IT'S MY LAST DAY HERE!
It's hard to even wrap my mind around because this place is what I'm familiar with now. Texas seems like such a long time ago! But at the same time, it's amazing how fast this semester flew by. Life needs to slow down please :)
This past weekend in Bonn was seriously so great. It's like the whole town came alive! Within a week, everything bloomed and I swear the population doubled. It's crazy because this is the first time in my life I've actually witnessed the transition from winter into spring. Texas is definitely lacking in that department...haha. Here's Bonn in all its beauty!
This past weekend, Bonn had a huge festival in celebration of the beginning of May. It was jam packed full of people and had a huge stage with bands performing all day, a carnival, booths, fireworks, everything! It was so much fun. Here's everyone sitting on the lawn listening to music that night.
It was nice to see the younger people in the city in a place other than mcdonalds ;)
Jeff, Saif, & I decided to pay to jump on one of those trampoline things. It was actually a horrible idea because I decided to do it right after I had drank a bunch of liquid. But regardless, i've always wanted to do it! Hahahaa. I can check this off the bucket list.
The fireworks that night were the best I've ever seen! Sorry Granbury, Bonn's gotcha beat. All the fireworks were in sync with music. I specifically remember one of the songs being Beethoven's Fifth.
The following day, AIB paid for all of us to take a farewell cruise down the Rhine river. It was neat because all of our host families were invited too, as well as the rest of the AIB students from LMU & Penn State. The cruise was about 6 hours long and they hired this German soap opera star to give a speech. Apparently he's kind of a big deal because my host mom was freaking out, hahah.
&that brings us to today! The final day. I went into town early to just kind of soak the city in one last time. It was a beautiful spring day today! We had one last meeting at AIB at 2 and it was definitely weird saying goodbye. Ariane(our main coordinator) was telling us that it was especially hard to say goodbye to our viz group because we're all so diverse in personalities. It's so true! Whatevaaaa, we're clearly just fun ;) Later that afternoon, Teaghan & I went to this area behind one of the universities.
Everyone was reading a book, sleeping, or just hanging out. It was super relaxed and the perfect way to spend my last afternoon in Europe!
Here's one last picture of the cathedral in Bonn.
When I got home for dinner, my host family ended up giving Erin & I little gifts. They gave us these "wishing rocks" which are popular in Germany and a cutting board(I guess I should start learning to cook now, haha). After dinner, they took us to go get ice cream. It was seriously the coolest ice cream place ever. And by cool, I mean I got spaghetti ice cream.
Also, here's a picture of my host family(Elizabeth & Samir)! They're pretty wonderful.
Erin & I are lucky to get a host family who is so kind & open. Speaking of them, about an hour ago once I had finished packing, Elizabeth walked in my room and was all like "Wow, Alex. I don't think I've seen this room this clean in months!" Which is pretty sad because if she thinks that was bad, she should see my room back home...hahaha.
During the walk home, I asked them about these decorations I'd seen hanging in the trees this past week.
Apparently during the month of may, boys will buy a certain tree and tie streamers and the girls name to it and leave it outside her house. The girls will do it for the guys every leap year! Just one of those cool(and somewhat stalkerish) german traditions we got to witness.
So anyways, I just wanted to say one last time how amazing this trip was & how much of a blessing it was that I got to experience it! I learned so much about myself and saw the world in a way most people never get the opportunity too. My expectations had nothing on reality. I'm going to miss you Europe!
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