One Day More

This is it: I leave tomorrow for Germany! I'm very excited, and a bit nervous, but I trust God will take care of me.

I just recently realized that some of you may not know the story of why I'm going to Germany. It's nothing much really: I've always had a vague interest in German culture, so I was considering spending a semester abroad, but I couldn't bear to miss a semester at HMC so I started looking for summer opportunities. I found a couple work abroad programs and applied. It was actually pretty straightforward; if you'd like to spend sometime overseas, do some internet searching it's a lot easier than you might think.

The program I'm participating in is called RISE ( Research Internships in Science and Engineering) sponsored by DAAD a German exchange program. Basically, German graduate students post internship opportunities online, US undergrad students apply for the positions and RISE matches the candidates and pays a stipend to cover living expenses. The project I am working on is titled: "MAC Protocols for the Mixed Mode Environment", which means very little even to me :-P . Basically, I will be researching and testing wireless protocols (a system of rules about how devices in a wireless network behave) which try to guarantee that a message gets from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time, while trying to conserve as much power as possible. I'm going to be working at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in Darmstadt, Germany which is just a little south of Frankfurt. (If you're curious look at the map)

One more note: some folks wanted a way to get updates by email, so I've added a couple of buttons over on the left to let you subscribe either in your RSS reader or by email. Just type your email address and press the button and you should recieve an email everytime I write a new post.

Next time you hear from me I'll be in Germany!