the begining of a great adventure

Saturday day 2 approx 9 am
We wake up early and head to the train station. We arrived on time, early actually for probably the only time on the trip, and met Braden, aka BDawg, at the mcdonalds. Kendall and I sat with him and waited for kat,kim, and hannah, aka hann dawg. The train ride was my first ICE train ever. As soon as we arrived, we walked around the city for a while. This is definitely a city of sin, it's dirty, dark, dreary, wreaks of illegal smells, and of booze. There are drunken, stoned, and drugged up people everywhere I look. What a great place. I don't know if I could live in this sin city, but I could visit here several more times. I tasted the culture, experienced the food and drink all while under an influence. I spent two days in Gods blind spot. We walked the red light district, and viewed the merchandise on dislay in the windows. Some were appealing, while others we not.
My "team", consisting of kat, braden, kendall, and I hung out most of the time. While Kimberly and Hann dawg endulged in the flavor of the country the first day; however, the majority of the time it was just the team together.

Saturday, day 2 cont'd,
B dawg, kat, and I stayed out until daylight, about 5 am, partying around the city. We experienced first hand the "Amsterdam" that is so famously talked about at home. We didn't get much academically done this day, but I would say we immersed ourself in the culturem. Although, we did end up at a trippy mcdonalds at 3 am. We laughed and had a great time, three people that had just met the day before. Under our culture shock, we were amazed at how we were freakin out at the little things at the resturant that reminded me of home.

Day 3 The second day of sin
After a long day and night of the best part of a euro trip, the team and I needed time to recover. We slept in and planned to go to the sights around amsterdam. We visited the Rijks museum, the Heiniken Experience, and the Anne Frank Haus. All three were educational and a good change towards an educational direction. We decided to hang around town that night, but get to bed early to make our 6:34 am train.

Day 4 The Triumphant Return
We were on time for our train leaving back to dusseldorf and successfully made it to the dussledorf hoptbahnhof. Although we made it back in with ample time to make it to class, a challenge of getting back to our host family's home lay ahead of us. We boarded the correct tram to get home, just in the wrong directio. This was the first of our fiascos on the public transpo that morning. We finally made it home a quarter 'til 9, 15 minuted before we had to be at class all the way across town. After a desperately needed shower and some disagreements on which tram and which direction to travel, I jumped on a tram with the team. We did't make it but 2 stops before we started 2nd guessing ourselves and got off. We then proceded to wait 30 min for a train that didn't run that day. This is only after watching two of the correct trains pass by. We arrived at the AIB two and one half hours late our first day of class. Haha... I enjoyed the entire experience, but my partners in crime were not so amused. That first day was long, very long... Did I mention that the first day was extremely long? I was tired, grumpy, and I believe I was still feeling Amsterdam from the two previous days. We walked forever the first day, we took a tour of our neighborhood around AIB as well as a city tour of Dusseldorf. Although quite informative, I thought they lasted TOO long. That night I crashed at 8:30 pm. Shortly after talking on the phone with kimberly.

Tuesday & wednesday day 5 & 6
These two days were similar, both boring and long. Everbody started receiving their blackberries except me. We started the day with a history of medicine lecture, followed by a lesson in German. Tuesday, after class was a scavenger hunt... Still nothing medically related, I know... Following the hunt we had a dinner with the host families although ours didn't come. Wednesday after class we traveled by train to Bonn, where we visited a German history museum and sat in for a very intriguing lecture on the bioethics of stem cell research. Funny how a German history museum has so many not so German artifacts inside. The tour guide was quite impressed by a moon rock in a special display case, most of us laughed. She asked us why we weren't impressed? That this rock was on loan from NASA in the US. The majority of the class laughed on, seeing as the majority of us are from Texas, and we've visited the space museum. There were several other artifacts like a french specialized bike rim and russian space suit; neither of which were Germanin any way. Again on the way home, kendall and I waited for a train that would never come; delaying our arrival home by two hours.