Hi All

Got to make it quick.  We are in the 5 lands (cant spell the name correctly) for the last two days.  We walked down some beautiful paths and saw some great scenery.  I am already burnt for being out in the sun for only a few hours!

We are going to eat at the restaurante belvidere which has the best seafood spaghetti in the world!  I am so excited!

We skipped Pisa in order to get a place to stay at the 5 lands, so we will visit it tomorrow.

Hope all is well and I will be posting a longer journal on the 5th when I am back in Darmstadt for the day and have free internet.

10.7.08

This is the end, my only friend, the end

Today was the last German class in Germany.  It was not that sad really, more relieved.  I can now work on my reports that I need to finish by this next Wednesday before I leave.

This past week has also been a blur, so I will try to recap it as much as possible…or at least to my knowledge.

Most of Saturday was spent getting things cleaned up and organized for the arrival of Dad and his family.  Their flight was supposed to come in around 2pm, so I took a nap.  When I woke up at 7pm, they had not called me.  I checked my email to find out that Dad had sent me a short email saying that their first day was a little hectic and that they would see me tomorrow at 11am.  I managed to find the hotel in Ashaffenburg that they were staying at and talked to the manager to leave a message for them since they did not have a phone in the hotel room.

So Sunday morning came and I got to see everyone.  They did arrive at 11, letting me know that they got my message, and I got to hear about their horror stories of parking and a twelve hour flight and trying to get in contact with me without having a phone.  I showed them around my apartment before we headed into town to show them where I do my research.  After the ‘tour’, they were hungry for lunch, so we went to McDonalds to ease their hunger fears.

After lunch we headed to Schwabsberg to see the city where the Melius’ cam from.  We saw the church where they had worshiped and then walked up to the tower where you can see the great wine valleys of the Rhine Valley.  After the detour up the tower, we proceeded to the cemetery where we took pictures of the grave stones of the Melius’ relatives.  We then headed back to Darmstadt where we got a nice German meal.  Dad and they then headed back to the hotel after dropping me off since they were still exhausted from the flight.

Monday and Tuesday were spent taking exams for German to wrap up the course.  I also spent the majority of the time working on my research paper.  The results of my experiments did not go well since nothing that I tried that was an unknown worked.  I still added quite a bit of information thought to compensate and I will send it in this Tuesday as my final grade, even though I do not know if I will be graded or not.

Wednesday was a real treat.  Schmidt-Walter is one of those professors that is a genius in one field, but forgets about everything that we do and report.  Case and point was Wednesdays morning meeting.  Even though we told him twice that we would be on vacation for a month, he surprised us with a future report meeting that he wanted from us.  He wants us to do a power point or report for 15 min on what we did and what were our results.  The problem was that he wants it during the time of our vacation…yeah.  So after going back and forth for a while, we agreed on the 15^th of August as the presentation date.  This means that Ryan and I will have to go all the way back to Darmstadt when we are supposed to be in Berlin to give a 15 min presentation, losing 2 days of our vacation in north east Germany.  I am not too upset about it because I have been to Berlin, but Ryan will not get the chance to really see the city that I have lived in for 2 months.

Thursday was the last German class.  I wouldn’t say it was really a class because all we did was talk about where we were going during the break before she gave us our certificates.  I now am officially a B2 graduate, so the next course that I can take is C1 which is the upper level, so I am excited.  Dave and I went to An Sibin for the last time and had a Guinness.  We both sang karaoke individually and than sang a duet of Millionaer by Die Prinzen.  It was really funny when it was my turn though, because the DJ started playing “Im not a girl, not yet a woman” by Britney Spears.  Without a pause, I started to sing it while the Germans cheered me on.  I would have finished, but the DJ stopped and said that he just wanted to see if I would do it.  I then sang my real song “Cecilia” which was ok.  After An Sibin, we got one last doener at Mak Doener before heading back home.

I am currently packing all of my stuff up since I will not be around for the next month and will only have a day or two to get ready before leaving for home.  I also want to pack some stuff since Dad said he would take a bag home with him.  He was strict on the 50lb limit, but I really don’t care since it is my stuff and I would be glad to pay him for the tax that they put on the bag.  I should see them on Tuesday night for a last dinner before they head off to Frankfurt where they will leave early the next morning.

Compared with the last couple of weeks, this latter half of the week seemed to have topped the cake.

