To begin, we flew from Minneapolis to Detroit to Rome, and then spent 3 days in Rome sightseeing. After Rome, we stopped off in nearby Tivoli to tour Villa d’Este and Villa Adriana.

The next stop was the remote Assergi (l’Aquila) near Gran Sasso. Here we had some lectures given by researchers working in the nearby Gran Sasso Laboratory. Due to some political reasons and safety concerns, we were not allowed to tour the Gran Sasso Laboratory (which is located deep within the heart of the mountain, connected to one of the tunnels thru the mountain).

Leaving Gran Sasso, we took a bus to Florence for some more sightseeing. There was a little bit of class work when we toured the European Gravitational Observatory about an hour outside of town. The EGO is looking for gravity waves using a very large interferometer. Neat stuff, really.

After spending a few nights in Florence, we stopped for the afternoon in Pisa before continuing on to Torino. Torino was just a quick layover until we left promptly the next morning for the Laboratory in the Frejus Tunnel (you know, the one that’s closed now because of the fire that killed 2 people).

Next stop was the beautiful Geneva, Switzerland, where we stayed 4 nights to tour the nearby CERN research facilities. After the 4th night in Geneva, we drove to Montreaux located on the other side of Lake Geneva to tour an old castle, Chateau de Chillon.

We then took the TGV from Geneva to Paris, a trip which lasted about 3.5 hours. After spending 3 nights in Paris (so 2 full days of sightseeing), the trip ended and we flew home.

I’ll try to write more about my experiences when I get the chance.

Brad on a Donkey, Originally uploaded by Brad Froehle.

You should check out Flickr, as it now has all of my pictures on it. Like this one, of me on a Donkey outside of Old City Hall in Boston, MA. You can also see a set of all the pictures from my trip to Boston.

I’ll try to do a good job posting notes here when I upload cool things to Flickr, you should also subscribe to the RSS feed to get instant updates.

I have all of my homework done for the rest of the semester, save for the Final Report in Methods of Experimental Physics (MXP). That paper is due on Friday, a rapidly approaching deadline!

However, I should be mostly home free after Friday — I only have two finals, one on Thursday and one on Friday.

Tonight wrapped up my Latin Dance class, something that I will definitely miss. Joy (the instructor) and I were talking afterwards — she asked what I was taking next year and then proceeded to suggest Swing Dance. Funny that I already signed up for that one. After class 20 or so of us headed over to Famous Dave’s for Salsa night. We stayed for a little under two hours, leaving pretty early because everybody has stuff to attend to.

So far 4/7 classes have wrapped up completely:

• Latin Dance
• Physics Seminar
• Pepband
• University Bands
• Methods of Experimental Physics: Still have to finish that pesky report.
• Analysis: Just a final exam.

• Electricity and Magnetism: final exam.

If you aren’t a friend or family, some 400 of those won’t be initially visible to you. If you are a Flickr user already, leave a message here and I’ll add you as a friend. If not, either leave your email and I’ll send you a password to get in, or sign up for Flickr and leave your screenname.

I’ve also put together about 30 photo sets that should be interesting to browse.

At the time it wasn’t very painful. I managed to limp off the field without any problems, but soon realized that my ankle felt funny… swollen (but not painful). I layed on the ground, but refused an initial offer for ice. After another minute, my ankle started swelling and was soon quite large—maybe the size of a softball.

Intramural sports had already dispensed their only ice bag for the evening, so Rachelle had to ride over to McDonald’s to get some ice for me. Stepnick graciously drove me home.

I spent Thursday night in the dorms, but quickly realized that I’d have a much better time this weekend at home with a couch and a TV to watch. My mom picked me up Friday morning, and I have been home since.

My ankle has made considerable progress in the last 48 hours. I can now walk on the ankle in a sort of unusual fashion. It doesn’t feel comfortable enough to really use very much yet. But it can load bear without any pain… a very good sign.

I should be back and walking in another day or two. Latin dance on Tuesday might be a little crazy, I might have to sit this week out.

All in all, I feel lucky that it wasn’t anything more severe. It did ruin a lot of my weekend, including missing the Gopher Spring Football Game at the Metrodome and the Drum Major Tryouts this afternoon.

I’ll post a few pictures of the injury when I get back to school tomorrow and have access to my camera again.

The 2005 Recipients from the U of M are:

• Bradley M. Froehle (That’s me!)

