Brief Recap, More to Come - It's been wild

So I am back from Budapest. I had a really good time, and Budapest was a very pretty city. Mostly I did sightseeing, no really special activities. Walking around the city, seeing this and that, eating good food, and repeat. Very nice and relaxing. Pics will be posted soon.

Other news: I have a Deutsche girlfriend! Amazing I know. Her name is Janine and we met about 3 weeks ago. Very sweet girl and fun to be around. Plus she's really patient with my barbaric German. She doesn't live in Aachen but about 2.5 hours south, which is sort of a problem. But she's come up to visit and I will go down to see her later this month. Not such a big deal. We met through the girlfriend of my roomate. Janine came along for the ride up to Aachen with her, and that was about it. I'll have pics of her also.

Lastly, yesterday I saw two operations. It was very interesting. I drove down to a hospital to visit a neurosurgeon and talk about my project. While I was there, we got to see another doctor implant a valve system into the body/head of a 10 day old baby. I put on the whole surgeon gown stuff, with mask and everything, and was standing about 10 feet from the operating table. Plus, after that was over, I checked out some man, about 50, who was having a rather large brain tumor removed. That was eerie and sad. I saw him before the operation, peacefully lying on the table, being prepped. He looked like a totally normal father, with grey chest hair, just like anyone his age. Then I left to see the baby op, and when I came back about 45 later, the guy was hardly recognizeable. The skin on his head had been cut and pushed away to both sides. That scrunched up all the skin on his face so he looked like one of those dogs with all those wrinkles. Then there was a large hole in his skull, maybe 1 inch in diameter, and they were digging around trying to separate the tumor from the brain. But,just like any of those surgery shows, they were not being gentle. The brain tissue was pushed away with forceps to either side and they were pulling and pushing their way through. There was always blood of course that needed to be removed and it didn't seem like a very clean business. They had said that the guy, although he could live maybe another year instead of 2 weeks, would not be all there afterwards.

So all in a all, an exciting last week or so. By the way, I am coming back to the US on dec 17 and will be there for the next month, so set aside some time to get together. and check back on the blog
peace