Thursday day was ok since I was in lab with Huettenhain.  As we are working on this Biodiesel experiment, we are finding it to be a lot harder than it should.  After we distilled the DMF from the product and add distilled water, the solution gave a weird oily coating that they were not expecting.  Needless to say, I have spent the last two days trying to figure out what it is.  It has also been frustrating for my professor since he doesn’t know where it came from…in short, I have had to do a lot of DC analysis.  After lab we had German class which is coming to an end.  We should have our exam on the 3^rd, so after that I should not have any problems with working on the fuel cell project.

Thrusday night is when the fun really began.  A bunch of us went to the Rats Keller to see Germany take on Portugal for the quarterfinals match.  Portugal was heavily favored, but Germany managed to win 3-2.  The first goal was probably the best coordinated goal that I have ever seen in soccer.  The way that the players are able to handle the ball is just amazing; I give a lot more respect to them and their abilities now that I have seen how hard it really is.

After the game there were hooligans all around Darmstadt.  We wandered through the city until we met up with a giant group that was wandering through the street and chanting.  We decided to join them and help with their shenanigans.  People were yelling and chanting and cheering through the streets, so we joined in.  I thought that the mob would be broken up when the police decided to drive through, but once I saw the German flags waving from inside the squad car, I knew that they were not going to stop us.  We marched as a giant group through the street and into the tunnels where we met up with another group of hooligans.  From there it got even crazier since we probably had over a thousand fans inside the tunnel alone.  People were banging on drums and blowing air horns and waving flags…it was one of the coolest things I have seen a mob do.

Friday I did not have any lab cause I needed to be in the fuel cell lab for Dr. Hamiltons arrival.  He came in to the lab around 11am and went over a few things before he took off to go to another meeting.  After lunch, he came back and spent a couple of hours with Michael on his Masters project…this is where it got awkward.  Dr. Hamilton is a very direct person and does not be around the bush.  He is also has a bear-like personality, so if you get him upset or are incompetent, you will hear about it.  Needless to say Michael was dominated from the very beginning.  He didn’t do a lot of what he was supposed to and Hamilton spent the majority of the time telling him what he needed to get done rather than asking him what he is doing.  I felt bad, but that is what happens when you are unprepared and don’t have Hamilton for an advisor.

I guess you can say that I got lucky or they felt like they did not want to yell anymore because once they (Schmidt-Walter also) were done with Michael, they turned their attention onto me.  I got the lucky end of the stick with nothing but praise.  Dr. Hamilton never argued with me nor told me what I wasn’t doing wrong.  If anything, I got praises from both him and Schmidt-Walter.  Schmidt-Walter also gave extremely positive remarks about me to Hamilton saying that I am the ONLY foreign student who has ever attempted to write a paper in German for their project…wow, that really meant a lot.  They also suggested that I write the paper in English, but since I know so much of the material and most of it was in English anyway, there shouldn’t be a problem.

That night I went over to Dave’s house to watch the Turkey and Croatia game.  The game turned out to be boring except for the last 2 minutes.  It was 0-0 until the end of regulation and then they had overtime.  In over time the half goes for 30 min with a break at 15 min.  It was 0-0 in overtime until there was one minute left in the game when Croatia finally scored…finally its over…but it wasn’t. 

The game keeps going until the whole 30 minutes are up.  So we continued to watch until the 30 min were over, but then in each game they also give a few extra minutes (3 in this match) for injury compensation time since the clock never stops and a lot of time is wasted for the players who are babies and get hurt.  So with about 5 sec left in the injury time, Turkey pulls the improbable and magically scores a goal that ties it and sends the game into double overtime…I could not believe it. 

Now with double overtime, they have 5 penalty kicks per team and whoever makes the most wins.  It didn’t take long for Turkey to win by kicking 3 of their 4 in to Croatia’s 1 of 4…so Turkey finally wins the quarterfinal match.  I hated that game because I could have been doing something else for the last 2 hours and come in later to see the last 5 min worth of excitement…crazy.

So since Turkey beat Croatia, Turkey will now play Germany in the semifinals which will be intense.  This is because Germany‘s population is about 30% Turkish, so this game will divide Germany literally.  We will see how the game plays out on Wednesday night at 8:45.  If Germany wins, then they are in the finals against Spain, Russia or Italy (Spain and Italy play tonight in their quarterfinal match).

So after the game I am beat and head back to my room.  On the way there I meet up with Pavel who was going to Shane’s for a pre-party.  I come along and we ended up having a party giant get together with all of the Erasmus students.  I got to see Pavel and Val for the first time in months and chatted it up with Ester who is a good friend of Gloria.  We then head down to the “frat house” where there is an Italian party going on and we are there until even later.  It is amazing how things like that just happen.  The Italian party was really fun, but the dance floor is this giant room that compared to the whole house is really humid.  You could literally swim in that room if you wanted to…sick.