Last Day

Well, in about an hour I'll be leaving Gottingen...

And I have to admit that as much as I would like to stay, it'll be nice to come home. And also, I had an incredibly awesome last day. I still have a bit of packing to do (goodness, do I have a lot of stuff to bring home!) so I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that it consisted of running around like a mad person to get everything finished, a really amazing (-ly difficult) bike ride to Nikolausberg (WHY does Steffi have to live on a mountain???) a wonderful evening meal with some great friends that I am going to miss terribly, and a slightly tearful goodbye. Oh yes, and seeing two shooting stars! Whoo!

I know, this really doesn't tell you anything about my day (or the last few days, which were also astoundingly wonderful) but I'm afraid that there isn't time for one last super long post. But you can get all the details from me when I get home!!

And speaking of going home, I guess I should finish my packing, because my taxi comes in about 20 minutes. I love you all dearly, and I'll see you on the other side (of the Atlantic)!

Love always,

Kace

Samstag and Shopping

Hello all!

Well, this is my final week in Germany. At least for now! I must admit, as much as I miss all of you and can't wait to see you again, I am quite sad to be leaving. I really love this place and all of the people that I've met here. Oh well. It just means that I have to come back again!

Saturday was quite a lot of fun. I met up with Tracy and Schuyler (pronounced Skyler) at 9AM to go to the Wochenmarkt one last time. We didn't really see much that we wanted at the markt, but we then proceeded to spend the rest of the day shopping for gifts/souveniers. It started out as a gorgeous day, although it was a bit warm towards mid-afternoon. Unfortunately, the unpredictable weather suprised us by dumping a large amount of rain while we were walking to Andrew's flat (we wanted to have dinner with him because he was leaving Sunday to go back to Canada.) So, we did go have a very nice but somewhat soggy dinner. Also, I have decided that I don't really like Weisswurst. I'm not a big fan of the texture, and it tasted a bit like spam.

Sunday consisted of me frantically working on my poster, as did Monday (but, I found out that one of my in situs worked!!! WHOOOOOO!!!) Tuesday, on the other hand was crazy busy, and no work was accomplished on my poster (except to discover that you can do t-tests in excel. I'm a bit technologically impaired sometimes). Anyway, yesterday was the Summer Symposium at the MPI. The whole day consisted of lectures given by the different groups in the MPI so that we could get a feel for what the other people in the building are working on. I actually only saw four of the talks (although there were many more) and Martin's was definitely the best. Then at 5 or so we all went to a cook-out (in Germany they call it a barbeque (even if there is no BBQ)or a 'grillen party'). Hee. Anyway, the whole laboratory was there, and it was quite fun. Because Martin's lab is the newest in the building, we got stuck doing a lot of the grunt work. I ended up having to grill some pork chops. I've discovered that I am not very good at it....I'm never sure if the meat is done so I tend to overcook it. Nevertheless, we had an excellent time, and a few of us (Robert, Martin, Steffi, Bjorn, David and I) ended up staying until 1:30 AM just hanging out and talking. It was amazing. It was also a bit sad, because we are going to do something on Thursday night because I'm leaving, but Martin won't be there. So essentially, last night was the last time that I will get to hang out with him. ::sigh::

Anyway, I should go. I really need to get to the lab way early this morning, because I have a TON of work to do. Sorry for taking so long to get everyone up to date!

My Apologies

Hi everyone!

I am terribly sorry about not updating, but it has been a frightfully busy week. I'm scrambling to finish gathering my data and get my poster and my paper done and all of that stuff. So I've been working super long hours. (For instance, I worked more than 12 hours yesterday...but that turned out to be a good thing, so no worries).

So, really the only thing of real interest that happened this week was after work last night. It was about 9:30, and the only people left in the lab were me, Martin, David, and Bjorn. I was just finishing up the last bit of my experiment when David popped his head into the lab and asked if I wanted to come with him and Martin to get something to eat. I was not looking forward to having to come home and cook something for dinner, so I gladly agreed. (Bjorn, by the way, decided not to come). We went to the Asian place around the corner. We all ordered the Shark Soup, and we were all a bit disappointed by it, although I liked the texture of the meat and it was certainly much better with the addition of a bit of pepper. But my main dish was very good. It was duck with this amazing sauce and some perfectly cooked cabbage. David and Martin both got the super spicy stir fry stuff which also looked exceptional except for the chili peppers. You could always tell exactly when one of them found a hidden pepper. ::laughs:: Oh, I wish I could've gotten pictures.

