....Aaaaaaand Finished!

Actually I need to stop thinking that. Because that depends first on my having passed Linear Algebra and second, I still have that 15 page research paper to write for Religion Sociology. But that's not due till April and the repeat test for Linear is also in April, so I'm done for now either way.

Anyway. As said, Saturday was the going away dinner for Nicole. We had a group of ten and went to a Mexican restaurant that, though quite tasty, is still not the Mexican I miss due to the fact that they don't have spice... Hans (who's half Mexican) finally asked if they had hot sauce. They had Tabasco sauce... which they brought him. It was a lot of fun, though, of course sad. I'll miss Nicole a lot.
Sunday was a stay home and study day for me. Monday was officially Nicole's last day. We all got lunch at the Cafeteria at 1:00. Amelia and I agreed to help her take all her stuff to the airport. Well, I had originally agreed but Nicole remembered I had exams and asked Amelia to help instead and then we both ended up helping. Reminding me I'm going to have fun dragging all my stuff to the airport in August... hmm... So that was afternoon. Her flight was at 7, so after lunch we headed back to her place, did some last minute chocolate shopping for her, got her stuff, said her goodbyes and then headed up to the airport. I got home around 7 and went right back to studying.
Tuesday was actually an all day review session in Garching for Linear Algebra. It was actually considered a one-day course over semester break. Two were being offered. Tuesday and Thursday (same material). I went at the start, 9:30, but then had to leave at 3 to get to my German class. It was the last day and she was passing out our certificats/grades, but luckily it was starting at 4 instead of 3. The result was that I missed the last 90 minutes of the review session. Figured I'd go catch the last bit on Thursday after my Econ exam. After German went home and studied...
Wednesday I studied. All day. Took an hour break to go to dance. The course is over but every Wednesday the room is open and they turn music on and you can practice for two hours. I told my partner I could only stay for one, but it was fun (and a nice break) nonetheless. Then I went home and studied.
Thursday I woke up, studied, and went to Econ. In the review session he'd given us 14 topics and told us there would be 14 questions, one corresponding to each topic. We had to choose two and then had an hour to write an essay on each. I'd gone ahead and just studied all the material I could find on the two topics I felt most comfortable with. (Shock city development in the 19th/20th century... specifically New York, San Fransisco and Los Angelos, and Imperial Economies of the early New Worlds: fur trade, cod fishing, sugar plantations and merchantilism). I figured this was slightly risky, since I had no fall back topic, but I got lucky and was adaquately prepared to answer both questions. I actually didn't even get a chance to read through the other 12. I just found those two and answered. An hour for two essays is not much once you subtract the time it takes to write all your information on the exam and read the questions and organize your thoughts. Still, I felt pretty good about that walking out. No idea when the grades will be up, but apparently it won't be too long becasue the professor is going back to New Zealand... so then I headed out, grabbed a slice of pizza for lunch and headed up to Garching... or tried to. First of all, I had just missed the train I needed by two minutes (couldn't have made it b/c of the exam), but they were only running ever 20 minutes. Then it came 10 minutes late because of the work on the station I was traveling through. The result was that I ended up in Garching at 4:00. I plopped down next to a guy in one of the few free seats and started furiously copying everything on the blackboard. He commented that I was a little late. I replied that the U-Bahn had been late, to which he responded, "since 9 am? Hey, are you American?" ... Well, then I had to look up from my copying to explain that I'd been there Tuesday and had had to leave early and had just had an exam and yes, was American. And then we chatted for a bit while I continued to copy notes. Luckily for me the review ended up going till 4:50 instead of 4:30, so I still felt like it was somewhat worth it. Afterwards headed home... and studied...
Friday's exam was Bio at 11:00. This was my first real experience with German Uni exams. First I made the mistake of sitting somewhere I wasn't allowed to. Apparently they're a little anal about cheating on the final... I guess because it's the only grade? Well, first I was in the wrong row. You are only allowed to sit in every other row. Then I was in the wrong seat. Because unlike U of IL, where you have to keep one empty seat between each student, Germans apparently have extremely good eyesight, because the professor insisted on two empty seats between students. Thus the majority of the seats in the lecture hall were very empty and two lecture halls were needed to test a class that normally takes up 2/3 of a lecture hall half that size... But anyway. The exam was 90 minutes. And 18 questions. Yes. 17 powerpoints of about 40 slides each. So many cycles and enzymes and processes and molecules covered and memorized and studied for so many hours of my life... and I got asked an entire 18 questions. I was mildly irratated actuatlly. I had the very strong desire to regurgitate everything I had learned to prove I had learned it. But I didn't get to. To top it off, the first question, which was 10 out of 100 points, was on the second slide fo the first powerpoint... and one of the perhaps 3 out of 17 x 40 slides I had not bothered to copy into my notes and thus hadn't learned... figures, no? But despite all of that, I felt really good about the rest of it (I did learn that stuff!). So then I grabbed lunch, went home, and took a break for a couple of hours. And then started studying.
Saturday I studied. Saturday evening a group from the Cafe I work in were going ice skating and I had been invited when I randomly met one of them on the U-Bahn. So I took a study break. We went to the Ice Arena in Olympia Park. It was a lot of fun and needed... and then I went back to studying.
Sunday morning was another brunch in the Cafe. I once again ran into a lot of people from the Cafe and had to turn down their offer to play a board game after they ate... to go back and study...
Monday... Linear Algebra exam was at 9:15. It was 7 questions, but that's typical for math finals at UIUC so it was relatively expected. Apparently you need 25/60 points to pass. This explains why the grading conversion scale for TUM -> UIUC is a little warped and me passing at TUM does not guaruntee that I will pass at UIUC. Unfortunately this may have been the case. I wasn't clueless. I worked my way through 2 of the problems relatively completely, and another two at least partway. The last two I just didn't understand... they were written in my professor's lovely version of math which I have yet to grip since I can't find it anywhere online or in any of my 16 textbooks... And the last problem was a set of 11 true/false. Except that when you guess wrong it's -1, not 0, which means it cancles the one you guessed right. As in, don't guess. Aaaanyway, unlike other courses here where I was warned results would come out in 4-6 weeks because professors go on vacation, Linear promised to have scores by tomorrow morning... I was going to check before I left until I recently realized that I'm not sure where they will be posted. So I might not actually know...

But moving on. So! I'm finished with the semester! And now on to travel! Tomorrow morning I'm catching an 8:20 am train to Berlin. I'll get in at 2:00 and hopefully meet up with Amelia, who will be flying in from London around 11:00. We're staying at the same hostel, anyway, so we should meet up eventually. We're in Berlin until Saturday morning when I'm taking a train down to Cologne to meet up with Hans who will be taking a train up from Munich. Thursday through Tuesday is the huge Faschings/Carnival Celebration (read huge German Marti Gras). It's called Faschings in Munich (as it was in Austria), but is known as Carnival in the North. Cologne has the biggest celebration in Munich. Because of this, booking lodging was a bit difficult. Saturday night we're sleeping on the floor of the kitchen of another student Hans knows in Cologne. Sunday night we're staying in Düsseldorf, which is only 25 minutes away by train. Monday we'll stay in Cologne for the big Rose Monday parade, and then we'll take (separate, unfortunately) trains back to Munich that afternoon to get in that evening. Then I'll move my stuff around to finish packing because Tuesday I have a 10:00 am flight home. I'm probably going to be pretty out of reach for the next week, except for a few possible email/facebook checks if the hostel has internet access as promised... but expect lots of pictures when I get back!