Hi everyone! I’m back with another update on everything that’s been going on with me. The trip definitely feels like it’s winding down now, less than three weeks until I’m stateside, and I really am looking forward to seeing everyone again. Still, even though it’s winding down that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been doing anything. Last weekend was great, it really got going on Saturday when Peter, one of the students here from Britain, decided that some of us should get all dressed up and go to Hohensyburg Casino, which is just outside Dortmund. Here’s a couple pictures of everyone looking their finest!

Naturally, we all lost money (we mostly played roulette and some automated slots), but everyone behaved so no one lost more than they wanted to, and it ended up being a really great day! We all enjoyed putting our suits on and doing something more fun and different and exciting than just laying around (which is definitely the Saturday norm). Unfortunately, this meant that, for the first time all season, I didn’t see any of the Buckeyes game, but they looked good against Minnesota anyways and I got to see them again this week.  After the casino, we went to a birthday party for one of the girls who’s here from Romania.  Everyone was quite impressed when we showed up in suits, and it was a fun way to cap off a great day!

Sunday, I caught a morning train (impressed I made it out in the morning on a Sunday?) to Gelsenkirchen, which is where Christian’s favorite soccer team, FC Schalke 04, plays.  Way back in April in the US, on the morning of my birthday, I got a mysterious phone call on my cell phone that only said “private number” on the caller ID. Turns out that it was Christian, calling to wish me a happy birthday and to tell me that his present to me was that he would take me to a real European soccer game when I got to Germany! This was a great surprise and now, just over 6 months later, I got my present (and it was fantastic!).  Schalke was in third place in the German Bundesliga (the main German soccer league) and playing second-place Hamburg.  They were down 2-0 at halftime and things weren’t looking good, but when all was said and done,  the game ended in a 3-3 tie (Schalke scored their third goal, to tie the game, in the very last minute of play).  We had a blast! Here’s a couple pictures:

So between the casino and the soccer game, it was definitely a fantastic weekend, but Monday meant that it was back to work.  We’ve had a really busy week as Christian was working on a research proposal and I was working on getting a technical paper finished up, edited, and formatted to be submitted to a technical journal about material forming technologies, which is my field of research. It was a lot of work and a couple long nights, but the paper is all set so now we just have to wait to hear back in the next couple months if the paper will be accepted or not! Work-wise for the rest of my time here, I’ll be busy wrapping up the rest of the experiments and analysis on my current research project and then writing another paper about the project. That paper will also be submitted for publication, so I might be lead author on two published papers by the new year!! It’s been tons of work the last couple months, with much less traveling, but it’s been a great experience and the opportunity to write these papers and hopefully get them published definitely makes it all worth it.

Even though it was a tough week of work, I got well rewarded again because I got a ticket to the BVB Dortmund soccer game for this past Friday! First, this was a little strange because the greatest rivalry in German soccer is Dortmund vs. Schalke, so it was a little weird to go to each team’s games, but I like Schalke because it was an amazing experience to go and see them play, plus Christian is such a big fan, but I’m also from Dortmund and I definitely had to go see a game there! Since Christian refused to go, being a Schalke supporter, I went with some of my friends from the German language course that I took in September.  We had a great time and Dortmund even won, 2-0!  Check out the photo album, where you can see some of the friends I’ve made and the game and stadium…even though Dortmund isn’t very good, their fans are crazy and Dortmund has the highest average attendance of any German soccer team…their stadium is also the largest in Germany, seating just over 80,000.  The pictures in the album show, in order: Caitlin (America) and Amy (England), Imogen (England) and me and Caitlin (America), Peter (England) and Jean-Murie (France), Nicolas (France) and his girlfriend (who I’d just met that night), and then some pictures of the game and stadium.  The supporter’s section, shown in the last picture, is called the Gelbe Wand (or yellow wall) and you can see why: it’s huge and absolutely crazy: they were singing and cheering non-stop the entire game!

View Full Album

Yesterday, I decided to skip the Halloween festivities and just take a day to relax and do nothing, which was perfect…I got to watch Ohio State win big and USC get blown out by Oregon, which was definitely fun.  Today I’m planning on going for a run here shortly and heading over to Christian’s to hang out around 7 or 8. And with that, time for me to get going…Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend, and I look forward to seeing all of you very soon! 17 more days!!