Monday, September 15, 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Galway, the 4th of July, and Responses to Comments
Hey everyone! First I will try to respond to everyone who commented on the last blog. This was the first time I've checked it, so it was nice to be able to hear from so many people. First of all, Felicity, sadly I will not be back until August 30 in the evening sometime. Paul, I'm working on this project the whole time, right up until August 29th when I have to give some big presentation on it. Should be a fun time. Brad, programming at the speed of light is the coolest thing ever. Sometimes I try to slow down to enjoy the view. When I get back, I can try to speak some Irish to you and you can respond in Arabic. It will be fun. Juliann, if you read this post, you'll see about the 4th.
Alright, first I will talk about our trip to Galway. There ended up being 13 of us going! All 7 people in our house went along with a French guy named FX, three more Canadians named Shannon, Sabrina and her boyfriend Conall, a girl from Spain named Elena, and one Irish guy named Anthony. The plan was to catch a bus from Cork to Galway, then immediately catch the connection to Doolin where the Cliffs of Moher are. The reason we didn't go straight from Cork to Doolin was because there was an internet special from Cork to Galway that we wanted to take advantage of. Anyway, the trip started off with a bang! We were waiting for everybody to meet at our house. When it was time to go, people still weren't there, so a group of us went early to make sure the bus didn't leave us or something. So we got there, and we saw Anthony there. We actually didn't know he was coming until right then, so that was kind of a surprise. Anyway, everybody else showed up at the station about 2 minutes before the bus was supposed to leave. We had all printed out our internet tickets which told us that we just had to show that to the bus driver, and he would then print out our real tickets. Well, when we showed them to the bus driver, he didn't even look at them and told us we needed to get our tickets from the ticket booth. We asked if he would wait for us, and all he told us was that the bus left in two minutes. So we hurried to the ticket counter, and there was a huge line there! We didn't think we were going to make it. If we missed that bus, then we would have missed our connection from Galway to Doolin. So Conall, being the genius he is, talked to someone in a suit who looked important and he turned out to be awesome. He ran into where we were all lined up and shouted, "Anyone who is trying to take the next bus to Galway come with me." He tried to take us to another ticket counter, but there was no one there, then he asked the people in line if they minded if we jumped ahead in line. They said it was fine, then he looked at my internet printout and said, "Oh no! You just have to show this to the driver!" He took my ticket and ran to the bus and argued with the bus driver for about 5 minutes. I just looked at Conall and said, "Where did you find this guy?" He said, "I don't know, he was just standing right over there." Finally, we were able to get on the bus with our tickets printed out from the driver. I thought to myself, "Well that was close, but it was nice to get our problems out of the way early." How wrong I was.
The bus to Galway was really bumpy and I actually started getting a little carsick. The bus driver was speeding up really fast in traffic, then slamming on the brakes. It was really annoying. When we got to Galway, it was about 1 minute after the Doolin bus was supposed to leave. We tried to find the bus, and it was gone. We weren't sure what to do, but once again, Conall talked to the right person and we got on a bus that was actually going to chase down the Doolin bus we had missed so we could catch it. We stopped in Ennis, and everyone got off the bus. We didn't know what was going on. The bus driver came back and asked everyone where we were going. He asked each individual person even though we all told him we were in the same group going to Doolin. Alin had actually laid down across the seats in the back to try to sleep. We told him that he was with us, but that didn't satisfy him. He marched to the back and shook Alin and asked in a gruff voice, "Where are you going?" Alin, looked up very startled and stammered "Doolin!" It was hilarious. Now, everyone once in a while, one of us will shout "Doolin!" the way he did. Anyway, the reason he asked everyone was because he had actually caught the Doolin bus at that point and we had to change over. We were able to get on without many problems. As that bus was going, it was raining a lot, and people kept noticing water droplets coming out of the ceiling every once in a while. The bus was fairly full, so people couldn't move out of the way. I think what was happening was something was wrong with the air conditioning, and that was causing some water leakage out the ceiling. As we kept going, the amount of water that was falling kept getting larger and larger. Then, one time we made a sharp turn, and all this water poured out onto some people in the seats. Our group was in the back laughing hysterically. Finally, a woman got her umbrella out to block the water and everyone was laughing. No one was really angry about it, which was good. It was like we were all on an adventure together.
We finally arrived in Doolin after about 7 hours of bus riding. We checked into the hostel there and decided to go eat at a pub called O'Conner's pub. They served great food there, and the prices for beer were the same as in Cork. We were worried everything would be more expensive because we were basically out in the middle of nowhere. So we went into this pub and it was packed. We couldn't find a place to sit down, but the bartender told us that if we could finish our meal within a half hour, we would be allowed to sit at the musicians table. We figured that that was our only option, so that's what we did. We tried fitting about 10 people around a table designed for 6 at the most. I ended up eating some kind of Irish bacon dish with mashed potatoes. It was absolutely delicious. After we were finished, we looked around a bit and saw some pictures on the wall. I saw this one picture of a group of musicians around a table with some very traditionally Irish-looking instruments. They had a fiddle, an accordian, and several other instruments that looked Irish. I turned to someone and said, "I hope that's what the musicians will play." When the musicians got there, that's what it turned out to be! They played traditional Irish music, and we ended up staying there for about 4 hours just listening to them! It was awesome. Some of the other people got videos of it and promised to post them on facebook, so I'll try to get my hands on some of them too. I had actually left my camera in the hotel because I just thought we were leaving to get something to eat. After that, we decided to go back to the hostel so we could hike around the Cliffs of Moher the next day. At the hostel, we had reserved a room for 8 people and two beds in a room for 6 people. Three people had decided to skip out on paying and just sleep on the floor in the 8-bed room. I decided to take one of the two beds because we were the only people in that room so far, and I wanted to get a good night's sleep. Well, this room was one of those that locks when you close the door, and you need the key to open it again. Nick and I were in that room, and I thought he had the key. As we walked in to the hostel, he said, "Steve, you have the key right?" I thought he was joking and trying to freak me out, so I just said, "Yeah, of course." Well, it turned out that he was serious. The reception had long been closed because it was about 12:30 by that point. Both of us searched our pockets and neither of us had it. I knew that Nick had it last because I had never even seen the key. Then Nick remembered that it was in his hoodie that Conall had brought back to the hostel for everyone, which was in the other room. Conall gave us our hoodies back and the key was in there. We were both really relieved because we were convinced that we would have to sleep on the floor in that other room, which would have been awful. We got ready for bed and went into the bathroom to brush our teeth. The bathroom was outside the room, so I said, "Nick, you have the key right?" in the same tone he had asked me before. I was trying to make a joke about us getting locked out of the room again. He said, "No, I left the door open." I went back to the room, and of course, the door was closed. I went back to the bathroom and said in the same tone, "Nick you have the key right?" He said, "It's closed?" Then he searched his pockets for the key again, and it turns out that we really were locked out of the room that time. We couldn't believe it. We had such a feeling of relief, then we were tense again. I glanced in the other room, and they were having a pillow fight in there. I was glad I hadn't gotten a bed in that room, but I was worried I would have to sleep on the floor in there. Nick and I tried everything to get back into our room. We tried breaking into the reception room with a credit card. We tried to find a way to the roof to see if we could get through the window into our room, but nothing was working. We went back upstairs, and the owner of the hostel was actually telling the others to quiet down! We explained the situation to him, and he let us back into our room. Again, a feeling of relief washed over us. We slept peacefully that night and woke up refreshed in the morning.
