July 16th and July 17th (More pictures added later)

Dairy

July 16th

Breezing, greenness, sunshine, along with beautiful landscapes, these are the features standing out in my impression about Weimar, where Goethe spend most of his life. We left Jena in the morning and took about half an hour to arrive in this peaceful but romantic city. It is very exciting to have a short but comprehensive guided tour through Weimar. We walked around the Goethe and Schiller statue, Goethes Gartenhaus, Bauhaus-Museum, Castle, GoetheResidence and so many other landmarks. In the afternoon free time in Weimar, we spent most of our time in the Bauhaus Museum, where presents the artworks, designs from about one century ago. It is a design and art school founded at 1919 in Weimar and moved to Berlin during the Second World War. The style of these presenting artworks are very modern but simple. It is hard for me to realize that those things have an age more than ninety years. It is also fascinating to witness how many things we used today are influence by the designs and ideas from students studying at Bauhaus, for example the design of iPhone, cans for drinks and also pencils that are most common in US. I am really glad to have chances to learn about this art school and its history. Besides those landmarks, we checked a very famous ice cream store in Weimar. As always, food plays a big part in my trips. 

When we came back to Jena, we are all invited to the American day and its exhibition. As a Chinese, this activities is a good learning process for me. The guest speaker from South Poverty Law Center delivered us a wonderful speech about the history of civil Rights movement and the contribution of Martin Luther King. It is surprising to see this connection to Berlin because Dr. King also visited East Berlin to inspire the people there. It is a wonderful lecture to hear.

July 17th 

Cannot believe that this program is coming to an end. Time runs always so fast especially when we enjoy it. In Chinese, there is a very famous quote: “天下没有不散的筵席”, which translated in English is that “everything will come to an end.” It is sad but at the same time, a new journey will start from here. 

Since this is the last day of the program, we didn’t have a lot of activities. We left Jena in the morning. Everything went quite smoothly today. Besides that it was a little breathtaking when we rushed to catch the train. But our group were so organized and everyone was calm so that we arrive at our train two minutes before it came. After two hours trip, we finally came back to Berlin where we spent three weeks. We have some free time in the afternoon before the group dinner. For me, I spent all of my time in the apple store to repair my laptop. It is very lucky that I finally got a spot at Genius Bar. At first, I thought it was battery problem. It finally turned out that my battery just run out of power and my charging cable was mal-function. But we found out there was software issue in my laptop so I have to purchased a external hardware disk to backup all of my data and then reinstall an operational system. I lost all of my programs but it is still better than cannot use it. 

The group dinner was so great. We went to Baraka, which is an Egyptian style restaurant. This is my first time to try this type of food and it is surprising delicious to me. Our lovely instructors Julie and Manuela gave a final conclusion to our program. Just like what Julie said, “it is bitter happy.” Even though the program ended, its impacts on us never came to an end.
Here is some pictures of our dinner from Julie: