Home is where the wifi is

We only got to stay in Bonn for a day before we had to leave for Hannover L. We got in late from Prague and Lauren and I got locked out of our host home. We had a key but the door is really tricky. After struggling for almost half an hour we called our host mom at 1:30am and she kindly let us in and then jumped back in to bed. I don’t know what we would have done without her. It was late and we were exhausted and on the verge of tears. She’s wonderful.

Hannover was really fun. Cassie, Kasey, and I lucked out and got one of the only rooms in the hotel with a balcony! It was a great room with the exception of a really terrifying baby carriage stuck right next to my bed…no thank you.

We started the day off listening to a cardio-thoracic surgeon talk to us about Left Ventricular Assistance Devices (LVADs) and then moved on to the axolotl research facility. I didn’t know a whole lot about axolotls but the research they were working on was really fascinating. They were trying to regrow body parts just like the axolotl does for transplants, skin grafts, tendon repair, etc. I was really excited to see that they were using adipose derived stem cell, because I used the same cells in my last high school science fair project for the same application –tendon regrowth and repair.

After one short day in Hannover we headed off to Norderney. I was a bit skeptical at first, but it was wonderful with one exception –WIFI. Wifi, the pulse of our lives, was practically unavailable in Hannover and in Norderney we had one computer per group with wifi for our projects on various non-conventional medical techniques. THE STRUGGLE WAS SO REAL. We all sat around moping about how we couldn’t get our applications done, emails sent, or facebooks updated. I think the hostel on the island probably did this for a purpose. The island focuses on healing and health and there is something to be said about being disconnected from the world of email and social media.

We spent a lot of time on bikes and outdoors in Norderney. After we were released the first evening we set off on our new wheels and followed trails all the way to the lighthouse. The next day we went to the spa where we had a lecture and gave our presentations and were then able to use the spa. This marks the third spa I’ve been to in Europe and by far my favorite. They had a ton of different salt water pools for thalasso therapy –salt water therapy. My favorite was the inhalation room. You sat in a dark room with steam filling the air. It was about 104 degrees Fahrenheit and salty steam filled the air. I could have sat in there for hours. No one was talking and with each deep breath I felt stress melting away…or sweating out. That evening we sat on the beach as a group and watched the sunset. We had a lot of fun, maybe a little too much, but it was nice to be together for our last night on the island.

The next morning Kasey and I woke up at the crack of dawn to see the sunrise. We biked out to a dune with a lookout platform on it and waited for about 40 minutes before the sun peaked out from beyond the horizon. It was the definition of beautiful.

I’ve seen sunrises before, but none quite like this one. For a moment I sat there in disbelief that I was watching the sun rise on the North Sea. It was a sight that I’ll never forget. We went back and slept some more before embarking on our mudflat walk. We rode out to meet our guide who we were convinced was a pirate. He was really nice but only spoke German so Dr. Wasser and Helen translated for us. At one point he told us to walk through a specific patch of mud. I didn’t think much of it until I took one step and suddenly the mud was at my knees instead of just covering my feet. We struggled to get through as a group of kids that came along ran circles around us –I guess we’re too old for that. All in all it was a great experience.

We had a lot of fun over the past few days, but I think we’re all ready to return to home base where we know our way around…and the wifi password…