Finals Week, the Final Week (Week 16)

We started the week off with a relaxing bike ride to Remagen on Monday. It might be one of my favorite activities that we've done as a group. The weather was, thankfully, bright and sunny and the ride was the slowest-paced thing we've done all semester with everyone together. We rode to a museum within an old bridge that was destroyed during WWII. Here, we learned a bit more about the local history during that time period and about some conflicts since WWII. After the museum, we had a group lunch, our last one, before making our way back to Bonn. The rest of the week was mostly finals. We had our third physiology exam Tuesday and the physiology final Wednesday, which everyone did well on. The genetics final was Friday, and it was harder than any of us expected it to be, but I still feel like I did pretty well on it, like a high B. Tuesday and Wednesday I took a break from studying to watch the final Harry Potter movie and "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" with Astrid and Naja.

Saturday was the Rhinecruise for us and the Vis program. The weather wasn't that good early on, but the cruise was still nice and the scenery beautiful. We had our History of European Medicine final during the cruise, which was fun and went pretty well. After the cruise, we toured Nassau castle, which is the only castle in the Middle Rhine to have never been conquered. It was cool to see the different rooms, like the bedroom and kitchen, as well as the armor and torture devices on display in other areas of the castle. That evening, about half of our program, plus John from the Vis program, went to see the fireworks that were part of the Rhine in Flammen (Rhine in Flames) festival. They were much more impressive than I thought they would be and we all had a really great time hanging out, talking about our plans for the summer, and reminiscing on the last semester. It was pretty melancholic. A few of us went out afterwards because we didn't want the night to end just yet, which was kind of a reflection of my attitude about the semester itself.

Today, Sunday, was packing day, but I've been packed since Tuesday night. I wanted to go to Cologne and go to Claudius Therme, but didn't end up going since the store I wanted to go to in Cologne was closed. Since that was the case, I had a hard time justifying 16 euros for the tickets to Cologne to go to the spa, where I'd be spending 24 euros to use the spa and sauna for two hours. Instead, I used the morning to pack for my trip to Portugal. In the afternoon, the theater students from LMU had their performance of Spring Awakening, which I went to see with the others. Honestly, I didn't understand what was going on for a good portion of the play and definitely didn't enjoy the style of the play. But I can acknowledge that the students did an excellent job with their performances.

Once the play was over, most of us went to old AIB to kill time before the farewell party. The farewell party was a great time for pretty much everyone, although a few people left early to eat with their host families one last time. That was kind of a shame, since we got a group picture towards the end of the party. Most of our program ended up in the lounge downstairs to talk and hang out with just us one last time. Again, pretty melancholic. I had to say goodbye to a few people who were leaving really early tomorrow morning and to those who I wouldn't see again before I left with some of the others on my shuttle to Frankfurt. Tomorrow, I'll have to say goodbye to the ones on my shuttle and on the 14th, I'll say goodbye to Sid one last time in Frankfurt. It's weird to think about how we won't see each other every day come tomorrow. And, even though everyone except Madyson will still be in College Station, it won't be the same as it was here. I'll miss it.

The Countdown Begins (Week 15)

This past week actually had a few big events taking place. On Tuesday, we held a small Muster ceremony at the old AIB. Lindsay was the one responsible for putting most of it together and she did an excellent job. I really enjoyed being able to participate in an Aggie tradition even though we were so far from campus and even a few days late. But the meaning of the ceremony holds more weight than time and distance, which is one of the reasons why I was surprised none of the previous groups in Germany had held a Muster ceremony.

Thursday, we went to Bingen and visited two very different museums. The first museum was for Hildegard of Bingen, one of the only females we learned about in our History of European Medicine lectures. Even though a lot of her theories were wrong, since she believed in humoralist practices, she still sounds like a very strong individual and was very influential in the area. The second museum was in a man's house, since the city hadn't gotten the museum it's own space yet, and had a wide variety of pieces. It was kind of like a highlight real of a lot of what we covered in lectures and some of the pieces were actually impressive, considering the size of the museum.

Friday night, I went to see Avengers: Endgame with Joshua, Park, Ryan B., and Josh. It was a long movie but so so good. My favorite part was when Captain America finally used Mjolnir - I've been waiting for it for so long! Saturday, I watched another Harry Potter movie with Astrid, so there's only part two of the Deathly Hollows left in the original series, plus the Fantastic Beasts movie. The rest of the weekend wasn't very productive, outside of a bit of studying for the third physiology exam and the genetics final today.

What Day Is It, Again? Oh Yeah- My Birthday. (Week 5)

I actually had this thought when I woke up Friday morning. Honestly, this entire week the days were blurring together. I was so exhausted from all the travel. Of course, I really enjoyed getting to be in four different countries over the last week and a half, but it really took a lot out of me. This week I just wanted to get back into some kind of routine.