University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Major(s): Physics/Mathematics
Career Goal: Ph.D. in Physics/Condensed Matter. Conduct leading edge research in condensed matter physics and teach at the university level.

• Loren Greenman

University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Major(s): Chemistry/Chemical Engineering
Career Goal: Ph.D. in Chemistry. Conduct research in the area of computational chemistry at an academic institution or the industrial world.

• Katie N. Lee

University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Major(s): Biochemistry/Chemistry
Career Goal: M.D./Ph.D. in Cancer Research/Biochemistry/Pharmacology. Conduct research using new and established scientific concepts to investigate and translate basic science research into clinical solutions.

• David P. Molitor

University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Major(s): Mathematics/Physics
Career Goal: Ph.D. in Mathematics. Research mathematician in the field of combinatorics studying the applications of mathematics to physics and economics.

This scholarship is good for $7.5k/year for up to two years to cover Tuition, Fees, Textbooks, Room and Board.

Best humorous congratulations from a professor so far:

Brad,

Congratulations for the Scholarship. I guess you are not just sleeping in class. Yuichi

Coincidentally, David Molitor and I are going to be roommates during our class in Italy/Switzerland/France over May Session.

I uploaded some pictures of Boston and Durham to Flickr. Enjoy.

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Ten students participated at the University of Minnesota. Of these, 3 were selected before the competition to compete on behalf of the University in the team portion (calculated by summing the individual students’ scores).

2004 Team Members consisted of Matthew Korson, Derek Dalle, and myself. I haven’t heard how the team fared in the competition.

Personally I scored 46/120, placing me 122nd nationally.

This is up from last year’s performance, where I scored 30.3/120 and placed 200th. I definitely knew I did better than last year when I walked out of the test, but my feelings on the test’s difficulty still hold true.

Update: The University of Minnesota – Twin Cities team finished in 63rd place overall.

I need to figure out summer plans and housing for next year.

They make me look like Tobey Maguire from Spiderman.

I really hope this gets better fast…

Look for class updates in a few days.

Down to 15 credits this semester.

Although now I’ll probably add a 4 credit math class (maybe Topology — it’s with Don Kahn — or Computational Algebraic Geometry with Moeckel).

Time to go try out some math classes!

I’m bring a camera, so hopefully there’ll be a lot of pictures to show off as well.

From this point forward, I am not an employee of Walgreens Co. It was a fun three years, but it was time in my life to move on. I couldn’t bear another fall of trying to balance classes, work and marching band.

The current prescription is -3.75 in the left eye and -4.25 in the right. This is up from -3.25, -3.75 last time I had an eye exam. Here’s to hoping that they don’t get any worse so I can have LASIX in a few years.

Minnesota Brass had a performance Saturday night in Blooming Prairie so I caught a ride down there with some friends in Minnesota Brass. I watched the Minnesota Brass rehearsal on Saturday afternoon and then they performed at nightfall as part of a a 100th year anniversary for the local bank. The Govenaires from St. Peter also performed their show. The event was finished with some fireworks that were “choreographed” to music, but the CD kept skipping so it was really quite terrible. The fireworks, however, were pretty awesome, especially for a small town like Blooming Prairie.

That evening almost a dozen of us crashed at Gary Tashima’s house. His mother was way too polite, going way out of her way to make sure everything was perfect. Gary’s younger brother looks just like Gary—it’s quite remarkable.

We sat and talked for a while, it was awesome to be able to reminisce with old band friends and meet some new people who will be joining the University of Minnesota’s Marching Band this fall. (Spat camp starts in under a month).

The weather during the night was quite nasty, lots of noisy thunder peals and bright flashes of lightning. I slept in a tent with Matt Beyer and Ryan (aka “That Guy”), but we didn’t stake out the corners—“Oh it won’t be windy or storm…” I had the joy of dashing out in the rain at 5am to grab tent stakes from the car and put stakes in the corners so that the tent wouldn’t try to blow over with us in it.

On Sunday we drove over to Le Sueur so Minnesota Brass could march in their parade. Sarah Henning and I helped distribute water to the corps members during the parade. Afterwards we enjoyed some overly buttered corn and other fair goodies.

The weekend was wonderful with the exception of the numerous down times that Sarah and I faced since we weren’t in Minnesota Brass like everybody else we were traveling with.

And if I have to eat Dairy Queen one more time this weekend…