visit to Madrid,
weekend in Amsterdam,
or BVB winning both the German Meisterschaft and the Polka and the ensuing celebrations. Well maybe I will write about those another time (not very likely).
This past weekend I was in Muenster for a scholarship holders meeting. What a time! There were over 700 people, including families with a total of 80 children, from 91 different countries.
This trip I took a break from my normal structure, taking cues from some of my good friends, and just went up and talked to people. I talked with an Iranian gentleman working out methods to treat viruses, an Irish girl still in undergraduate German studies, a Russian doing German literature research in Koeln, a South African doctoral candidate in Artificial Intelligence and on the list rolls. Very rewarding talking in a mixture of English and German; I will have to try to do it more often.
Muenster itself is a beautiful city with a tree and grass lined bike track (Fahrradbahn?), the Promenade around the inner city were the ancient city wall was.
A palace now used by the university.
This was just the area near the center of the city that I got to see as a tourist, but in Dortmund you have to go outside of the city center to visit any of the many parks.
One of my two favorite parts of the weekend was listening to the short half hour lectures given by students on their work. I got to attended a lecture given in German by an Estonian computer scientist developing a method to construct three dimensional models from simple pictures, such as those taken by a smart phone. The interesting thing for me is that he was using some of the very things I have learned about in my Computer Vision class this semester. Nothing like seeing the practical application of the things you are learning about. The second lecture I got to was a very concise, but very thorough, explanation of artificial intelligence. Just a wetting of my appetite to learn more of the applied theories in class next semester.
The second thing I most enjoyed was renting bikes with a Ukrainian student and touring around the town. We rode the entire Promenade loop and around the Aasee. Being a rare sunny Saturday afternoon, there were many natives grilling, sun bathing, and generally enjoying the outdoors. We found a group slack-lining and joined in for half an hour. It has been such a long time since I last slack-lined, but I was walking more than halfway across by the time we left.
Now for my regular life:
Great news! I got the extension for my scholarship to the end of next July! It gives me money for food and housing as well as paying for health insurance. I am now more relaxed, not having to worry about money for another year. I can work on getting my residents permit extended and making more more solid travel plans (going home for Christmas time, I can't wait!).
Also exciting for me, I got into the project group I wanted for next semester. Aside from a set of classes, electives, labs, seminar, and thesis work, the Masters program requires a semester long group project. Not having started it yet, it sounds like it will be similar to the design groups in my bachelors. I got into a project group working with robot proxemics or "the way in which the interacting partners mutually establish and control their spatial separation and posture while being involved into the communication situation". I can't wait to start it with the new semester in October.
Well until next time.
Nic