As far as classes go, I was really focused on genetics, since we had our exam on Wednesday. Everyone back in Texas took it last Wednesday when we were in Vienna. But even though we had a full extra week before we had to take the exam, I really wasn't able to get much extra studying done because of all the traveling. I feel pretty good about the exam though. There were only a few questions I felt two answers could have worked, so I think I'll pull out a B. Something interesting from this week though, is that there was a pharmacology workshop for everyone on Monday and Tuesday. There are only a few people taking pharmacology, so it was a chance for the rest of us to learn more about how drugs are manufactured and we even got into a bit of toxicology. The toxicology was probably the most interesting part for me. I always thought it was interesting that dosage determines toxicity. The workshop was also interesting because of the fact that our enmodes project working with ECMO units can affect drug delivery in ECMO patients. The use of ECMO units actually results in drug sequestration very early on, which only gets worse over time and can make it difficult to determine the proper dosage for patients. It's a difficult problem to address but would be worth considering for the project, I think, since reducing drug sequestration would reduce the amount of monitoring a patient would need.

I got to watch another Harry Potter with Astrid on Thursday night. It was the third movie, The Prisoner of Azkaban. Honestly, I think Lupin as the name of the new teacher was too on-the-nose, but I liked his character. It was a bit surprising and disturbing that Ron's rat turned out to be Pettigrew. And I don't understand how Harry and Hermione could go back in time and not think about catching him since there was enough time between when Pettigrew got away and Lupin fought Sirius, but what do I know?

Friday was my birthday and it was a pretty relaxed day. In the morning, everyone sang "Happy Birthday" and I got a cake, which is always a plus. We only had a few classes, so I got to go home early and even went running. I even got an extra award on my Nike app because I ran on my birthday. Later in the evening, I went to Drachenfels castle with Sean to see the light show. It actually turned out to be an entire exhibit by one artist, with pieces all over the castle grounds and in the castle itself. Some of the displays were pretty weird, but it was a fun night overall. When I got home, it was even better because I could have some of the zucchini cake that Astrid and Naja made for me. It was so good and much sweeter than I expected.

Saturday, I went to Cologne with Sean. We originally planned to go around eight, but I woke up feeling really sick, so we pushed it back until ten. The first thing we did was go to the Ludwig Art Museum. They have one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe, which was pretty cool. I don't think that I'll ever really understand the finer points and meanings behind some art pieces. There was one display that was basically a big bundle of interwoven clothing tags with the artist's name on them. Apparently, the piece was supposed to question the value of goods and people. I didn't even realize that the little clothes were supposed to be clothes tags, so.... Anyway, after that, we went for lunch at Früh. I got their goulash and it was super tasty, as expected. The bread was really good too, especially with the goulash. Next, we stopped by the Fragrance Museum because we thought they actually sold the original Eau de Cologne that we were looking for. But they actually only sold the brand's more modern perfumes and colognes. They did have a tour about the history of the brand and cologne, but it was an hour long, so we decided to just head to our next and most important destination: the Chocolate Museum.

It was a bit of walk to get there, but we went along the Rhine and got to enjoy some scenery, so it wasn't bad at all. The Chocolate Museum was definitely my favorite place, for a number of reasons. First, they had a great layout for the museum that guided you through the process of making chocolate from the growing of the tree to the actual production of chocolate pieces. Second, part of the first area of the museum had a greenhouse area that was super warm and humid with beautiful tropical plants, including the cocoa tree. For a minute, it was like I was back home. Third, we got to see a lot of machinery that is actually used in the production of chocolate, like the roaster and mixer. Some of the machines were even being used so we could see melted chocolate be put into molds, shaken, cooled, and packaged. Fourth, not only could we watch little chocolate pieces be made, but we also got to take a piece directly off the production line! It was just like the Krispy Kreme by my grandparents' house that gives you a free donut off the line if you go in at certain times of the day. And the fifth reason the Chocolate Museum was my favorite place of the day is all of the free (re: included with the price of admission) chocolate! While we waited in line to get our free piece of chocolate off the line, we were given wafer cookies dipped in the chocolate of the museum's famous chocolate fountain and, my favorite, a truffle! We even got more pieces of chocolate when we left!