The next day, we bought some breakfast in the hostel, which sold cheap cereal and milk, and also some really good Irish soda bread. After breakfast, we decided to go on our hike to the Cliffs of Moher. From the hostel it was about a 7 kilometer walk. We started hiking right along the ocean and came to this fence about 30 minutes in. We decided that we had come this far, and if we got in trouble, we would feign ignorance and just claim that we were foreigners. We never ran into anyone... except cows. At one point, our hike led us through a herd of cows, and all they did was stare at us. The hike consisted of jumping over rivers, climbing barbed wire fences, and trying to avoid being shocked as we climbed over electric fences. At one point, I put my hand on a wooden post that was attached to the electric fence, and that ended up shocking me because the post was wet, and there was current running through it. It was very weird. As we went further, the cliffs came into view. We got a picture by a sign that said "Warning! Extreme danger ahead!" We all took a picture beside the sign and kept going. We actually found a really cool place where we were all able to lay on our stomachs and look over a ledge that went straight down over the cliffs. It was really cool, and we got some awesome pictures there. Don't worry I remembered my camera for this part of the trip. We finally arrived at the visitors center for the cliffs, and the cliffs didn't look as good as when we were actually hiking. It was a bit disappointing, but we were all glad that we went on the hike. We ate lunch at the visitor's center and relaxed for a bit, then we hiked back along the road to Doolin. We caught the last bus to Galway and found our hostel.
Galway, of course, had it's own stories. We got to the hostel, and they said that we had booked our rooms for the night before and that we were no-shows. For this particular hostel, they had made us pay everything beforehand, so we had lost €240 collectively, which was about $400. The girl who made the reservation printed off the email and showed them that they had made the mistake, and that we had emailed them asking them to change it. The hostel had emailed her back telling her that they had changed the mistake. So she printed all these emails off and showed it to the hostel. The hostel then got a lot nicer and told us that they were all full, but they would call other hostels in the area and see if we could stay there. Everything had turned out to be full. They offered for us to sleep in the kitchen area for free and told us that they could get us a refund the next day when the manager came in. Some people really didn't want to sleep in the kitchen, so Alin, John, and I set out on foot to find places to sleep. We found this cool Mexican restaurant with rooms above it that had room for everyone for about €30 per night. A lot of people just wanted to sleep in the kitchen, but a few of them took our offer on sleeping at the Mexican place. Also, FX had a friend who lived in Galway at some student apartments that was out of town. He was planning on staying there, and a few of us were going to stay there with him. There were only three people who were planning on doing that, so I decided to join them. After we finally got everything worked out, some of us decided to go to a pub, and some of us decided to hang out at FX's friend's place. I decided to go with FX's group and it turned out that the place was an absolute dump. There was food everywhere, and it looked like it hadn't been cleaned in months. We had a good time there though. We just talked and played games and had a good time until about 4 in the morning. I was going to stay there, but the peole who were staying at the hostel had forgotten how to get back, and I had a map. I just decided to go back with them and show them the way and sleep in the kitchen/dining room area of the hostel. We ended up getting back, and I was only able to sleep until about 7:00 when people came in to have breakfast. This dining room was pretty big, and we were all sleeping off in a corner where there was a separate area with a tv and a couple of couches. I opted for the floor, and couldn't sleep past 7, so I decided to go out and walk around for a bit. It was very peaceful, and I was grateful for it because I was kind of able to recharge without being around people for a while. After that, we ended up walking along the beach and eating at this place that served a full Irish breakfast. It was really good. We caught the bus back in time for us to watch the championship soccer game of the Euro Cup. It was Germany vs. Spain, and I was cheering for Germany as some of you may know for my earlier post. Spain ended up winning 1-0, but it was an exciting game. Anyway, that was the Galway trip.
For the 4th of July, we decided to go to a local bar called Captain America's. We decided we had to do something American, and we could think of nothing that would have been better. I asked if they had any specials for 4th of July, and they ended up not having anything! I was sorely disappointed! Why would you call your restaurant Captain America's, and then not have anything special on the American Independence Day? Anyway, we got some good American beer, Coors Light and Miller Genuine Draft. The Miller was a lot better than the Coors, but we had fun. After that we went back and celebrated some with some rum and Cokes and whiskey. We had invited some Irish people to our place to celebrate with us, and only one of them showed up at around midnight, but we had a great time. We took several videos of all of us dancing to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and Another One Bites the Dust. No fireworks, but it was awesome nonetheless. Anyway, that's about it for now. Thanks for all the comments everyone, and I miss you guys!
Alright, first I will talk about our trip to Galway. There ended up being 13 of us going! All 7 people in our house went along with a French guy named FX, three more Canadians named Shannon, Sabrina and her boyfriend Conall, a girl from Spain named Elena, and one Irish guy named Anthony. The plan was to catch a bus from Cork to Galway, then immediately catch the connection to Doolin where the Cliffs of Moher are. The reason we didn't go straight from Cork to Doolin was because there was an internet special from Cork to Galway that we wanted to take advantage of. Anyway, the trip started off with a bang! We were waiting for everybody to meet at our house. When it was time to go, people still weren't there, so a group of us went early to make sure the bus didn't leave us or something. So we got there, and we saw Anthony there. We actually didn't know he was coming until right then, so that was kind of a surprise. Anyway, everybody else showed up at the station about 2 minutes before the bus was supposed to leave. We had all printed out our internet tickets which told us that we just had to show that to the bus driver, and he would then print out our real tickets. Well, when we showed them to the bus driver, he didn't even look at them and told us we needed to get our tickets from the ticket booth. We asked if he would wait for us, and all he told us was that the bus left in two minutes. So we hurried to the ticket counter, and there was a huge line there! We didn't think we were going to make it. If we missed that bus, then we would have missed our connection from Galway to Doolin. So Conall, being the genius he is, talked to someone in a suit who looked important and he turned out to be awesome. He ran into where we were all lined up and shouted, "Anyone who is trying to take the next bus to Galway come with me." He tried to take us to another ticket counter, but there was no one there, then he asked the people in line if they minded if we jumped ahead in line. They said it was fine, then he looked at my internet printout and said, "Oh no! You just have to show this to the driver!" He took my ticket and ran to the bus and argued with the bus driver for about 5 minutes. I just looked at Conall and said, "Where did you find this guy?" He said, "I don't know, he was just standing right over there." Finally, we were able to get on the bus with our tickets printed out from the driver. I thought to myself, "Well that was close, but it was nice to get our problems out of the way early." How wrong I was.
