My busy weekend

Yes!!!! I finally did it!!!! I'm first place on the SmarterMind scoreboard! SmarterMind is a Facebook application; you play Mastermind against other users. Mastermind is a simple code-breaking game for two players. It's super-fun. And on Facebook, you can play with more colors and longer codes. I play with the maximum option in both cases: code length 6, 10 colors. But to make it a little easier, I select the option where you can't repeat colors in your code. I've gotten pretty good at it. I can usually solve it in about 7 or 8 moves. I've been playing it almost daily for the past, ohhh, six months. And now, at last, the name at the top of the scoreboard is mine. "Sara: 977 wins; Kathie: 976 wins." You don't understand how many hundreds of hours I've put into this. I made up my mind a long time ago I was gonna be number one. And now, on this historic date, June 1, 2008, I have achieved my goal. Now I know what to say in interviews when they ask me what my greatest accomplishment is. Sure, they might think it shows that I spend way too much time on some social networking site instead of studying or something. But I prefer to think of it as training for the logical part of my brain and a display of my determination. :-)

But SmarterMind isn't the only thing I've done this weekend. On Friday, the guys and I headed to Cologne to meet with Simone, our contact from the university here who coordinates a lot for our study abroad program. When we first arrived here, she was with us daily, showing us around, giving us papers to sign and stuff. Now we meet with her monthly. This month, she'd planned an excursion to Bonn to the Haus der Geschichte. Geschichte means history. It is a German history museum. The exhibits were all in German, so Simone had to give us our own little tour and try to answer any of our questions if we saw something cool and wanted to know what it was. The museum was too large to really go through all of it. I saw some neat stuff. There was old propaganda from the days of Hitler. There was part of an old plane they'd used during the Berlin Airlift, when the Soviets had blockaded the sectors of Berlin occupied by the French, British, and Americans.

We ate lunch in the museum, and since the price for the meal had been included in our program fee, we didn't need to pay for it. I took full advantage and ordered dessert. Back in Cologne, we went to a place on the Rhine and Simone ordered us all a Kolsch, which is beer made in Cologne. It's like the drink to drink if you're there. Naturally, because it was beer, I thought it was terrible. Maybe it's an acquired taste, and by the end of the summer I'll like beer, but I doubt it.

Afterward, the guys wanted to go shopping and then to the bars in Cologne. I normally would have joined them, but the beer combined with my being very tired from staying up playing Flunkyball the night before had given me a large headache. I decided to just go home to Aachen and get some sleep. They understood; also, I was the only one from our group who'd signed up for the castle visit the next day, and I'd have to get up at 5:30 to go to that. The trip back to Aachen took forever. The train was delayed about 15 minutes. And when it finally arrived at the station, there was a huge crowd waiting. Everyone pushed and shoved their way on the train. Dad would have been proud of the elbowing maneuvers I used to get a seat; not really. I actually hung back and let everyone else go first. There was still room for me on the train. I had to stand and I was smooshed between a bunch of sweaty, smelly people. With each successive stop though, it got less crowded, til I could breath again.

The train the next morning was a different story. Not too many people ride out of Aachen at 7:15 in the morning. There were about 80 people going to the castle, Burg Eltz, that day. We were going to hike to the castle, have a tour there, then hike down a different way to where we could get on a boat that took us down the Rhine to Koblenz. There, we would have dinner at the Weindorf and then take the train back to Aachen. INCAS, the intercultural center for students at the universities in Aachen had organized the trip. We had to take multiple trains, stopping in various places, to get to Treis-Karden, where our hike to the castle started. At one of the train stations, when we had a bit of a wait, I went to McDonalds. They were still serving breakfast. Their menu was quite different. They hardly had any sausage, which is like the main thing on a lot of our breakfast sandwiches in America. They had McToast, which is new to me. Luckily, they had McGriddles, my favorite. They didn't specifically have a bacon egg McGriddle sandwich, but they had bacon on one of the McToast sandwiches, so I figured they could just as easily but it on a McGriddle. But when I asked, they said no. They could only give me what was on the menu. How stupid. So much for 'Have it your way.' Oh wait, that's Burger King. They served just plain McGriddles, and it was only a euro, so I got that. They gave me honey with it, and it was actually quite good.

The hike up to the castle was great. We had to go up some pretty steep hills. With each step, the view just got better. It was a cloudy day, a bit cool, but the hiking kept me warm. It was a few hours to get to Burg Eltz. We spent a while there taking pictures, getting a tour, and eating a little something in the cafe area. I was the only person from MSU there, but there were a lot of people from the UROP program. I don't know what UROP stands for, but it's a program similar to mine. There are students from several different schools across the US. They also have German class and do research in the institutes. Some of the UROP students who had a little experience with the language are in our my German class. I enjoyed the chance to get to know some of them a little better. While we were at the caste, it rained. Luckily we were inside for the tour, and by the time we wanted to hike again, it had stopped. But then it was really muddy. The hike back from the castle was easier. The boat ride down the Rhine was three hours long. Other people got really bored but I liked it. My feet needed a rest after all that walking. In Koblenz, it started raining again; at the Weindorf, we shared a few bottles of wine at the table I was sitting at. I ordered wiener schnitzel for dinner. I figured I needed to have it at least once while I was over here. We had a long train ride back to Aachen. We didn't get back until 2:00 in the morning. There are no buses at that time, so I had to walk back to my dorm. It's pretty far to begin with, and of course I got lost. I didn't get back until 3:00 AM. So it was a long day, but it was worth it.

Now back to playing SmarterMind! I need to establish my lead!