Good times, good times!!

By far one of the coolest things on this trip was our trip to the heart and diabetes center at Bad Oeynhausen. The staff was super nice and the surgery was amazing to witness. I have never seen a surgery on a human so this was a first time experience for me, not to mention that it was open heart surgery. I mean, I actually say them drain the blood from his heart and then make it stop pumping, yet he was still alive. I was shocked. All I could think about was the fact that his chest was open and his heart was not beating. It was crazy! Luckily, Amanda and I were in the surgery room with the head doctor so he was so nice and explained every step of the procedure and then made sure that we could see what he was doing. If we couldn't see he would move his instruments and wait until we could see. Then he let us stay longer so that we could see more of the surgery. It was so awesome. At the end of the day, I got to see and learn about so many cool things. Then I went to Hamburg. By the way, the train station in Bad Oeynhausen was a little shady. Since it is a small town, there were only three platforms and the bathrooms were in a bar behind the station and it was full of old drinking men. Then the train we got on had no air conditioning so it was the longest half hour ride ever. It was okay though because once we got to Hamburg, we were so glad that we went. My host mom has a son that lives in Hamburg with his girlfriend so we actually met up with her for dinner. Phillip, her son, was in Berlin so we didn't get to meet him. Dinner was nice. Katherine actually works in a lab at the university hospital. She started out working with pediatrics and now she is in the genetics lab so it was cool to talk to her about that. We then went down to the river at night to see all of the ships illuminated because we just happened to show up on the weekend that the Cruise Days were going on so a whole bunch of big ships were all there in Hamburg. The whole next day we just spent down by the river enjoying the view of the ships and all the people. We acutally took a harbor tour but the first half was all about the shipping areas so Jamie actually fell asleep. It was really funny. The rest of the tour was good though and I'm still glad we went on it. So I think that if you are just going to Hamburg to experience the city, you can do it in one day, but not if you are planning on seeing certain sites. I can definitely see myself coming back and spending several days there to see the rest of the city. Once again, the weekend was very relaxing and I'm glad I was able to have some down time. All of us are getting tired and I think we all needed a down weekend so that we can make it through our last week in Berlin.