Day 6 – Group Projects are Finalized

This is where we hang out for our coffee breaks, the back porch of the castle.

The day started with Reinhold Wagnleiter’s lecture on The U.S. of America and the World: Views from a Distance. I think the title does a good job in giving you an idea of what the lecture was about. We heard lots of numbers of how people respond to questions about America, as well as what some twelve-year-olds think about when they talk about America. “Dumb President” was one of them, and Reinhold said that that wasn’t even what they really said, it was much nicer (meaning dumb was nicer than the other words they used).

We spent the afternoon finalizing our research papers in the small groups and ours specifically writing our skit. After dinner we had our final lecture of the week: Emerging Diseases and Bio-Terrorism: Global Health and Economic Issues of Importance by Michael Thomas. Afterwards there was more rehearsing all over the castle and I finally settled in my room after talking to Ken on the phone around 2 AM. Chris was hanging out in our room and we continued to talk until about 3 AM. Sandra and I finally fell asleep.

Today is actually already day seven, but I’ll blog more about the entire day tomorrow when we’re back on the road again. For now, it’s almost noon and I slept in for the first time. I did wake up from the cleaning woman opening our door and after that I was in and out of sleep, but I do feel pretty rested. I still haven’t done the math of how many hours of sleep I actually got, combined, for the entire week. I’ll perhaps do that tomorrow on the plane. I do want to talk about my impressions while everything is still fresh but the reality is that I didn’t get ANY schoolwork done while here and that all the stress is starting up again as soon as we’re back. Still, hopefully I’ll be able to write a bunch on the plane or while we’re waiting around. I’m also planning on adding hyperlinks once I’m back on a real computer with a real mouse and not a touch pad.

I’m waiting for members of my group so we can rehearse. Sandra is still upstairs getting ready and Chris is sitting next to me on the couch and we’re recapping everything that has happened. It’s a pretty nice day today, although it’s a bit chilly, and I still want to walk around the lake and take more pictures. Chris and I just decided to do that tomorrow.

Well, I am going to go ahead and post this and hope that my group will start trickeling in soon. Ok, someone just got here.