The bus to Galway was really bumpy and I actually started getting a little carsick. The bus driver was speeding up really fast in traffic, then slamming on the brakes. It was really annoying. When we got to Galway, it was about 1 minute after the Doolin bus was supposed to leave. We tried to find the bus, and it was gone. We weren't sure what to do, but once again, Conall talked to the right person and we got on a bus that was actually going to chase down the Doolin bus we had missed so we could catch it. We stopped in Ennis, and everyone got off the bus. We didn't know what was going on. The bus driver came back and asked everyone where we were going. He asked each individual person even though we all told him we were in the same group going to Doolin. Alin had actually laid down across the seats in the back to try to sleep. We told him that he was with us, but that didn't satisfy him. He marched to the back and shook Alin and asked in a gruff voice, "Where are you going?" Alin, looked up very startled and stammered "Doolin!" It was hilarious. Now, everyone once in a while, one of us will shout "Doolin!" the way he did. Anyway, the reason he asked everyone was because he had actually caught the Doolin bus at that point and we had to change over. We were able to get on without many problems. As that bus was going, it was raining a lot, and people kept noticing water droplets coming out of the ceiling every once in a while. The bus was fairly full, so people couldn't move out of the way. I think what was happening was something was wrong with the air conditioning, and that was causing some water leakage out the ceiling. As we kept going, the amount of water that was falling kept getting larger and larger. Then, one time we made a sharp turn, and all this water poured out onto some people in the seats. Our group was in the back laughing hysterically. Finally, a woman got her umbrella out to block the water and everyone was laughing. No one was really angry about it, which was good. It was like we were all on an adventure together.
We finally arrived in Doolin after about 7 hours of bus riding. We checked into the hostel there and decided to go eat at a pub called O'Conner's pub. They served great food there, and the prices for beer were the same as in Cork. We were worried everything would be more expensive because we were basically out in the middle of nowhere. So we went into this pub and it was packed. We couldn't find a place to sit down, but the bartender told us that if we could finish our meal within a half hour, we would be allowed to sit at the musicians table. We figured that that was our only option, so that's what we did. We tried fitting about 10 people around a table designed for 6 at the most. I ended up eating some kind of Irish bacon dish with mashed potatoes. It was absolutely delicious. After we were finished, we looked around a bit and saw some pictures on the wall. I saw this one picture of a group of musicians around a table with some very traditionally Irish-looking instruments. They had a fiddle, an accordian, and several other instruments that looked Irish. I turned to someone and said, "I hope that's what the musicians will play." When the musicians got there, that's what it turned out to be! They played traditional Irish music, and we ended up staying there for about 4 hours just listening to them! It was awesome. Some of the other people got videos of it and promised to post them on facebook, so I'll try to get my hands on some of them too. I had actually left my camera in the hotel because I just thought we were leaving to get something to eat. After that, we decided to go back to the hostel so we could hike around the Cliffs of Moher the next day. At the hostel, we had reserved a room for 8 people and two beds in a room for 6 people. Three people had decided to skip out on paying and just sleep on the floor in the 8-bed room. I decided to take one of the two beds because we were the only people in that room so far, and I wanted to get a good night's sleep. Well, this room was one of those that locks when you close the door, and you need the key to open it again. Nick and I were in that room, and I thought he had the key. As we walked in to the hostel, he said, "Steve, you have the key right?" I thought he was joking and trying to freak me out, so I just said, "Yeah, of course." Well, it turned out that he was serious. The reception had long been closed because it was about 12:30 by that point. Both of us searched our pockets and neither of us had it. I knew that Nick had it last because I had never even seen the key. Then Nick remembered that it was in his hoodie that Conall had brought back to the hostel for everyone, which was in the other room. Conall gave us our hoodies back and the key was in there. We were both really relieved because we were convinced that we would have to sleep on the floor in that other room, which would have been awful. We got ready for bed and went into the bathroom to brush our teeth. The bathroom was outside the room, so I said, "Nick, you have the key right?" in the same tone he had asked me before. I was trying to make a joke about us getting locked out of the room again. He said, "No, I left the door open." I went back to the room, and of course, the door was closed. I went back to the bathroom and said in the same tone, "Nick you have the key right?" He said, "It's closed?" Then he searched his pockets for the key again, and it turns out that we really were locked out of the room that time. We couldn't believe it. We had such a feeling of relief, then we were tense again. I glanced in the other room, and they were having a pillow fight in there. I was glad I hadn't gotten a bed in that room, but I was worried I would have to sleep on the floor in there. Nick and I tried everything to get back into our room. We tried breaking into the reception room with a credit card. We tried to find a way to the roof to see if we could get through the window into our room, but nothing was working. We went back upstairs, and the owner of the hostel was actually telling the others to quiet down! We explained the situation to him, and he let us back into our room. Again, a feeling of relief washed over us. We slept peacefully that night and woke up refreshed in the morning.
The next day, we bought some breakfast in the hostel, which sold cheap cereal and milk, and also some really good Irish soda bread. After breakfast, we decided to go on our hike to the Cliffs of Moher. From the hostel it was about a 7 kilometer walk. We started hiking right along the ocean and came to this fence about 30 minutes in. We decided that we had come this far, and if we got in trouble, we would feign ignorance and just claim that we were foreigners. We never ran into anyone... except cows. At one point, our hike led us through a herd of cows, and all they did was stare at us. The hike consisted of jumping over rivers, climbing barbed wire fences, and trying to avoid being shocked as we climbed over electric fences. At one point, I put my hand on a wooden post that was attached to the electric fence, and that ended up shocking me because the post was wet, and there was current running through it. It was very weird. As we went further, the cliffs came into view. We got a picture by a sign that said "Warning! Extreme danger ahead!" We all took a picture beside the sign and kept going. We actually found a really cool place where we were all able to lay on our stomachs and look over a ledge that went straight down over the cliffs. It was really cool, and we got some awesome pictures there. Don't worry I remembered my camera for this part of the trip. We finally arrived at the visitors center for the cliffs, and the cliffs didn't look as good as when we were actually hiking. It was a bit disappointing, but we were all glad that we went on the hike. We ate lunch at the visitor's center and relaxed for a bit, then we hiked back along the road to Doolin. We caught the last bus to Galway and found our hostel.
Galway, of course, had it's own stories. We got to the hostel, and they said that we had booked our rooms for the night before and that we were no-shows. For this particular hostel, they had made us pay everything beforehand, so we had lost €240 collectively, which was about $400. The girl who made the reservation printed off the email and showed them that they had made the mistake, and that we had emailed them asking them to change it. The hostel had emailed her back telling her that they had changed the mistake. So she printed all these emails off and showed it to the hostel. The hostel then got a lot nicer and told us that they were all full, but they would call other hostels in the area and see if we could stay there. Everything had turned out to be full. They offered for us to sleep in the kitchen area for free and told us that they could get us a refund the next day when the manager came in. Some people really didn't want to sleep in the kitchen, so Alin, John, and I set out on foot to find places to sleep. We found this cool Mexican restaurant with rooms above it that had room for everyone for about €30 per night. A lot of people just wanted to sleep in the kitchen, but a few of them took our offer on sleeping at the Mexican place. Also, FX had a friend who lived in Galway at some student apartments that was out of town. He was planning on staying there, and a few of us were going to stay there with him. There were only three people who were planning on doing that, so I decided to join them. After we finally got everything worked out, some of us decided to go to a pub, and some of us decided to hang out at FX's friend's place. I decided to go with FX's group and it turned out that the place was an absolute dump. There was food everywhere, and it looked like it hadn't been cleaned in months. We had a good time there though. We just talked and played games and had a good time until about 4 in the morning. I was going to stay there, but the peole who were staying at the hostel had forgotten how to get back, and I had a map. I just decided to go back with them and show them the way and sleep in the kitchen/dining room area of the hostel. We ended up getting back, and I was only able to sleep until about 7:00 when people came in to have breakfast. This dining room was pretty big, and we were all sleeping off in a corner where there was a separate area with a tv and a couple of couches. I opted for the floor, and couldn't sleep past 7, so I decided to go out and walk around for a bit. It was very peaceful, and I was grateful for it because I was kind of able to recharge without being around people for a while. After that, we ended up walking along the beach and eating at this place that served a full Irish breakfast. It was really good. We caught the bus back in time for us to watch the championship soccer game of the Euro Cup. It was Germany vs. Spain, and I was cheering for Germany as some of you may know for my earlier post. Spain ended up winning 1-0, but it was an exciting game. Anyway, that was the Galway trip.
For the 4th of July, we decided to go to a local bar called Captain America's. We decided we had to do something American, and we could think of nothing that would have been better. I asked if they had any specials for 4th of July, and they ended up not having anything! I was sorely disappointed! Why would you call your restaurant Captain America's, and then not have anything special on the American Independence Day? Anyway, we got some good American beer, Coors Light and Miller Genuine Draft. The Miller was a lot better than the Coors, but we had fun. After that we went back and celebrated some with some rum and Cokes and whiskey. We had invited some Irish people to our place to celebrate with us, and only one of them showed up at around midnight, but we had a great time. We took several videos of all of us dancing to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and Another One Bites the Dust. No fireworks, but it was awesome nonetheless. Anyway, that's about it for now. Thanks for all the comments everyone, and I miss you guys!
Thursday, June 26, 2008
In Cork!
Alright, so I know I've been kind of lax on the blogs lately. Sorry to those of you who lost interest and aren't reading this anymore... but you won't read this anyway, so I just apologized to nobody. Whatever. Anyway, I got settled in here, and I'm living in a 7 person house full of other "foreigners." There are 3 Americans, one from Santa Barbara, one from Seattle, and myself. There's 1 Canadian from Toronto, and he's actually got the personality type of Brad Wallace, meaning he's sociable and has that courteousness towards people that makes them feel included and enforces their opinions, even when he doesn't agree. I don't know if that really makes sense, but does Brad really make sense? Anyway, there's also a guy from Britain. That's it for the males, and there are 2 females, one from Romania and one from China. There's also a house behind ours full of foreigners. There are 3 Canadians there, 2 French people, one girl from Spain, at least one girl from Poland, and one Irish guy. Our house is kind of known as the "party house" meaning people come over to our house when they want to hang out because it's got a big common room that's somewhat separated from the rest of the house. It's been great. I know some of you are interested in the project I'm working on, so I'll give a short explanation and a long explanation.
First, the short explanation: I am making a computer model of the way light travels through something called a waveguide (basically a fiber optics cable).
Now for the long explanation (don't worry, I won't be offended if you skip this): A waveguide is something that guides light waves... which is where the waveguide gets its name. The way it works is the waveguide is very thin (only about 1/200 of a millimeter thick) and it's attached to something called the substrate. The waveguide section is called the core, and the air on top of the waveguide is called the cladding. Every material has something called an index of refraction. For those of you who have forgotten your physics, the index of refraction is based on how fast light travels through that medium. It's basically like a person who can walk through air vs. a person who walks through water. The person walking through air will travel faster than the person who is traveling through water, even though they exert the same amount of effort. The air has an index of refraction of 1 (basically) meaning light is not slowed down at all. The core has the highest index of refraction, and the substrate has one an index between the air and the core. There is a phenomenon called total internal reflection that happens when light strikes the surface of a material at a very shallow angle and the material the light travels through is higher than the material on the other side of the surface. When the light is totally internally reflected, no light escapes the material. This is how fiber optics works. The light continually bounces off the walls of the material at shallow angles, and it can thus be guide to wherever you need it to go, provided the angle isn't too sharp. Now, as some of you may know, light is an electromagnetic wave, and so it exhibits an electric and magnetic field. What I am doing is making a computer model in C++ of the electric and magnetic fields of the light as it is traveling down the waveguide. This is so we can figure out things like the optimum shape of the waveguide so as to produce the least amount of energy loss, which would really help things like information transfer. I think it's pretty cool, but some of you may have already exited the window, or skipped down to here. That's cool.
Anyway, this is basically the thesis of the dissertation for the PhD that my "boss" is working for. His name is Rob, and he's very Irish. Sometimes, I can't really understand what he's saying, but I'm getting more used to the accent. At least he actually speaks English (most of the time anyway - sometimes it sounds like another language). Our supervisor's name is Dr. Frank Peters, and he's from Canada and worked in Silicon Valley for 12 years. That's cool because he actually has my accent, so it's easy to understand him. I also found out that he's a fairly strong Christian, and he was able to direct me to a pretty cool church that I checked out last Sunday. I was very thankful for that. Since then, we've had some discussions about God and how to incorporate that into a physics career. I'm so glad that God put someone like that in my life, so thanks to all of you for your prayers in that area.
Anyway, this weekend a bunch of us are going to Galway, where we are going to visit the Cliffs of Moher. Apparently they are one of Ireland's biggest attractions, and there's a 10-mile hike that we're going to go on. I'm pretty excited about it, and a lot of the people going with us are excited about it too, so that makes me even more excited because I know they're probably not going to wimp out. So I'm leaving for that at 1:30 tomorrow on a bus with everyone else. It's going to be awesome. Other then that, we got memberships to the local gym. The way they let you inside is they read your fingerprint and that opens the gate for you. Pretty cool I think. Almost like Gattaca if any of you have seen that movie. Anyway, they have a basketball court and a rock climbing gym, so I've been able to stay active. It's pretty cool. Anyway, I think that's all I have to say. If any of you have questions or just want to say hi, feel free to comment or email me at steven.horne@tyndall.ie. That way I won't have to wade through all my junk email to find your email. Also, blogspot and facebook are blocked at my office because I guess they don't want people messing around when they're supposed to be working. I love all you guys!
First, the short explanation: I am making a computer model of the way light travels through something called a waveguide (basically a fiber optics cable).
Now for the long explanation (don't worry, I won't be offended if you skip this): A waveguide is something that guides light waves... which is where the waveguide gets its name. The way it works is the waveguide is very thin (only about 1/200 of a millimeter thick) and it's attached to something called the substrate. The waveguide section is called the core, and the air on top of the waveguide is called the cladding. Every material has something called an index of refraction. For those of you who have forgotten your physics, the index of refraction is based on how fast light travels through that medium. It's basically like a person who can walk through air vs. a person who walks through water. The person walking through air will travel faster than the person who is traveling through water, even though they exert the same amount of effort. The air has an index of refraction of 1 (basically) meaning light is not slowed down at all. The core has the highest index of refraction, and the substrate has one an index between the air and the core. There is a phenomenon called total internal reflection that happens when light strikes the surface of a material at a very shallow angle and the material the light travels through is higher than the material on the other side of the surface. When the light is totally internally reflected, no light escapes the material. This is how fiber optics works. The light continually bounces off the walls of the material at shallow angles, and it can thus be guide to wherever you need it to go, provided the angle isn't too sharp. Now, as some of you may know, light is an electromagnetic wave, and so it exhibits an electric and magnetic field. What I am doing is making a computer model in C++ of the electric and magnetic fields of the light as it is traveling down the waveguide. This is so we can figure out things like the optimum shape of the waveguide so as to produce the least amount of energy loss, which would really help things like information transfer. I think it's pretty cool, but some of you may have already exited the window, or skipped down to here. That's cool.
