"Then it begins."

Hello family, friends, and strangers!

Thanks to an extremely patient effort by Mom, I am now fully packed and ready to depart on my journey to Darmstadt, Germany. For those of you who are a little hazy as to what exactly I will be doing over in Europe for the summer, I will be conducting research at the Technische Universität Darmstadt for eight weeks, and then traveling for about two and a half weeks. My research will involve the study of high temperature stress-strain behavior of structural steel. Apparently, not much research has been done in this area, so the end goal is to have compiled a lot of data by the end of the summer that will then be used to make future steel framed structures more fireproof.

I will be leaving from O'Hare tomorrow afternoon and will be arriving in Frankfurt early Saturday morning. I'll let you all know when I have settled into my apartment, but until then, "I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing."