Week... An end that is met with a beginning is just a continuation

This is the final week of the program. It all went by so quickly, yet it seems like I have been here for so long. We went to Remagen and we walked down the Rhein. It is a shame that we are leaving just as Germany is starting to come alive and be green. As we walked, the girls decided to pick some flowers and put them in their hair. Them doing that just made spring feel really there. We went to a museum, which no offense to the guide, but he was utterly boring. The museum was about a bridge. So yeah, the top is boring too. After we finished our tour we headed to lunch where I got some amazing pasta and we got treated to gelato as well. After that we boarded the train and headed back to Bonn. We had some time before the AiB party so we all went home to change and rest a little before starting the night.

We got home, rested, changed, and were ready to go to the party. We arrived with Mindel, Pia, and Emma in tow. For those of you who don’t know, Mindel is our Mexican sister, and Emma and Pia are her friends. So we arrive at the AiB party and say hello to people. We met some other parents and host siblings and we ate a whole bunch of food and drank a whole bunch of beer. Towards the end of the party, it was mainly just AiB students and workers, so we all just hung out, sang, danced, and messed about. After the party, we went to a bar, and then to club and that finished out our night.

On Monday we had the Rhein cruise. We all met up early and began our journey on a bus and went to a small town where we had breakfast. We then boarded the boat and sailed down the Rhein. I can’t say it enough, this river is beautiful. No picture can truly capture what the eyes can see. We also had our History of Medicine final, which for some reason I was Gryffindor… and not Slytherin, which slightly upset me. We became kids on the cruise, or at least I did. We finally finished the cruise and we had lunch. After lunch we began our hike to a castle. The castle was really cool, but people were already living there, so it is not the castle for me and Deanna. After that we got back on the bus and headed back to Bonn.

Tuesday, the last day of stuff. We took our 308 final, and did our exit interviews. Then a lot of people met at the hofgarten and chilled together for our last day. I was fully packed at this time and everything started feeling somber. Reality started to hit and we said our goodbyes to those we wouldn’t see the next day or those that wouldn’t be back in College Station. After that we went home and had I had my final meal with my host family, and watched the Champions League game. Then I went to bed.

It was never sad until this morning. I woke up to Wolly knocking on my door saying it is time to leave. I hurried and packed up my backpack, rushing into Mitchell’s room to say goodbye to him. Then I did the same for Romello and Leon. Saying goodbye to Mandy was hard. I was on the verge of tears as I was thanking her for everything and I forgot to tell her that she’s my second mother now, which after saying that, I would have definitely started crying. Wolly drove me to the old AiB and on the way we were just talking about everything that happened and life, and the emotions were just piling on one another. I think I saw Wolly wipe his eyes, which made me start feeling even more emotional. We finally arrived at the old AiB and we got out and said our goodbyes. As we were saying good bye, tears started forming in my eyes and I walked away from him and I could not hold every tear back. It was a hard goodbye, because I do not know when I will see them again. If I am leaving my home in Midlothian, I know I’ll see my parents again soon, but this time it felt like it was for good. I sat down, and cried a little bit, and then it stopped. We loaded up the bus and made our way toward the airport. I said my goodbyes to my friends and Darby, Alexa, Deanna, Austin, and I all boarded our plane. Sitting on the plane, it still does not feel like I am going home yet. For some reason, I feel like it is not ending, but everything is just continuing on. Maybe that’s something. An end followed by a beginning is just a continuation.

Week... at least we went to Switzerland

“Hey Corey, wake up, you’re going to be late to catch the tram!”… I was late… I hurriedly packed my bags for the trip and ran after Mitchell for the tram. However, he wasn’t able to keep the doors open and I watched him flash past me on the tram. I walked, dejectedly, to the next stop and luckily for me, there was still another tram that was running. However, it did not go to the Bonn Hauptbahnhof, it went to Beuel. Still, it was faster than running, so I hopped aboard the tram and made my way into the city. By the time I reached the station I was 20 minutes late for the train to Switzerland, but I lucked out again, the train was 40 minutes late. Everyone started laughing at me when I arrived and we all joked about and waited for the train to arrive. Finally, we boarded the train and made our way to Switzerland. Over-night trains are tragic… It is just hard to sleep on trains and I couldn’t do it for some reason. So when we arrived to Switzerland I was exhausted, but WE WERE IN SWITZERLAND!