Anyway, this is basically the thesis of the dissertation for the PhD that my "boss" is working for. His name is Rob, and he's very Irish. Sometimes, I can't really understand what he's saying, but I'm getting more used to the accent. At least he actually speaks English (most of the time anyway - sometimes it sounds like another language). Our supervisor's name is Dr. Frank Peters, and he's from Canada and worked in Silicon Valley for 12 years. That's cool because he actually has my accent, so it's easy to understand him. I also found out that he's a fairly strong Christian, and he was able to direct me to a pretty cool church that I checked out last Sunday. I was very thankful for that. Since then, we've had some discussions about God and how to incorporate that into a physics career. I'm so glad that God put someone like that in my life, so thanks to all of you for your prayers in that area.
Anyway, this weekend a bunch of us are going to Galway, where we are going to visit the Cliffs of Moher. Apparently they are one of Ireland's biggest attractions, and there's a 10-mile hike that we're going to go on. I'm pretty excited about it, and a lot of the people going with us are excited about it too, so that makes me even more excited because I know they're probably not going to wimp out. So I'm leaving for that at 1:30 tomorrow on a bus with everyone else. It's going to be awesome. Other then that, we got memberships to the local gym. The way they let you inside is they read your fingerprint and that opens the gate for you. Pretty cool I think. Almost like Gattaca if any of you have seen that movie. Anyway, they have a basketball court and a rock climbing gym, so I've been able to stay active. It's pretty cool. Anyway, I think that's all I have to say. If any of you have questions or just want to say hi, feel free to comment or email me at steven.horne@tyndall.ie. That way I won't have to wade through all my junk email to find your email. Also, blogspot and facebook are blocked at my office because I guess they don't want people messing around when they're supposed to be working. I love all you guys!
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Brussels and Dublin
Alright, well we made it to Brussels ok, obviously. The first night in Brussels, we just walked around for a bit and got to know the city. We both kind of decided that we liked Germany better than Belgium, but it was fun anyway. After a somewhat late night of walking around and stuff we went to bed. Funny story about that night. I woke up at 4:30 am and I had to go to the bathroom really bad. Being a hostel and all, the bathroom was outside the room, so I got out of my bunk and went there. On returning, I found that I had forgotten my key to get back in the room. The reception was closed at this point, and I didn't really want to knock and wake people up, so I just decided to wait outside the room until someone came out. There were 14 people in this room, so I figured someone would need to go to the bathroom or something soon. And I was right. Someone came out at 5, and I gratefully went back in the room. I just couldn't believe I had forgetten the key. I felt pretty stupid.
Anyway, the next day, it was raining all day, so we went to the museum of musical instruments. This was really cool because they gave us headphones, and I was like "Oh great, it's going to be a self-guided tour with some droning voice in a French accent in my ears." But it was actually something different. At each place, you could see the instruments through the glass, then if you stood in the right spot, the headphones would intercept a radio frequency that was playing the particular instrument we were looking at. We spent about 5 hours in the museum before we got hungry and left. It was one of the coolest museums I've ever been in. Also, I introduced Andrew to the glory of the nutella crepe. If you don't know what that is, you are missing out on bliss. It's basically a flat pancake filled with a sweet hazelnut spread. It tastes amazing! I'll try to make it when I get back to America, but I think the Europeans really have grabbed the essence, and no one can make it like the Parisians. Anyway, I got him hooked on those. After this, we went to the park and broke our hackey-sack record! Woot! No naked people this time though, but we did have a guy ask us if he could take our picture while we played. It's kind of funny because we'll be playing and every once in a while a group of people will stop to watch us, and sometimes people even video-record us! We feel like movie stars, and we actually play better when people are watching us. The next day, we decided to go to the palace that was there, and try some Belgian beer. Dave, Andrew tried the beer you said, and it was delicious. People, if Dave Smith ever gives you advice about anything food-related, definitely take him up on it. He knows what people like!
So the next morning, we had to get to the airport to catch a flight to Dublin at 10:10. Andrew wanted to get there by 8:15, but I didn't think we needed to be there until 9:00 because my flight from Edinburgh to Paris was so smooth. We were wrong. We decided to get up at 7:30 so we could be out the door by 8 and at the train station to the airport by 8:30. From there, we figured it would take about a half hour to get the ticket to the airport and take the train there. This was the plan. What actually happened is we got up at 7:30. I figured out that I had lost the paper with the reservation on it, and for those of you who are newer to our adventures, my computer had broken down the first day I got to London. So we couldn't find our reservation anywhere. I tried to look on the hostelworld web site to see the bookings I had made, but the password for my account was really weird. I had it sent to my email, but the computers at the hostel couldn't access my email for some reason, so we decided to get to the airport and check it there on Andrew's laptop. So we got out of the hostel by 8:15 and to the train station by about 8:35. We had just missed the train to the airport at 8:33, so we waited for the one that left at 8:45. We figured we would still be ok. Well the train never came. Apparently it was really delayed or something, so they just cancelled it and we had to take the 8:59 train. We got the airport by 9:15 and we had to walk for a little ways to get to the airport from the airport train station. By the time we had checked in and everything, it was already 9:25. Boarding began at 9:45 and the flight took off at 10:10. We figured we were still good because all we had to do was get through security. Actually, no. Apparently in Brussels, you have to go through customs to get out of Belgium. We got to this room with an insane amount of people where we saw that we had to wait in this huge line to get through. So we wait in line, praying that we'll get to our flight on time. This whole time, Andrew's been saying, "We'll never make it," in a joking matter, but I started saying it too when I saw how long the line was. We got to within 10 people by 9:45, but then, people started taking a really long time. We ended up getting our passports stamped by 10:00. We had 10 minutes. We run towards the security line, and all I saw was a huge amount of people, and I thought we were finished. I looked at Andrew and just sighed. Then, I saw this little tiny security line off to the side and said, "We're going there!" We get over there, and apparently we were allowed to go through that way. There were only two people in front of us, but the lady in front of us waited until the last minute to start getting ready to go through the line. She took things out of her pockets, took the liquids out of her bag, took off her shoes, took off her watch, blah blah blah, and all the while, Andrew and I are like, "Just go lady!" under our breaths. She finally gets through, and Andrew and I empty our pockets and go through. Andrew had a bunch of change in his pockets apparently, and he felt the need to get every last coin one by one back into his pocket. I grabbed his bags and my bag and ran to where there were less people. Andrew meets me there, and we look at our tickets to see which gate we have to go through: B32. I saw a sign that said B1-B98. I said to myself, "Surely, fate would not be this cruel to us..." but yes, it was. We had to run 32 gates through a Belgian airport dodging people and trying not to run over babies. At one point, I actually ran through a restaurant to avoid a group of people. I got to the gate at exactly 10:10 and said, "Please, my brother is coming in 1 minute!" The guy said that it was fine, and Andrew comes sprinting up out of breath. Apparently, the plane was delayed by 20 minutes. Thank goodness. That was probably the most stressful time of my life. Anyway, we got to Dublin ok, but we still had to figure out the hostel reservation.
