Week 1

 It has been an eventful week! We started our trip this week with the bus ride from the Frankfurt airport to Bonn. It was so exciting to meet everyone who was also going on the trip and I made a lot of fast friends that I hope I will stay connected with well past the end of this trip. On Tuesday of this week, we had a lecture on the Hero's Journey. This lecture was very eye opening to me because it made me think about the idea of being the other. I have already experienced some of this as it is hard when you don't know the language well. Furthermore, there have been some small cultural differences that have really stuck out to me. For example, I am a very loud person and many of the people here are quieter and aren't as openly loud in public. As well as hearing the lecture on Tuesday, we went to the house of history and learned about the history of Germany past the end of World War 2. I think this is really interesting because I never knew much about the division of Germany during the cold war and it was very cool to learn about. The rest of the week we had class. Starting the History of Medicine lectures was exciting because it is something I don't know much about but I am excited to learn. I think that these first couple of lectures have been super interesting and much of it is information I had never thought about. For example, I thought it was interesting that in the ancient and medieval times they did not do much experimentation or research and many just went along with the information that they learned from previous physicians. It is interesting to compare that to today where so much of medicine is research based and new things are being discovered all of the time. I think it is so important to learn where we came from so that it can guide us moving forward. Along with class I have been getting to know the other girls on the trip. We often have lunch together and on Saturday we hiked to the ruins of a castle together. This was so fun. I really got to know the other girls and I am glad that we all get along so the rest of the trip will be very fun!