Out of all the days on the trip, today was the only day I wasn’t particularly looking forward to. I feel like my brain was so out of school mode that the thought of standing in front of everyone for 25 minutes was so daunting. I think it was also intimidating thinking about presenting for the German students because they are all especially smart and well-spoken.
We planned to meet as a group at the University at 12:30pm, so I spent the morning getting breakfast, finalizing my speech, practicing it, and figuring out how to send Elisabeth our presentation. Since members of my group were still finishing their speeches and needing to print when we got to the University, we didn’t have time to run through the presentation. I felt nervous about how close we would be to the time limit, but I knew I had no control over the final outcome and that I just needed to focus on my part.
I really enjoyed watching other groups present because everyone did such a great job on their presentation. I feel like I learned a lot about each company on top of what I learned just from the talks and factory visits. When it was time for my group to go up, I felt less nervous since we were second to last and by that time most of the students were too tired to pay super close attention. Standing up there wasn’t as scary as I imagined, and I did my part just as I had practiced which I was happy about. I felt so relieved to be done when it was all over! Sitting in that room for 3 hours was not my favorite, so I was really looking forward to leaving and going to our farewell dinner.
I sat at a smaller table with two other girls from Pitt and two girls who were exchange students from Madrid and Brazil. Sitting at this dinner it really started to sink in that I would never see a lot of these people again. I felt really sad that friends I made would just become people I followed on social media, but I tried to remind myself to be grateful for the opportunity to meet them.
We finished the night with some gelato and hungout in the city center. I also started to feel sad about leaving Augsburg because I felt like I didn’t get enough time to explore it in its entirety or do any shopping in the city. Despite these sad feelings, I was so excited for our free day in Salzburg and to explore a whole new country!