In Dublin, I get my bag and we go through customs and through the immigration office. I show the officer my passport and my papers to let me stay for three months. He points out that the letter from Tyndall calls me a "she" in several different occasions, and he suspected that it was a fraudulent letter! I got a little worried, but he gave me the benefit of the doubt probably because I was an American. We got through that alright, and we used the airports wifi to find the hostel reservation. I get my password to hostelworld, and go to the website. I see all the hostels I was at... except the one we had to get to. Apparently, the reservation had not gone on my record and therefore, we had no way of finding where we were supposed to stay that night. I didn't know what to do. We decided to go to the tourist station at the airport to see if we could make a reservation at a different hostel. The woman there said that there were a lot of events happening in Dublin that night, so most of the hostels would be full. She tried two of them, the first one was full and the second had a double available for 44 euros per person per night. We asked her to keep looking. I glanced at her paper and saw the name of the first hostel was Abbey Court Hostel. I thought that sounded somewhat familiar, so I asked if she could call there and just see if my reservation was there. She called and said, "Hello, this is so and so from the airport. I have two guys here who think they might have a reservation at your hostel. The name is Steven Horne. Do you have a reservation by that name?" Seconds that seemed like hours passed by. I was praying that this was the right hostel. Then I heard, "Oh you do?" My heart leaped, and I did a fist pump saying, "YES!" I don't know how it happened, but we found our original reservation and the rest of the day went splendidly. That incident right there makes me believe that miracles do happen.
After that whole fiasco, we checked into our hostel and visited a church and walked along the river. We were relieved to be in an English speaking country again. That night, there were a bunch of girls from Germany in our room, and they talked and had the light on really late. Finally at 1:15, I said to them, "Are you going to bed anytime soon?" (Apparently Andrew can sleep through anything, so he wasn't affected by this at all.) They apologized and the light was off by 1:30. We were up by 9:30 the next morning (this morning) in time to catch breakfast. I had to check out to go to Cork, so I did that. We decided to go to a church service we had seen the day before, and it was awesome. They had Chris Tomlin playing and they sang songs we knew. It was a very welcoming environment, and we both had a great time there. It was really awesome to be able to go to church after a long time of not being able to for a while. After this, we went to get some lunch, and I packed up my stuff to go to Cork. I got on the bus, said goodbye to Andrew, and got to the train station. Then I realized that I had no idea where to go once I got to Cork. I found an internet station at the train station and logged onto my email from there. I found the Tyndall Institute welcome letter and saw that I was supposed to be receiving an email from the housing accomodations soon. Now I know you are all familiar with spam. I receive about 600 emails per day, about 595 of which are spam. I had actually deleted the email from the housing people, so I wasn't sure what to do. The Tyndall email had given me the name of the place, so I had hoped to just show up there and check in when I got there. I checked my inbox, and lo and behold, there was an email from the place already there! It was asking me when I would arrive in Cork because the lady who runs the place is not there all the time. It alluded to the previous email that I had never gotten and gave me her phone number. Luckily there was a phone next to the station I was at, so I phoned her and left a message. By this time, it was about 10 minutes until my train left, so I went to get on that. Apparently I had forgotten to tell her I would be at the train station, so when I got to the place, the lady wasn't there. One of the residents let me in, and he let me use his computer and phone. Finally, when I called, she got to the place and said she had been waiting for me at the train station. I felt kind of bad, but I was just glad to be there. I finally have my own room! I have to share a bathroom, but I'm so glad to finally have a place I can call my own. I start my orientation tomorrow, so I'm going to do some laundry now and hopefully I will be fresh for the morning.
Anyway, the next day, it was raining all day, so we went to the museum of musical instruments. This was really cool because they gave us headphones, and I was like "Oh great, it's going to be a self-guided tour with some droning voice in a French accent in my ears." But it was actually something different. At each place, you could see the instruments through the glass, then if you stood in the right spot, the headphones would intercept a radio frequency that was playing the particular instrument we were looking at. We spent about 5 hours in the museum before we got hungry and left. It was one of the coolest museums I've ever been in. Also, I introduced Andrew to the glory of the nutella crepe. If you don't know what that is, you are missing out on bliss. It's basically a flat pancake filled with a sweet hazelnut spread. It tastes amazing! I'll try to make it when I get back to America, but I think the Europeans really have grabbed the essence, and no one can make it like the Parisians. Anyway, I got him hooked on those. After this, we went to the park and broke our hackey-sack record! Woot! No naked people this time though, but we did have a guy ask us if he could take our picture while we played. It's kind of funny because we'll be playing and every once in a while a group of people will stop to watch us, and sometimes people even video-record us! We feel like movie stars, and we actually play better when people are watching us. The next day, we decided to go to the palace that was there, and try some Belgian beer. Dave, Andrew tried the beer you said, and it was delicious. People, if Dave Smith ever gives you advice about anything food-related, definitely take him up on it. He knows what people like!
So the next morning, we had to get to the airport to catch a flight to Dublin at 10:10. Andrew wanted to get there by 8:15, but I didn't think we needed to be there until 9:00 because my flight from Edinburgh to Paris was so smooth. We were wrong. We decided to get up at 7:30 so we could be out the door by 8 and at the train station to the airport by 8:30. From there, we figured it would take about a half hour to get the ticket to the airport and take the train there. This was the plan. What actually happened is we got up at 7:30. I figured out that I had lost the paper with the reservation on it, and for those of you who are newer to our adventures, my computer had broken down the first day I got to London. So we couldn't find our reservation anywhere. I tried to look on the hostelworld web site to see the bookings I had made, but the password for my account was really weird. I had it sent to my email, but the computers at the hostel couldn't access my email for some reason, so we decided to get to the airport and check it there on Andrew's laptop. So we got out of the hostel by 8:15 and to the train station by about 8:35. We had just missed the train to the airport at 8:33, so we waited for the one that left at 8:45. We figured we would still be ok. Well the train never came. Apparently it was really delayed or something, so they just cancelled it and we had to take the 8:59 train. We got the airport by 9:15 and we had to walk for a little ways to get to the airport from the airport train station. By the time we had checked in and everything, it was already 9:25. Boarding began at 9:45 and the flight took off at 10:10. We figured we were still good because all we had to do was get through security. Actually, no. Apparently in Brussels, you have to go through customs to get out of Belgium. We got to this room with an insane amount of people where we saw that we had to wait in this huge line to get through. So we wait in line, praying that we'll get to our flight on time. This whole time, Andrew's been saying, "We'll never make it," in a joking matter, but I started saying it too when I saw how long the line was. We got to within 10 people by 9:45, but then, people started taking a really long time. We ended up getting our passports stamped by 10:00. We had 10 minutes. We run towards the security line, and all I saw was a huge amount of people, and I thought we were finished. I looked at Andrew and just sighed. Then, I saw this little tiny security line off to the side and said, "We're going there!" We get over there, and apparently we were allowed to go through that way. There were only two people in front of us, but the lady in front of us waited until the last minute to start getting ready to go through the line. She took things out of her pockets, took the liquids out of her bag, took off her shoes, took off her watch, blah blah blah, and all the while, Andrew and I are like, "Just go lady!" under our breaths. She finally gets through, and Andrew and I empty our pockets and go through. Andrew had a bunch of change in his pockets apparently, and he felt the need to get every last coin one by one back into his pocket. I grabbed his bags and my bag and ran to where there were less people. Andrew meets me there, and we look at our tickets to see which gate we have to go through: B32. I saw a sign that said B1-B98. I said to myself, "Surely, fate would not be this cruel to us..." but yes, it was. We had to run 32 gates through a Belgian airport dodging people and trying not to run over babies. At one point, I actually ran through a restaurant to avoid a group of people. I got to the gate at exactly 10:10 and said, "Please, my brother is coming in 1 minute!" The guy said that it was fine, and Andrew comes sprinting up out of breath. Apparently, the plane was delayed by 20 minutes. Thank goodness. That was probably the most stressful time of my life. Anyway, we got to Dublin ok, but we still had to figure out the hostel reservation.
