Week 6,7,8..... The final trip.

Well, it seems that my journey is finally coming to an end. The last week in Germany was a week I will forever cherish. I spent my last two days with my host mom enjoying homemade German food and spending some more hours talking about the future. Wednesday morning she brought me to the train station and gave me a present from her family to me. We said our goodbyes and were sad that I wouldn't be at dinner that night. We then headed to Berlin for our final excursion before the end of the abroad. We arrived at our hotel and then headed to lunch. I then proceeded to visit a local grocery store and somehow ended up ruining my coffee by putting salt instead of sugar into my cup. We all then headed to the hospital, where we got to learn more history of German medicine and got to see their collection of different body parts. We then went on a city tour with Ryan and got to see how much of Berlin had become a city-wide museum commemorating all the victims of World War 2. It was quite impressive that the city has become such a vast place of remembrance for their history. We then ended the night with a late dinner and went straight to bed.
The next day we had the incredible experience of getting split into smaller groups to go on different tours. Our tour guide was a Syrian refugee who took us to specific landmarks such as the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie. He then began to explain the similarities between his person persecution in Syria and the persecution that took place in Berlin. We further learned the history of Syria and how our guide made his way to Berlin. We then had a traditional Syrian lunch and headed back to the hotel where we finished a powerpoint for the overall day. Later that night, we learned from each group and got to see what they experienced during their day. There was so much information I learned from each different presentation. I was quite fascinated to hear the experiences from different types of perspectives on how they view Berlin. I took away a lesson from each guide and was so glad I got to learn from people who live their lives differently than my own. After we had our presentation with My Berlin Day, I headed back to the hotel and went back to bed. The final day we woke up bright and early and led to Sachsenhausen. This tour was probably the saddest tour we had gone on throughout our whole study abroad. It was apparent that we all had become deeply impacted by the reality of what had occurred at Sachsenhausen. We learned how prisoners lived in the camp, including experiments the doctors performed during their time there. After a few hours of walking through the actual grounds, we headed back into Berlin and got lunch before going back to our last tour. We then visited the House of Music and had the best time hearing all sorts of instruments from different places and centuries played in person. Our guide taught us how instruments have changed over time and the difference between the materials used. After the tour, we headed back to the hotel, where we packed our luggage and got ready for the farewell dinner. At the dinner, we all told stories of our favorite memories and how much we had enjoyed our time studying abroad. We ended the night we a belly dance performance that ended with everyone joining in. As the music lowered and everyone started gathering their stuff, we all began to hug goodbye. For some reason, I began to cry, and so did everyone else as we realized we would probably never be in Europe again with all of us present. It was bittersweet, but we all also realized that we did go to the same school and we were all going to see each other again. That night I headed back to my hotel room, packed all my things, and fell fast asleep to be later woken up by the 4 am an alarm for my taxi. I finally made it to my terminal at the airport and said my final goodbyes to Germany as I headed out for my next adventure.