at home and every time I look at the painting I'll be able to picture the yummy döner that lies just behind it! After the flea market we went to Hofgarten for a little picnic/hangout with a lot of the others. I had to say my goodbyes to Izzie and Mitchell at this point and it just made it even more clear to me how completely NOT OKAY I'm going to be when I say the rest of my goodbyes tomorrow. CAN'T WE ALL JUST STAY FOREVER?

Ibk and I headed home around 7, had dinner, and headed downstairs to finish up our packing. I didn't actually finish until around 1:15 am, but we did take a break in the middle to have a glass of wine and chat with our host parents before we said our good nights and goodbyes. Once I'd finally finished up packing, I lugged my stuff up the stairs (how I'm going to get all of that around with me for a month is beyond me) and returned back down to start cleaning. I started with the toilet and sink, swept the bathroom floor, and then moved on to my room. The ultimate challenge: how to vacuum up all of the hair you've shed over the past four months without a working vacuum. Challenge... accepted? Basically I used the hand broom and scrubbed my way across my entire floor, creating hairballs then tossing them into the trash. It turned out to be quite the arm workout but hey, it worked! Ish. It's now 2:30 and all there's left to do is take out the literal mountain of trash we've accumulated in the hallway and hop in the taxi that comes in an hour. 

May 2

I felt it was only right to end the Germany blogs where I started them, so here I am at the airport, just outside of my gate, and ready for my newest adventure. Unlike a lot of the others, I still have an entire month of travel ahead of me. First stop? Accra, Ghana. You'll have to stay tuned to know what else I'll be up to, but for now I'm visiting my brother Keegan as he is serving in the Peace Corps. I'll only be there for around 6 days and I don't have many expectations as to what we'll be doing, but this is going to be a week unlike any other thus far--and you can bet your butt I am PUMPED.

But to catch you up on the events of the day so far, not too much has happened. Just a lot of airport waiting and chats with the others to kill the time. We arrived at FRA this morning around 6 or so, and my flight wasn't until 11:40 so I had plenty of time to spare. When we first arrived I said my goodbyes to Ibk because she had an early flight and then joined Alexa, Lois, and Corey in the main entrance hall. We ended up standing there a while before settling on a plan of action, but I didn't mind because watching the departure board change all at once was truly mesmerizing. Eventually we took the sky tram over to terminal two (with all of our luggage--rip to Lois) to hang out with Darby, Camella, and Deanna. After an hour or so, Lois and I returned to terminal 1 while the rest headed on through security. Eventually I started making my way to Gate A (via sky tram) when out pops Nicky! What a crazy coincidence that we were both there at the exact same time. We went through security together, or should I say we tried to go through security together. We were both stopped and our bags searched. I even got pulled into a separate room and tested for explosive materials. Andddd the test came back positive which was just dandy. So they brought in an armed officer, and when I say armed I don't mean a little pistol, it was a full rifle type thing (I don't know guns, my bad). He went through my passport, I'm pretty sure he looked at every single stamp and visa I had in there, while the original lady that had pulled me in checked through my bags. And then I hear "Oh it's just candy," I look over and she pulls out the bag I'd gotten at the Haribo store a couple days before. I'd completely forgotten it was in there! She did the residue test once again and it came back negative, so the officer pronounced "Alles Klar" and I was on my happy little way. They didn't even throw out the haribo! After that I waited for Nicky to pack up her stuff again (her lady had legitimately gone through her things), we went on to buy some snacks and a phone cord for myself (I left mine in Bonn :/ ) before settling in for a chat. I caught her up on some things and she did the same and I realized I'm really going to miss our chats over the next month. We talked about this earlier, but we both think it's kind of weird that we became as good of friends as we did. Our friend groups don't hang out at all and we don't have classes together either, so I felt like we truly had to foster our friendship rather than us just being forced together. And yeah, we're not BEST friends, but it's nice to have someone you can have a little distance with but then always come back together as if nothing's changed.