In Dublin, I get my bag and we go through customs and through the immigration office. I show the officer my passport and my papers to let me stay for three months. He points out that the letter from Tyndall calls me a "she" in several different occasions, and he suspected that it was a fraudulent letter! I got a little worried, but he gave me the benefit of the doubt probably because I was an American. We got through that alright, and we used the airports wifi to find the hostel reservation. I get my password to hostelworld, and go to the website. I see all the hostels I was at... except the one we had to get to. Apparently, the reservation had not gone on my record and therefore, we had no way of finding where we were supposed to stay that night. I didn't know what to do. We decided to go to the tourist station at the airport to see if we could make a reservation at a different hostel. The woman there said that there were a lot of events happening in Dublin that night, so most of the hostels would be full. She tried two of them, the first one was full and the second had a double available for 44 euros per person per night. We asked her to keep looking. I glanced at her paper and saw the name of the first hostel was Abbey Court Hostel. I thought that sounded somewhat familiar, so I asked if she could call there and just see if my reservation was there. She called and said, "Hello, this is so and so from the airport. I have two guys here who think they might have a reservation at your hostel. The name is Steven Horne. Do you have a reservation by that name?" Seconds that seemed like hours passed by. I was praying that this was the right hostel. Then I heard, "Oh you do?" My heart leaped, and I did a fist pump saying, "YES!" I don't know how it happened, but we found our original reservation and the rest of the day went splendidly. That incident right there makes me believe that miracles do happen.
After that whole fiasco, we checked into our hostel and visited a church and walked along the river. We were relieved to be in an English speaking country again. That night, there were a bunch of girls from Germany in our room, and they talked and had the light on really late. Finally at 1:15, I said to them, "Are you going to bed anytime soon?" (Apparently Andrew can sleep through anything, so he wasn't affected by this at all.) They apologized and the light was off by 1:30. We were up by 9:30 the next morning (this morning) in time to catch breakfast. I had to check out to go to Cork, so I did that. We decided to go to a church service we had seen the day before, and it was awesome. They had Chris Tomlin playing and they sang songs we knew. It was a very welcoming environment, and we both had a great time there. It was really awesome to be able to go to church after a long time of not being able to for a while. After this, we went to get some lunch, and I packed up my stuff to go to Cork. I got on the bus, said goodbye to Andrew, and got to the train station. Then I realized that I had no idea where to go once I got to Cork. I found an internet station at the train station and logged onto my email from there. I found the Tyndall Institute welcome letter and saw that I was supposed to be receiving an email from the housing accomodations soon. Now I know you are all familiar with spam. I receive about 600 emails per day, about 595 of which are spam. I had actually deleted the email from the housing people, so I wasn't sure what to do. The Tyndall email had given me the name of the place, so I had hoped to just show up there and check in when I got there. I checked my inbox, and lo and behold, there was an email from the place already there! It was asking me when I would arrive in Cork because the lady who runs the place is not there all the time. It alluded to the previous email that I had never gotten and gave me her phone number. Luckily there was a phone next to the station I was at, so I phoned her and left a message. By this time, it was about 10 minutes until my train left, so I went to get on that. Apparently I had forgotten to tell her I would be at the train station, so when I got to the place, the lady wasn't there. One of the residents let me in, and he let me use his computer and phone. Finally, when I called, she got to the place and said she had been waiting for me at the train station. I felt kind of bad, but I was just glad to be there. I finally have my own room! I have to share a bathroom, but I'm so glad to finally have a place I can call my own. I start my orientation tomorrow, so I'm going to do some laundry now and hopefully I will be fresh for the morning.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Munich and Time with Dave
The train ride to Munich was pretty nice. It was a direct train from Goppingen to Munich. When we got there, we were able to check into the hostel right away, then we went to go explore the city. We walked down to the Glockenspiel and then over to the English Gardens (not to be confused with Elitch Gardens). We also saw the Frauenkirchen, which means church of our lady (strangely enough, that's also what Cathedral of Notre Dame means). That was a pretty cool church. Then we walked around the corner and we saw this HUGE church! It was St. Stephen's cathedral, and it was really awesome. We took some good pictures of everything, so those will go up when we can figure out how to do it. We walked around some more, then went back to the park. We took a nap there, and right when we were about to go to sleep, this duck came over to Andrew and got really close to him. It was pretty cool. Then we saw this family of geese. There was a mom and a dad and three babies. They were pretty cute, and when another goose got close to them, the dad would start making a lot of noise and chase the other goose away. It was hilarious to watch. I told Andrew that he should go near them and see if the dad would chase him away. He got within five feet of them, when the whole family started to move away, and the little babies said, "Meep!" in a really high-pitched squeal. We walked around a little bit more, then we went to check out the Glockenspiel's performance at 5:00. It was kind of cool, just because it was the world's biggest cookoo clock, but other than that, it was kind of lame. We both agreed that our dad would have loved it. After this, we went to the Hofbrauhaus and ordered the obligatory liter sized beers and some good food. I got the sausage platter and the dark beer. It was delicious! Andrew got the light beer and a meatball plate. He said that was really good too. To finish, we had some applestreudel. It was a great meal. After this, we walked around some more and went back to the hostel. The Euro Cup soccer games were still going on, so I went and checked them out for a little bit, and Andrew went to bed. It wasn't very exciting, but there were a lot of people cheering for Holland to win, and they did, so that was cool. The next day, we went to the food market and had these yummy sandwiches with meat in them. They have a really funny sounding German name so I don't remember what it is, but they were good. We went back to the park to play hackeysack, and there were a few people scattered in this open field with a river running through it. We decided to go play over there, but I saw this guy who was either naked, or wearing some skin-colored clothes. I said to Andrew, "Andrew, is that guy naked?" He said, "I don't know," so we went over to check it out... and it turned out he was completely naked! We both just started cracking up! You couldn't really see any of his... parts because of the way he was sitting, but it was still nasty. He looked really sunburnt everywhere. Everyone just seemed like it was natural, so we said, "Ok!" and acted like it was natural. Every once in a while, we would check to see if he was still there, and he would be. Then Andrew just pointed and he was fully dressed! It was the weirdest thing ever. After that, we walked back through the food market and I had a bratwurst for lunch. The meat there was so good. We then caught a 1:00 train to go to Hof to meet up with Dave and his wife Steffi. We got there at 5:30 and had an awesome time with them. They live in a bed and breakfast type of place that Steffi's dad owns. He also has a zoo-like park with a bunch of animals