Week 12

 Lots of rescheduled classes!! We had physiology EVERY SINGLE DAY this week! *tears* But on the bright side, I did a whole 18 points better on the second exam than I did on the first, so hopefully things are looking up and the trend continues!! Classes and studying this week took up basically all day, every day, so there wasn't much time for anything else (hanging out, training for the Bonn marathon etc.) - yeah that's right, I said the BONN MARATHON!! That's this weekend and I still think the farthest I've ever run is half the distance I've committed to running on Sunday… yikes! The good thing about the scheduling this week though, is that AIB Charity Day is before the marathon! That way, we won't be dead for charity day if we were to swap the two! For Charity Day, my group went to a retirement/nursing home where we updated and maintained the courtyard. It was a really cool set up where the residents had a viewing gallery to look out over the courtyard and could see that we came to put in some time and work for them! You could tell that they were happy we were there, even though we unfortunately didn't get to interact with them. The lady in charge said that the oldest resident is 113 years old! Thinking about living in the early 20th century, in Germany, made us all very reflective about her life. She lived through some of the craziest times in modern history. I wish my language skills were fluent enough to get to listen to some of her stories! That would have probably been the COOLEST part of the entire study abroad. But hey, doing some work in the courtyard is pretty cool too. We were teamed up with students from other programs, so I got to work a lot with one of the Vis girls. She, Kevin, and I all built a litlte shed together for the courtyard gardening tools. It was quite the team building experience! Speaking of team building… Sunday!!! THE BONN MARATHON!!! I was convinced that I was gonna die that day. But instead, I felt great throughout the whole thing (not just my leg, but until the whole thing was over)! I was back in forth/in and out of Hoftgarten reaping all the rewards throughout the day, so that may have contributed to all my energy! I was super duper proud of myself though - I ran my stretch in 59 min, one minute faster than the goal I set!! Imagine if I had actually really trained like I was supposed to… lol. Plus, I didn't stop once! The whole time I was keeping up with the runners who had the big 4:30 balloons, so I'm gonna tell myself that my marathon team would then ideally be about 4:30. Who knows though? Not me, and no one probably ever will because I don't think I will actually ever run a full marathon… I just don't see why I would want to do that to my poor ol' body. Not only did I do well, but my whole team did! We were the fastest relay team from AIB! Shoutout to Kevin, Josh, and Marcus!! What an accomplishment! For everyone really! I was really impressed with everyone who ran - relay, half, and the full marathon! GO US!