First Week of Class Back Home

After a week of doing nothing, I was kind of happy to have something to wake up for each morning. Classes started up again March 23rd, and we immediately got back into the swing of things. By Wednesday that week, I regretted wanting classes to return as I realized how far behind in all of my work I was. I felt swamped. Thankfully, through the next two weeks, I did really well in catching up. I re-watched old lecture recordings and took good notes in each class. Sadly, this burst of motivation only really lasted until just after our first week of testing, and I returned to studying and doing work at the last possible minute. Overall, besides schoolwork, this week was largely uneventful, so there really is not much more to write about.

Week 11: Returning Home

Sadly, due to the rampant spread of COVID-19, the study abroad was cancelled. On March 12th, Jen and I woke up in Paris to a call from my parents who let me know that I had to return home. We had already planned to return to Bonn from Paris that day, so we gathered out things and headed out to the train station at 5:45 AM. We did not leave the hotel room early enough, however, and we missed our train back to Bonn. We waited an extra hour and paid an extra hundred euros just to take the next train. Luckily, Jack and his family happened to get on the same train as us at a stop in Brussels, so we got to talk to him for a little while. After returning to Bonn, I said goodbye to my host family and went out to Tacos one last time with Jack and Jen.
The next day, Jen and I had 10:00 AM flight back to Dallas from the Frankfurt airport. The trip to the airport that morning was the most stressful four hours of my life. Jen and I met up at Bonn HBF around 5:30 and immediately got on the wrong train. It only took us a few stops to figure out that we were not going the right direction and got off in what I can only describe as the middle of nowhere. We walked around this small town until we finally found someone to ask where we could get a taxi. He said the only way out of this deserted hell hole was from the train station. We waited for the next train to take us to Cologne in hopes of getting on a high speed train to Frankfurt from there. The train to Cologne continued to get delayed until it finally arrived forty minutes late. We hopped on the train and arrived in Cologne around 7:45. The only peaceful part of the trip was the fifty minute ride to Frankfurt from Cologne. I took a short nap and arrived at the Frankfurt airport at 8:50, forty five minutes before our gate closed. We ran through the airport, which did not seem to have a single working escalator, until we finally arrived at the bus stop. We waited impatiently until the bus finally arrived to take us to terminal 1. We sprinted to the American Airlines check-in counter. The lady at the desk questioned my reasons for staying in Germany, and I answered them as quickly as I could until she finally asked me why I was so nervous. I explained that I was out of breath from the last twenty minutes of running and really did not want to miss my flight. My anxiety seemed to anger her, but I finally got my boarding pass. Jen and I made our way through customs, where I dropped and broke my phone. The automatic passport scanner did not properly scan my passport, so I had to wait in line to get my passport checked by an officer. After customs, we ran to security check, which was thankfully went smoothly. Shortly after, we boarded our flight and returned home. I guess that's what we get for flying home on Friday the 13th. I never plan on travelling with Jen again after this brutal week of travel.
The week after returning home was very uneventful and really only consisted of me playing video games and adjusting my sleep schedule as I prepared for classes to resume the following week.

Week 14

This week is the final Enmodes push. We have our presentation this Friday and still a lot to do.  Our group is comprised of both BMEN and BIMS students. We had that the BIMS students would start the PowerPoint while the BMEN students would work on the solid works design and computations. We went into the week with a great outlook, thinking we would complete the presentation by noon Wednesday and start practicing but we ran into some hiccups. This included the solid works design of our cannula and the computation of flow rates. The computations we assigned to both me and a colleague. Like I said, we thought it would be really easy, just plugging in numbers to Poiseuille's law. However, this law is only used for perfectly circular tubing, and ours weren't. We then searched the internet for other ways to compute the flow and we could not find anything that fir our design. Travis than came in and attempted to save the day by using the solid works flow simulation. My colleague and I tried to do this but it wasn't successful. This was a very stressful situation as the presentation was quickly approaching. We then used an estimation off of Poiseuille's law and completed our PowerPoint. We did several practice runs and finished our presentation at 2:30 am on Friday. Our group woke up looking spiffy at 8:30 am and did a couple more practice runs before our final presentation at 10:00 am. The presentation went really well and all the stress was finally off our shoulders.

Now, finals week is around the corner and the preparations start. One more week of school and I'm very excited to get a much needed break.

Week 13

This past weekend was great. It was Good Friday and the long weekend was much needed. Like I said in my past blogs, I have been so busy with work and it is annoying to see others just chilling. To make things worse, my old high school has made the last cycle not count while also not having finals. I was so frustrated thinking to myself, "maybe I was born in the wrong year." But the more I thought about it, I was glad that I am still pushing myself and persevering through these tough times. In the end, the amount of work you put in will show in future endeavors. The Enmodes push has started and our group has come to a point that our idea is almost at its peak. 

This week, Texas has also released some more news on coronavirus. It is now mandatory that everyone that goes out in public must wear masks, and if you don't then there will be a fine of one thousand dollars. 

Week 12

Unfortunately, this week has been just like the past weeks, still observing social distancing and hard at work, with one exception. The news of the pandemic has finally reached most of Houston's citizens and has officially closed down all non-essential shops, but your boy was in dire need of a haircut. So what did he do? I called up my barber, obviously Arab, and asked if he was still taking customers. He told me absolutely and asked when I would come. I scheduled a cut for 12 noon on Sunday and right before I was going to end the call he said, "hello brother when you come tomorrow, make sure to enter from the back of the shop." Since I needed a cut badly, I agreed. The next day my brother and I drove to the shop, and I was thinking to myself, "I am basically doing spy work." Anyways, I arrived and saw the front windows were covered to the floor so from outside looking in it appeared closed. I entered through the back door and he escorted me to this impromptu private suite in the back. We were talking and he told me that it was been hard on him. This pandemic is not playing nice with small business owners and he is doing everything he can just to stay afloat, even if that is seeing four customers a day. I was pleased with my cut as always and gave him a bigger tip than usual. The small amount of extra cash probably wouldn't have gone a long way, but I tried to help.

Other than that one interesting moment, the week has been boring. Next week the Enmodes push begins and I hope I'm ready!

Week 16 in Texas

This week, we had our last lecture exam for physiology which was fine, and we are done with lectures for all of our classes. Everyone is just preparing for finals and wrapping things up for the semester. I am working on my medical school application, along with doing some school work. Also, I got some very exciting news this week- I am officially a published scientist! A paper that I worked on in research was finally published yesterday and it was so cool to see my name on a paper in a huge journal like PNAS. A highlight of quarantine for sure. I'm ready to get this diploma!!!!!

Week 15 in Texas

This week we had our Enmodes presentation which required us to do a lot of work on it all week. It was worth it because on Friday morning we had our presentations and they all went really well and the Enmodes engineers seemed very pleased with our work. Over the weekend, I went to College Station to visit my boyfriend, and continued to work on school and medical school applications. Since TV shows are one of my main sources of entertainment these days, I'll update you on those. I finished the show Dave, which was hilarious and incredible. I also watched a couple of documentaries on Netflix, and the new show Little Fires Everywhere.