July 13th, 2011

Eventful day? I think so! Class started off the day. We had a lecture from Jason, the Ph. D student that traveled with us, and then we worked on completing our projects. After we finished we went to the mayor’s luncheon. We got to meet one of the mayor’s of Bonn. They had drinks waiting for us when we arrived and then the mayor gave a speech to welcome us to the city of Bonn. There are 17 other Texas A&M students that are here with the Psychology program and they joined us as well, so we had a good sized group there. We got to ask her questions and came to the realization that Germany has one of the most confusing election processes and we decided to give up on how to understand it.

I have kind of left a little setback of our trip out. Poor Michelle rolled her ankle yesterday at the psychomotoric place and she now has to crutch around town with a big swollen ankle. The poor girl is a trooper but she can’t move very fast so I have become her little side kick that is late to everything. She has kept a wonderful attitude though and we are hoping she is better within a week. She is still going to Paris with us and still wants to do the bike tour. I’m hoping all is well! I told her I think God is building character for her.

Anyways, following the mayor’s reception we got PIZZA HUT! It took forever and it was expensive but it was so worth it. Me and Cameron split a cheese stuffed crust ‘salami’ pizza- here salami is pepperoni and pepperoni pizza is literally bell peppers on the pizza. We only had 2 hours to eat lunch and change to get ready for the FIFA World Cup game so we scurried back to the dorm. Through on some American colored clothes and headed for the bus. All of the A&M students that are here right now got to go to the game. We spent the entire hour and a half bus ride painting each other’s faces with American flags, USA, etc. The pictures follow so that you can get an idea. Once we got there it was raining but we didn’t let that stop us. We sprinted into the stadium just in time for the National Anthem. I have never sung it with so much pride.

The game in general was absolutely AMAZING. I think I got the chills every 2 seconds. We have an amazing team with so much heart and the amount of Americans, and Germans, cheering on USA was rather humbling. It is so amazing what a sporting event can do to a group of people. We, of course, won if you didn’t already know 3-1 against France! WHOOP! It was so great to witness this in person and I guess we will be watching the game in Paris at a bar on Sunday. Not such a bad deal either.

After the game, we headed back and finally booked our trip to Prague. I will be taking an 8 hour bus ride there on next Thursday night and then flying back through Germanwings on Sunday afternoon. It should be pretty awesome. We can take a kayak trip all the way through the town and there is great night life as well. I’m pretty excited. We have yet to book a hostile but I don’t think it will be too hard!

I think we are all too wired from the game to go to bed anytime soon but luckily Dr. Batista pushed class back to 10, instead of 9, tomorrow so we could get an extra hour of sleep. What a sweet heart. Oh, and we were all apparently on TV back in the States so if anyone recorded the game please let me know!