Spending a week in France was a wonderful experience, but it set all of us pretty far back in school. When we came back, we had major assignments coming up in most of our classes. Thankfully, most of it got moved to a more reasonable date, but at the beginning it was looking pretty bleak. Differential equations was contributing to most of the workload, but it all got moved to next week, giving us time to finish the tear down analysis for medical device design. Enmodes is also approaching really quickly, and it's not looking so good. It's too late to scrap any of our ideas, but also there isn't enough literature out there to perfectly clarify everything we've proposed. I'm over this project, but thankfully it'll be finished in a few weeks. My priorities as far as school work goes are now the signals/systems test and the diffeq test, and enmodes will come when I get to it. But, outside of the monotonous strife, we had some good laughs this week while working with the toothbrushes, and we watched some quality John Mulaney as a break from the tear down analysis. Both little things, but they made the end of the week much better.
The weekend was much better than everything leading up to it. Saturday was Big Event, and all the other AIB kids invaded the Old AIB, before we split into groups and went to our separate projects. There were 6 or 7 of us Biosciences students, as well as some TAMU Visualization and LMU Science kids. We were tasked with taking the top 20 cm of sand out of a playground at a nursery, and then replacing that sand. I wouldn't say I love manual labor, but it is something I can do for a long time without complaints. So, I was a little pleased to just be shoveling and dumping sand into and out of wheelbarrows for a few hours. A writer for the local newspaper came and took quotes from some of us, so my name and face are now enshrined in local southern Bonn news for the rest of eternity. Towards the end, I actually ended up meeting some of the students from LMU and TAMU that I didn't know, and we went to Altstadt to see the cherry blossom festival after we finished our job. Before that, I met some other LMU kids that live in Mehlem near me, who apparently take the same bus that I do. I've never seen them before, but now I know some more people who have to travel too far to get to class. That night my host family had a barbecue, and this was especially exciting to me since I missed the last one. What's more, they had all gotten home from being away the past 3 weeks, and I got to hear stories about Chile from my host dad over a delicious meal.
Sunday was the marathon. To preface, I had not run more than a mile since high school, and I hadn't run a mile in probably a year. When I signed up to run a quarter marathon, I definitely thought I would have time to train, but alas I did not run a single time unless it was to catch a bus. I knew I could do it, but I wasn't sure how ugly it was gonna be. I also thought I was gonna get sunburned. Somehow, everything turned out for the better. I had the longest leg of the relay with 7.6 miles, but I ran the fastest mile out of our team, I found a friend along the route, and I didn't get burned. My route was very straight and boring, but along the way, I ended up running with this guy Lucas. We talked a little bit along the way and kept each other's pace the whole time, and I attribute some of my mild success to having a good running partner like him. During the race I never got very winded, but my entire lower body was in pain for a while. Eventually my legs and feet kind of just went numb, but then the pain came back at the end and I knew I was going to be unbelievably sore afterwards. I finished strong with a sprint through the finish, and it reminded me of when I ran track in high school, the end of the marathon feeling a lot like the end of a 400. At the end of the race there was an outdoor food court in the Hofgarten, and I had everything. At that point I was on the best runner's high, and good food made me feel even better. I managed to hit a 9 minute mile, and looked good doing it, so I consider the marathon a success. Maybe I'll try to run a half or full marathon one day, but those I'm definitely going to train for.
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