We got off of the train and made our way to the hostel. This hostel was far from the city center and near the hike we wanted to do. We got to the hostel, got situated, and then went to go get breakfast from a grocery store. I got a banana and musli, the important part is the musli. We then went to our hike and got on our way. Switzerland is absolutely one of the prettiest, most gorgeous places I have ever been to. We hiked up and every view was simply breathtaking. It felt so surreal that I could not believe it was real. We made our way up, and the girls were pretty worn out, but Mitchell and I were just getting started. This is when we decided to split up, they would take the cable car up and we would hike up the rest of the mountain, which was about 4000-5000 feet of elevation change. So, we split ways. There were trail markers but no real trail. It just kind of, went up the mountain. We clambered and crawled our way up and we saw more breathtaking views. This hike was not easy. Snow covered some parts of the trail and it was hard to traverse because I did not have proper hiking shoes so I would just slip all over the place. We kept going until we made it to a giant snow bowl that was where the path should be. We made it that far already that we felt close to the peak, so we decided to just go for it. We climbed up snow to the best of our ability in a pretty vertical direction. My hands and feet were freezing, but I would not give up that easily. It got to the point where if we kept going straight up the ice bowl we wouldn’t be able to make it, so we started climbing up the side of the mountain by pulling on thick grass that had deep roots. We climbed for what seems like hours on end, and finally made it to the top of the snow bowl area. But by that time, we were already too late to catch the last cable car down. We waved at Lexie, Shannon, and Ibk as we saw them in the last cable car heading down the mountain. We were semi-stranded at the top of a peak without a clear way down. We considered climbing to the top, but we opted out of that idea for safety reasons. I figured that we would be able to take the other path down, but unfortunately for us, it was just as snowy. We started down the other side, but had to turn back around because we couldn’t find the second trail. So, we climbed back up to the chapel and our only option was to go down the snow bowl. At this point, we were out of water and dehydrated. We both felt a little lightheaded, which wasn’t good. We both had thoughts that we would have to get heli-vaced out there. But we continued on. Mitchell led the way by crab walking his way down, but following his steps was hard because the snow was loose where he had been. So, I went for it. I started sliding down the snow bowl, and to be frank, it was SO MUCH FUN! Here we were, two college students, sliding down a snow bowl, should be dead at this point, just going for it. Eventually after enough sliding, we made it back to where it became a “trail” again and we knew we were safe. Now we just had to climb back down, then continue on the rest of the three-hour hike back down to the starting point. This is where the musli came in clutch for us. I completely forgot about the musli until now, and I pulled it out and it somehow gave us enough “sustenance” to continue on. Oh, also for the past few hours, Mitchell’s phone was dead, so we had no way to communicate with anyone. We rushed back, and somehow made it back to the hostel in one piece. The girls welcomed us back and Shannon had spaghetti made for us. It was delicious. Too tired to do anything, we showered, ate, and pasted out.

 

The next day was more relaxing. We just stayed in Lucerne for the day, but that does not mean that we had any less fun. We saw the sights to see in Lucerne and stumbled across a track, so naturally, we raced each other. Oh, and we rented pedal boats. We pedaled out into the middle of the mountain lake and the water was so clear, but freezing because it was a mountain lake. Even though it was freezing, we still jumped in. As soon you entered the water, everything went numb. Breathing got hard, and you just felt awful, but it was still fun. We finished playing around in the water, pedaled our way back, and went to go grab our stuff from the hostel. After getting our stuff we went out for Ibk’s birthday dinner and walked around Lucerne at night. We then made our way to the train station and headed back to Germany. More night trains, yay. This was the best final big trip I could have asked for before leaving the program.

