Why did I come here again?

I have been on such a high being in a different place, experiencing new culture, new food, new language, that I have completely forgot the purpose of my trip. Yesterday, however, brought me back down to earth, as I had to meet with my professor at BRSU (Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University) who coordinates with my professor at YorkU, to help me pick out the courses I'll be taking here.

Our main concern was courses in English (as my Deutsch is still nicht sehr gut), and of course, courses for which I would get credits back at York. I have to be enrolled in 5 courses for the semester, and so far the courses we've selected are giving me goosebumps from excitement. Nothing is finalized yet, but I am so super-excited I just have to share this with you:

1. Operating Systems
2. Computer Vision
3. Autonomous Mobile Robots
4. Machine Learning and Adapting
5. Introductory German

I am so stoked, you guys have no idea. I'm giddy from excitement. Robots, you guys... ROBOTS!!! I'm gonna be working with robots!!! How they see; how they move; how they learn and adapt to their environments... EEEEeeeeeeeeeeee!! ^_____^

When I came home, I remembered that I'm still enrolled in one course at YorkU and had made an arrangement with the professor to continue the course from here. Since it's a Java programming course, and the professor actually knows some people at BRSU, he figured the programming assignments I could submit online, and any written tests could be proctored by someone here. So I checked the course website, and what do you know - I completely forgot that in Toronto, my class is just settling in at the lab to write a programming test. I emailed the professor with an update on my status and asked him how he was planning for me to write the assignment. He told me that it was no problem if I simply log into the system at York and do the assignment. Since it was all very last minute (and 11pm local time), there was no way he could get someone to monitor me, so I was on the honour system to not use the internet for help during the test. Honestly, though, it's Java, and you either know it - or you don't. Being a programmer for the last 10 years, it was no big deal, but having to switch gears so fast from being a tourist, to now sitting in front of my laptop writing Java code and sending it half-way around the world to be graded, was a bit of a buzzkill. Luckily I had ran out of cash earlier that day, so my usual routine of coming home and having a couple of beers was interrupted - good thing too - drinking and coding is a mess.

And now, I'm off to school again, for a very exciting meeting which I'll have to tell you all about when I come back.