There was another cool area after the production line where they had a lot of old molds on display and you could watch a worker prepare molds by hand with different types of chocolate. Some of the old molds were much bigger than I expected and a lot of them were super intricate. There was a place where you could order a personalized chocolate bar and watch the chocolatier make it for you, which was pretty cool. I would have done it but the sign said that the service would take 45 minutes, and Sean and I thought we were pretty much done with the tour, so we decided to forgo the personalized chocolate bar. In retrospect, we probably could have ordered one without any issues but it's not a big deal to me since I don't have specialized tastes when it comes to chocolate. I don't need pistachio, strawberry, and marshmallow, which I saw someone else order; I'm happy with pretty basic flavors. Anyway, we probably could have gotten a personalized bar because there was another section of the museum that we didn't realize was as big as it was. This last part was basically all about the culture of chocolate from Meso- and South America to 17th century Europe up to today. I didn't realize that chocolate was available only as a drink for so long, or that ancient and Enlightenment-era people had dishes specifically devoted to chocolate. In fact, the museum mentioned a Prussian lord who had a chocolate service that had over 1,000 pieces!

After some time in the Chocolate Museum's gift shop, Sean and I went to the Lock Bridge. It's the main bridge in Cologne and it's like the lock bridge in Paris, where people place padlocks on the links of the fence along the bridge and throw the key in the water as a symbol of their- hopefully- lifelong long. The side that we were on had tons of locks- it was kind of crazy. The other side of the bridge had a lot, but not as much for some reason. Our last stop for the day was the 4711 Fragrance House, where we were finally able to buy little bottles of the Eau de Cologne. It smelled better than I expected, and there were even a few new scents that I really enjoyed. It's still hard to believe that people used to drink the stuff. Once we got the cologne, we decided to call it a day and headed back to Bonn. Once I was back home, I was just in time to have dinner with the others, which I was afraid I'd missed. Sunday I just slept in and then studied, so nothing too exciting. Overall, the week was fairly relaxed and just what I needed after the constant traveling we'd all been doing. I'm glad that I was able to take it easy and that I was able to see the castle lights before the display is taken down next week.

The Ordinary World, Pre-Departure

At this point, we've talked about the Hero's Journey a few times. Up to now, the journey for myself has been fairly accurate, though drawn out. I first heard about the summer version of this study abroad program about two years ago. I was short a few pre-requisite classes and wasn't in a position financially that would have allowed me to participate, so I had to say no to the opportunity. That was really hard for me for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is that my dad is in the Army and I moved a lot when I was young and then every year after starting middle school. Any opportunity I had, I had to take the second it presented itself because I could practically guarantee that I wouldn't get another shot. I'm beyond grateful that that was not this case for this program. Another reason it was hard for me to miss out the first time around was that I have always wanted to go to Europe, specifically Spain and Portugal, where my mom's family is from. I know the program is in Germany, which is not quite the same, but it gets me close enough to have a real shot at visiting. Germany also has a rich culture and my dad's side has some ties to the country, so I'm not disappointed in any way when it comes to location.

My flight is in two days, two hours and 42 minutes- officially, anyway. I won't be surprised if we take off a bit later. I'm about to cross the threshold into a special and new world and I have mixed emotions about it. Of course, I am excited and (clearly) counting-down the minutes but I'm also a bit apprehensive about a potential repeat of past experiences. It's not my first time traveling abroad; I went to Australia on exchange when I was a freshman, so three years ago now, and I've been to Mexico on a family vacation. And, honestly, both trips left me with a sense of disappointment, though the experiences themselves were fun.

In Australia, I was pretty much on my own when it came to learning about the history of the country and the daily workings. I asked the people I was with but they were all my age so, even though they grew up in Australia, they weren't necessarily well-versed in the history of the nation, political details, etc. Although, everyone could tell me about how Prime Minister Harold Holt mysteriously disappeared while Australia was at war in Vietnam. (It was later- four decades later, to be precise- discovered that he accidentally drowned.) I was also on the campus of the Defence Force Academy, Australia's joint-service military college, because my exchange program was through the Corps of Cadets at A&M. Here, the rules are a bit different and the officer cadets get privileges in a system that is very different from the Corps. The most important one though, was that first-years (AKA freshmen) were only allowed off-campus on the weekends. So I didn't get to travel around a lot during the semester, with the exception being our two-week spring break.

I don't really consider my visit to Mexico a true cultural experience since my family was only there for a week. We went on a few tours of the area and learned a lot about the history of the place, but didn't have a lot of interaction with locals. I was very much a tourist.

For this semester abroad, I want and expect a totally different experience. I don't want to feel like a tourist, only touching on the surface of the history, culture, and people. I want to really experience everything that Germany has to offer- or as much as possible. I want to live with Germans, do what they do, learn what they know, and widen my view and perspective of the world. I want to leave Germany a changed person- a better person who is more aware of others and myself. And I know that this program will make that happen, as long as I let it.

But none of that can happen if I'm not ready to leave, so I guess that I should get back to packing. I actually finished packing yesterday but still feel like I have too much stuff want to rearrange a few things. Also, just in case you were wondering, yes, I was updating my countdown as I wrote. This post ended up being a lot longer than I planned.