Week... the week I made a terrible vlog...

terrible vlog:

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zv4KGEQfP_KJH9kujRmfL79rEPt6spMJ/view?usp=sharing

Slight better video (but not by much): 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AM2LmxIbZ9Qf579RE6wpRrRq1anaT4zH/view?usp=sharing

Week... the week we found out the Irish flag, is a leprechaun

Easter weekend was approaching, which for me meant that Ireland was coming soon. Class ended and Mitchell left. Kate and Nicky were already gone because they had an earlier flight than we did. However, Mitchell and I still had separate flights, so we would meet up in Dublin. Lexie accompanied me home to pack, so we headed out of the AiB and towards Auerberg. When we got to the tram stop, the tram wasn’t supposed to come for a while, so we decided to walk to the next one. On the way to the next stop we saw caution tape, an ambulance and, police. As we walked past the scene, we heard some man talking, and he was speaking German. I overheard that he was talking about a girl and a car. He gestured as if she got hit by the car. So the tram wasn’t running because of this accident so we walked back to the City Hall to catch the bus. We got back, I packed, and we went to the Hauptbahnhof. Then I said goodbye and boarded my train from Dusseldorf because that’s where I was flying out. I got to the airport and got to my flight. I boarded the plane and fell asleep soundly. Next thing I know I was in Ireland. I exited the plane, went through customs and met up with Mitchell. Together we figured out how to get to the hostel. Oh yeah, the buses also had WiFi on them, which was wild. We got to the hostel and it looked like an orphanage. We entered an there were a bunch of high schoolers in the social area. We headed up to our rooms and… “SNORE!!! ( I don’t know how to spell the sound that this guy was making)” The most animalistic, loud, obnoxious, and grating snore I have heard in my life was being orchestrated in a fat man in a speedo sleeping in our room. I look at Mitchell and we just burst out laughing, and this guy, Portugal, started laughing with us. It was awful. Mitchell and I then left to go get dinner, and went back to sleep. Oh, and by the way this whole time, Kate and Nicky are out drinking and partying and stuff.

We woke up the next morning and Mitchell and I prepared for the day. We got dressed, ate breakfast, and were putting our bags in storage lockers for the day when we hear from Kate that she cannot find Nicky. We looked at each other, and just sighed… In the end, we did not help look for Nicky, but Kate found her. Instead, we went around Dublin, and explored the city. We saw Trinity College, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and a lot of pretty flowers. We met up with them for lunch at a pub and I had my first non-american fish and chips. It was really good, however I am not a huge vinegar fan, so I just salted my stuff. After that we walked around and went to a Viking museum, which was awesome. I didn’t know anything about Vikings, so this museum was a breath of fresh air museum-wise. After that, we did not have much time until our car rental so we headed to the airport after grabbing our bags, and we started on our way to Northern Ireland.

We arrived in Northern Ireland and this Airbnb was one of my favorites. It was run by a nice lady who from down the road and she laid out water for us the night we arrived and in the morning, she put out food for us to eat. Also, she talked to us and was super kind and friendly. As we left we signed her guest book and went to the Giant’s Causeway. The Giant’s Causeway was extraordinary. Oh, we also got yelled at by a bus driver to not climbed up the large hills. The causeway was crazy, with all of the similarly shaped rocks and it was weird to think that it was natural. We went from there to a suspension bridge that only Mitchell and I saw. We made our way to the bridge and crossed over, unfortunately it wasn’t the bridge to Terabithia. After there, we headed to Kanamara National Park where we would be staying in a hostel for the night. This hostel was super cool, we met really nice people, and they served free breakfast.

While eating breakfast we asked what we should do in the area and we were told to go to Diamond hill because it was pretty at the top and the hike started in the Hostel’s backyard. We made our way and started climbing the hill. Once we got to the top it was absolutely wild. The view was gorgeous, but what was even crazier was that there were huge gusts of wind that would almost send us all flying off the hill. Quickly after we got to the top, we scurried down the hill back to the car to go to the next location, the Cliffs of Moher. The cliffs were massive. Like really big and super sketchy. The only problem was that we only had 30 minutes to spend here. So Mitchell and I ran around like crazy people until it was time to head back to Dublin. After all that fiasco we returned to Dublin, returned the car, and ate Subway as our last Irish meal… schade… We then went out to a bar/club/pub thing as drank and danced. We ended up going over to some Irish guys’ place, and Mitchell and I talked to a couple of them while Nicky and Kate were elsewhere. We eventually left and went to the airport where we made our way back to Germany.