May 23, 2013 - Lab Starts

It's been awhile since my last entry, I'll try to keep it up! This week has been pretty busy now that the labs have started. Today we had our first experiment in wood gasification. The experiment was to measure the fluidization point of a mixture of sand and wood chips. Pretty much what this means is that we shoot air up through the bottom of a container holding wood chips and sand, with enough pressure the mixture will begin to act essentially as a fluid, and the pressure that this happens at is the fluidization point. This has many...

May 23, 2013 - 8am was a long time ago.

What is up friends? I am getting sleepy and it isn't even midnight yet. But that's because I expelled the most energy today than I have in about a week. I went all over the place today so prepare yourselves for an (hopefully) interesting post. I set my alarm today for 8am. Now, I did actually wake up then but I definitely did not GET up then. I laid in bed in a half sleep for another hour or so then I got up and got ready. The cleaning lady was here (I can't for the life of me remember her name. I know they've told it to me at least twice...

May 22, 2013 - Today...did not go as planned.

So it took 9 seconds but considering how bad I am at guessing time and distance, I'd say that was pretty darn close. I had totally planned on getting up at a decent hour and going on a picture taking spree of Spandau today. I had only the best intentions but then two things happened. As I mentioned before, my jetlag reared its ugly head and didn't let me sleep until 6am so I didn't wake up until 12:40. But Carly, you could've set an alarm. Yea well, I didn't think about it in the 6 extra hours I had awake yesterday. My bad. Also when I did...

May 22, 2013 - First Day Fun

I'm only on my second post and I'm already a day behind. Of course. Anyway, hello all and welcome to the second installment of Carly's German Travels part 2. Prepare yourselves for my spotty recollection of yesterday as I went into a jetlag coma last night and am having trouble remembering where all we went. Maybe as I start typing it will all come back to me. I forgot how to use the ENTER key and space bar on my computer yesterday so today I'm going to make actual paragraphs like I know how to write an essay. So my day started at about...

May 21, 2013 - Oh hey I'm in Germany again!

First off let me welcome back all of my adoring fans. I hope you are ready for another round of strange and unnecessarily informative blog posts. I also want to add that it is 2:50am and mom just reminded me to do this so I will make it short and sweet then get into the good stuff tomorrow. Typical right? I know. Alright let's do this! So my epic journey (and by epic I mean long and painfully boring) from Greensboro to Charlotte to Newark to London and finally to Berlin began on the 19th at 9:20am with my first flight from PTI to CLT. Joke...

May 18, 2013 - Soccer

A few days ago one of the students bought a soccer ball and played with a group from our trip. They were going to play again and this time i decided to join them although I have no athletic clothing. I ended up playing with an old t-shirt, a pair of shorts, and barefoot. The field was on turf as well, not grass, and my feet were killing me! A little while into playing with our group, a German high school soccer team showed up to practice. The couch came over to us and we decided that after they warmed up that we would skirmish! That's...

May 15, 2013 - Gardens

Today was a lot of walking and a lot of fun. This morning in German class, we learned how to ask where people are from, what their names are, and what languages they speak. We also learned quite a bit about good places to drink and some German specialty drinks from out teacher, Bennie. We are definitely the lucky group with Bennie, no homework and he said we're all basically guaranteed to pass the class. We tried one of his recommended drinks today, a Weisse I think. It's pretty much a beer with a few shots of a flavored syrup in it, it was...

May 14, 2013 - Getting Started

It's been a few days since my last entry and quite a lot has happened! Sunday was a slow day with most of it being spent relaxing and trying to adjust to the jetlag, not much to note. Monday was a full day, starting at nine in the morning we met our teachers, received our student and transportation cards, and had a fantastic dinner on a boat tour the went through much of Berlin. Our head course coordinator was a lot of fun to talk to, and knew much of the history of Berlin and of many of the cities in Germany. It was quite a lot of fun to...

May 11, 2013 - First Day

The apartment is very nice! It has a kitchen a large main room and a bathroom. Unfortunately the bathroom light doesn't work so I've had to move one of my lamps in there. This morning it took me almost two hours to make my bed. It's essentially a couch that gets a mattress cover wrapped around it, unfortunately none of the sheets actually fit this mattress, so it's almost bent in half as I try to sleep in it. The apartment is pretty close to Berlin, but about an hour outside of the center, using the subway. Once I was unpacked and napped I...

May 11, 2013 - Landed

Finally landed in Berlin today, after a very long flight. The only sleep I managed to get was soon awakened not ten minutes later for a complimentary breakfast. I was lucky with my fellow passengers for the most part, two girls sitting next to me, and one of them happened to be in the same program! I watched Zero Dark Thirty and Oz the Great and Powerful, both were good movies, but I much prefer the first. We were picked up at the airport right on time and given a brief orientation about our stay. So far the most difficult thing about...

Apr 22, 2013 - A Day In Berlin

Today we are going into Berlin for a look around. We're a bit too far out of the city for Doris so we just used her to take us the five miles to the nearest train station where we bought day travel tickets for €6.50 each. We needed the help of the train driver to master the intricacies of the automatic ticket machine but all was well and we made our way into the centre of Berlin. We had no real plan of what to see but from the books I had read and looking on the Internet I had listed the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag and the Berlin Wall...

Apr 21, 2013 - Off To Berlin

Up early to another frosty morning and on the road by 8.40am. Heading towards Berlin and crossed into Germany without seeing any border or signs to mark the change in country. We picked up a motorway quickly and started towards Hannover. The motorway was well served with picnic parking areas and we made our first stop after about 100 miles. The great thing with motorhomes is that you don't have to rely on overpriced service area food and drink. We just had to find a nice spot, turn on the gas and Viv soon knocked up some bacon rolls and...