in cages including tiny monkies, guinea pigs (they were nuts), and snow owls. It was quite a variety of stuff. Then we had a barbecue with Dave and Steffi's dad while Steffi was working and her mom was at English class. It was a good bit of man time. It was a bit surprising to see Dave talking in German with Steffi's dad. It was pretty cool to hear. Anyway, the barbecue was really good, and there was a lot of meat involved. Apparently it is somewhat of a tradition to make sure everything gets eaten off the table. Usually they make Dave to it, but this time we had to do it. It was really good, but we were so stuffed when it was done. Then Dave put some chocolate in some bananas and barbecued those. Those were "deelish" as he likes to say. It was good to be with someone whose first language was English again. Also, he knew the food really well so he knew the best Bavarian foods that Americans would like. It was really good. Later, we went to the restaurant where Steffi works and sat around for a while and played this game kind of like liar's dice. We'll have to teach people how to play when we get back. We shared some good stories and had a great time. Steffi had to close the restaurant, so it was midnight when she was done. We met up with one of her other friends and we were going to go in town to hang out, but there was nothing open. We decided to go back to the house and have some rum and cokes. It was delicious. After talking some more and laughing, we went to bed. The next morning, Andrew and I forgot to set our alarms, so we got up kind of late. We went downstairs, and there was another huge meal waiting for us. Steffi's mom was really nice too. She knew a lot of English because of the classes she is taking, and she packed us a big lunch for the train ride to Brussels. It was a very short visit, and everyone there wanted us to stay longer, but we weren't able to cancel our reservation in Brussels. Overall, we had a great time and got to Brussels at about 9:00 last night. More to come later about that.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Day 3 in Vienna and time with family in Germany
Alright, before we start with the touristy stuff, I have a funny story about Andrew. Apparently Andrew sometimes has a tendency to sleeptalk, so a couple of times in the middle of the night, I heard him talking. The first time, he started talking about how he needed to go somewhere. I said, "Andrew, what are you talking about?" He said, "I don't know, I'm probably just sleeptalking." Then, later, he started mumbling, then I heard him say, "Oh my guy!" which is something he's started saying lately, but I guess it's second nature now. So I went back to sleep, and the next day we woke up and I saw Andrew's fly was down. The thing is, he took his pants off the night before to go to sleep, so I said to him, "Andrew, why are your pants on?" He looked down and said, "I don't know! What the heck!" Apparently he had put his pants on in the middle of the night, and he didn't even know it. He didn't remember anything he said. It was pretty funny.
Anyway, the last day in Vienna, we wanted to visit Shönbrunn Palace. We decided to rent the nifty free bikes again, and we went and saw that. We had to catch our train at 11:45, so we just went there and looked around. It was pretty fun. We went back and caught our train. We were supposed to meet my mother's cousin and her kids at the train station. She gave Andrew a picture, but we didn't know how old it was, or if they looked different or something. Andrew said it would have been hilarious if we were just looking around at everyone, then we saw someone who looked just like mom. We would have said, "Oh! There she is." That would have been funny, but we found them because they looked just like they did in the picture. So we got to the house, and everyone was very friendly. Lisa and Ellen are our second cousins, so they are our age, and they took us to this mini-Oktoberfest kind of thing. It was really fun. We went on a really freaky ride, then we went to the beertent, where the beer only comes in liter-sized glasses. It was pretty ridiculous. They had a band playing, so everyone got up onto the benches and was singing with the band. It seemed like everyone was friends with everyone else, even though we didn't even know anyone's name. It was cool. After that we went to bed.
The next day, we had a big breakfast, which was really nice, and we went to meet more of our family. My grandmother had 4 brothers and sisters, and they all have kids, so we met more of our family, but certainly not everyone. All of the kids spoke pretty good English, so they were able to translate to the older ones for us. We met my grandma's last living brother, Otto. He was really funny because the only English phrase he knew was "I speak English!" We had a great time, and everyone was really happy to see us. We went to one of our cousin's birthday parties. He was turning 48. There was so much food, and there was a lot of beer and everyone was having fun. Andrew and I decided we wanted to introduce hacky-sack into Germany, so we played with everyone there. They were really good because I think everyone plays soccer. After this, we went to a place to watch the soccer game of Germany against Poland. Apparently it is Euro 2008 right now, so it's a huge deal. Everyone was decked out in black, red, and yellow. It was fun to watch and cheer for the team because everyone had so much passion. Germany ended up winning 2-0, so the streets were crowded with people honking and waving German flags. It was really fun. We went to bed after that, and now we are going to be on our way back to Munich. Awesomeness.
Anyway, the last day in Vienna, we wanted to visit Shönbrunn Palace. We decided to rent the nifty free bikes again, and we went and saw that. We had to catch our train at 11:45, so we just went there and looked around. It was pretty fun. We went back and caught our train. We were supposed to meet my mother's cousin and her kids at the train station. She gave Andrew a picture, but we didn't know how old it was, or if they looked different or something. Andrew said it would have been hilarious if we were just looking around at everyone, then we saw someone who looked just like mom. We would have said, "Oh! There she is." That would have been funny, but we found them because they looked just like they did in the picture. So we got to the house, and everyone was very friendly. Lisa and Ellen are our second cousins, so they are our age, and they took us to this mini-Oktoberfest kind of thing. It was really fun. We went on a really freaky ride, then we went to the beertent, where the beer only comes in liter-sized glasses. It was pretty ridiculous. They had a band playing, so everyone got up onto the benches and was singing with the band. It seemed like everyone was friends with everyone else, even though we didn't even know anyone's name. It was cool. After that we went to bed.
The next day, we had a big breakfast, which was really nice, and we went to meet more of our family. My grandmother had 4 brothers and sisters, and they all have kids, so we met more of our family, but certainly not everyone. All of the kids spoke pretty good English, so they were able to translate to the older ones for us. We met my grandma's last living brother, Otto. He was really funny because the only English phrase he knew was "I speak English!" We had a great time, and everyone was really happy to see us. We went to one of our cousin's birthday parties. He was turning 48. There was so much food, and there was a lot of beer and everyone was having fun. Andrew and I decided we wanted to introduce hacky-sack into Germany, so we played with everyone there. They were really good because I think everyone plays soccer. After this, we went to a place to watch the soccer game of Germany against Poland. Apparently it is Euro 2008 right now, so it's a huge deal. Everyone was decked out in black, red, and yellow. It was fun to watch and cheer for the team because everyone had so much passion. Germany ended up winning 2-0, so the streets were crowded with people honking and waving German flags. It was really fun. We went to bed after that, and now we are going to be on our way back to Munich. Awesomeness.
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