Happy May Day!

The weather this past week in half has been incredible, sun every day, and it continued to get warmer and warmer. We had some showers last night, and I enjoyed the moments of riding my bike home through a light drizzle and enjoyed the smell of a spring rain. During Frisbee practice, one of the girls said that she had to leave at 8pm because a friend of hers (who I also know) was coming to her place to watch a soccer match, Chelsea vs. Liverpool. I made a comment about how I like Chelsea because I really like the player, Michael Ballack. So I basically invited myself over, but she and her boyfriend said they were more than happy to have me over. Chelsea won in overtime, and the night was half English/half German, which is always funny. Then I enjoyed the rest of my evening with my window wide open and chatting on the phone.

So quite a few weeks ago, I got to spend the week in Berlin with a whole bunch of Americans, and that was great! Katy and I roomed together. Maybe I have blogged about this already, but she put my name down to room with, and I put her name down and we hadn't even asked the other person before doing it. We all arrived in Berlin on Saturday (all being me, Katy, Rachel and Aine met us up there). After a night out with Rob and some other Frisbee Fulbrighters, we checked into our hotel. What a place! It was a four star hotel, and we were on the 33rd floor and we had a view of the city, at least the west side of the city. After looking through all of the material given to us, we called up some bath robes and slippers and had a fun photo shoot. The week was filled with meeting lots of new people, learning about different projects people have done, being surrounded by academia, and appreciating musical talents of others. There are many different types of Fulbright grants, you can do research, be a visiting professor, study music under a great teacher, and teaching assistants. They had our evenings planned for us, but never too late, and we were able to meet up and relax with other people. One night we were able to enjoy listening to the musical talents of some scholars, there was opera, piano, tuba, and even a modern piece where the players had to use 3D glasses to read the music, which they didn't even have to follow. The last night they pretty much threw a party for us at a local club, and of course we danced the night away. I was able to dance about 15 minutes of pretty intense swing, and even got flipped a couple of times (it was great dancing with someone who was a great leader). Katy decided to stay in Berlin until Sunday, but I had to get going because I was meeting Dean up at the airport on Thursday.