Week 1- "The first one"

Week one- Wow!! Walking 45 minutes to class (by choice), experiencing what felt like frostbite while riding a bicycle, attending a 1^st division Bundisliga match, and trying cinnamon hot red wine (Glühwein)… it’s been a week full of firsts here in Deutchland. If the rest of our time here is anything like this week, then I’m surely in for a fantastic semester.

The first couple of days here are best described as a blur. The bottomless wine on the flight over reduced my sleeping time on the plane and so my jet lag hit quite hard. Really, I was asleep by 18:00 the first couple of days. Fortunately, Ina and the boys don’t eat dinner together so I didn’t feel bad about my early slumber. Speaking of Ina and the boys- they are great. I actually found out that a good friend of mine from San Antonio stayed with this same family while he studied abroad in Bonn and when asked about them, he agreed that they were an absolutely wonderful host family. They speak to me primarily in Deutch which is interesting, but it’s also exactly what I wanted going into this trip.

As for the other side of the coin, the academic venture of this program, I’m still excited. I waited until this first day of real class to post in order to get some idea of what the academic semester will be like. The applied pharmacology course seems very fascinating. It’s perhaps the smallest class I’ve ever taken (5 people) so I am very excited to engage in discussion and debate over our course material.

Finally, I wish to reflect on our Enmodes meeting. It was very informative. I am aware of the ECMO procedure and have marveled at it ever since observing some in the ICU. Because of this, I am very excited to delve into this project and hopefully aid in the design of a revolutionary mobile ECLS.