Woo!

Hey hey hey, I've very happy today and I'd like to share with you all the reason why! I received an email this morning from the school offering me a scholarship to pay all my tuition fees for the next 3 semesters. Woo! The Haniel Foundation will give me 4500 euros (6160 USD) over the course of the next year and half to finance my studies. Rock on! That's the biggest scholarship I've ever gotten and I'm pretty excited about it because it reduces my education costs a whole helluva lot. By the way, the Haniel Foundation coordinates lots of research and study-travel events and they provide a lot of money for exchange between Europe, Asia and USA. Here's a little note about their goals taken from their website:

The Haniel Foundation concentrates on four main areas in its work. Firstly, it supports young talent with scholarships for study trips and internships abroad and with pupils' academies. Its main focus here is on Europe, Asia and the USA. Secondly, the foundation works with selected universities to establish courses encouraging international knowledge transfer. Thirdly, it sets up platforms for exchanging opinions and experiences. For example, experts from business, politics and society discuss global developments at its events. And fourthly, the Haniel Foundation supports projects which help young people achieve a better level of education.

They have several partnerships with specific programs and one of the biggest beneficiaries of the money is the Willy Brandt School and I know several other classmates that also are receiving money from them. Glad I could join the ranks!

However, I can't take full responsibility for this good news, because the reason I got the money now was because one of my classmates is moving to the Berlin to attend the Hertie School, which is the big name policy school in Germany, meaning I inherited his scholarship money. I'm sad to see him leave because he was a very nice and fun person to talk to. But I am overjoyed that I was given his remaining funds and I hope I can carry on somewhat in his legacy. Here's to you, Lukas!  Of course I also have to be very gracious to my family who have helped me get here, and especially to Erika for living with me during this time. But it's really great being able to breathe easier and I imagine I will have a sound sleep tonight.

I'm still waiting to hear back from the DAAD scholarship which I applied for in November as well. If they select me then I will have to choose between one scholarship or the other, but since I still don't know those results, I'm very happy to have this one in the bag already.

Whew! This news combined with the beautiful weather this month has been an excellent boost of positivity. Today was about 50F, clear and sunny, and a slight breeze. Ich liebe frische Luft! Sorry to hear all the wicked weather news stateside, but all I see is an incentive for people to visit me next year. Although, it worries me that all the good things will come at once and there will be a shitty day soon, but I'll let future possibilities bother me when they are present realities.

EDIT: I discovered the name of my actual benefactor, it wasn't Amit as I had originally thought, but a German by the name of Lukas. So I changed the details around up above.

Video project team

So for one of my classes, we were divided into groups to complete assignments throughout the semester. One of our semester long projects was to create a public policy project to improve something around us, it could be in the university, the city, or even globally. Most of the projects involved the university and improving student life, especially for international students coming to the university. Our group's project was to install some photoluminescent tape in the staircases at one of the dorms. To me this was a pretty good project idea because this particular dorm is very ugly and run down. It was built in the mid 80's I believe and it is very utilitarian- big, blocky, concrete. The hallways have a tremendous echoing effect, the lights are few and far between, and there isn't much for emergency safety in it. A couple fire extinguishers here and there, and all the lights are on a timer, so in the hallways and staircases you have about 3-4 minutes from lights on to lights off. So you can easily get caught in the middle of a flight of steps in complete darkness. Getting to get to the next closest light switch must be done in pitch blackness. I noticed this problem also in my apartment, that if I go a little slower up or down the steps, I'm left in the dark midway through a flight of steps. So here is our project group's video. Originally it was going to be 5-6 minutes long, but we had to cut everything down to roughly 3 minutes to meet the requirements.  So here's our shortened informational horror film. Full screen for better viewing pleasure.

Leipzig

More photos! Wee! Last weekend Erika and I took a trip to Leipzig to visit her cousin and her cousin's boyfriend.  They hadn't seen each other in over 10 years, but now that both live in eastern Germany it was about time for a reunion. Leipzig is about 150km away from Erfurt and is about double the population. It's a rapidly growing city actually, and it's arts friendly attitude attracts a lot of young people and recently the New York Times wrote an article praising the music scene and hip culture as a "better Berlin". We didn't venture into one of these venues, but we did go to the Spinnerei, an old cotton textile factory that has been transformed into an art haven.

Some of the buildings are actually apartments for visiting and in-house artists.

From the outside everything looks pretty raw. I guess it makes for good inspiration. There is a custom bicycle maker: Rotor. Also art galleries and a pretty big art supply store.

But on the inside the buildings are nicely refurbished, but I bet heating can get pretty expensive. Here was a small art gallery that is open to the public

 Their specialty is the steel city bike. Looks pretty nice and I bet it rides smoothly. They have a few bikes prebuilt for sale, but you can also talk with one of the builders to fully customize your own.

Someone want to explain the lever on the left side of the handlebar to me? It connects to the front suspension, so it must be a lever for adjusting the compression on the fly.

A few old racing bikes on display, as well as some of their own creations hacked in half. And a bigass rear hub

Lots of old derailleurs in a glass case

I liked the upstairs office... 

I took some more pictures of the downtown area, but I'll only post a couple more. It was a pretty nice downtown area, lots of shops and people. But as I said earlier, Leipzig is much more for the hip, gritty, grungy, student types, so the shopping center is not the "cool" place to go. Oh yeah! Speaking of grunge, Erika's cousin told us that Leipzig hosts the world's largest goth festival each year. Thousands of people come to show off crazy outfits, piercings, and whatever else is happening in the goth world. I recommend you all google it and check out some of the pics.

This was a very cool cafe in the downtown area. The inside was also gorgeous, but I didn't take any pictures unfortunately. It was originally made around 1908 in the style of some Austria architecture so there was really ornate wood carvings all around the windows and above the bar with deep red velvety curtains and some very nice chandeliers.

One of several Kaufhalles, fancy shops and some historical statues of Faust giving his soul away to the devil. Stupid tourist group was in the way so I didn't photograph that either.

All in all, it was a very nice weekend trip, and not too costly either. Double score. Since gas is so expensive here, there are a lot of people that do ride shares and several different websites that organize them. So to get there we met up with some guy near a highway exit who was traveling from way western Germany. He dropped off one person in Erfurt, and picked us up and drove us to the main train station in Leipzig at a meager 7 euros per person. By comparison, we took the bus home and it cost us 11 euros. I can't believe how expensive the buses are in the US by comparison. $50 to go from Ames to Minneapolis, one way. 18 euros is about $25, for both directions.