We sat there, eating and talking until after midnight, when we finally realized how late it was and decided that it was time to go home. David walked me back to the institute, and we were laughing because he had told me earlier in the day that he had been out really late the last few nights and really wanted to get home early to go to bed. Needless to say, that didn't happen. Poor guy. I told him that I always stay up really late and get up early at home (Don't laugh, people! I really do when I'm at school. Those 8 AM classes require me to get up early enough to be conscious!!) and he claimed that it was easier for me because I'm younger. I told him that age wasn't an excuse because my parents and my sister are up nearly every day by 4AM (not to mention that he's only 25!)

But anyway...that was my evening yesterday. Today nearly everyone in the lab left early to go to Cologne, so I took the opportunity to leave a bit early as well. Tomorrow morning I'm going to try to go out and do some last minute gift shopping in the Innenstadt and generally just enjoy my last weekend here (oh yeah, and work on my poster ::sigh::). I hope that everyone else has a nice weekend as well!

Hamburg

Sorry about the delay today folks! I didn't get up until rather late, and then I was feeling a bit lazy today.

My trip to Hamburg was enjoyable, I guess. I saw lots of incredible things. It is a beautiful city, and it doesn't feel at all like it is the second largest city in Germany. Nevertheless, it wasn't a trip without problems.I ended up taking a different train than Jim and Tracy because my rail pass expired and I didn't want to pay 120 euros for a round trip ticket on the fast trains. So, my train ride ended up being 4 hours instead of the 2 hours that it would take on the ICE (fast) trains. Nevertheless, Jim and Tracy were supposed to get there at roughly the same time that I was, and they were going to meet me on my platform.

So, imagine my surprise when I got there, and the only person waiting for me on the platform was Tracy. Apparently, Jim never showed up at the train station that morning. (I found out today that he and Tracy were actually on the same train to Hamburg, but somehow they didn't find each other). So, it was going to be just me and Tracy for the day. Which wasn't terrible, but neither one of us had really had a chance to look up what we would like to see in the city, so we had no idea where to go. Plus, of the three of us, Jim definitely spoke the best German.

Nevertheless, Tracy and I bought a map, and set off to go see the sights. The weather was wonderful for most of the day, and Hamburg is really one of the most beautiful cities I've seen since I've been here. Case and point:

But anyway, I was quite nervous about touring with only Tracy. I don't really know her that well, and I'm not very good at small talk. (Plus, I knew that her boyfriend had just broken up with her a few days before and she was still pretty upset about that). The great thing about Jim is that you never really have to say much around him. He's enormously entertaining to just sit and listen to, and every once in a while you can throw in your two cents and all is well.

But anyway, we managed for the most part, and it was only slightly awkward. So, we wandered around, saw some very famous buildings, like the Rathaus and the Stock Exchange, and other similar places. We also found this AMAZING park that we sat in for a while. There were some pretty fountains and lots of chairs to relax in, and ponds with ducks! Both Tracy and I agreed that we could sit there all day long. It was beautiful. Here is the view from the chairs that we snagged in the park: After that, it started to get very very warm, and we thought about walking back down towards the docks to take a boat tour. But unfortunately, when we got there, it was a bit expensive and very confusing, and the boats either had no cover at all or were completely enclosed in glass (neither of which were very appealing to Tracy. I didn't care much one way or the other). So anyway, we decided to scrap the boat idea and went to find the street that had the old warehouse district and the street that had the houses right on the canals. Which, eventually, we did find, but it wasn't nearly as awesome as we thought it would be. Oh well.

By about mid-afternoon, though, we were both very very tired, so we decided to try to find someplace to eat. I sort of wanted to stay down by the canals and eat at one of the restaurants there, but Tracy thought they were rather expensive and we walked back up towards the center of the city, although we couldn't find anyplace at all to eat there. We finally found a reasonably priced restaurant there that served burgers (no bun or anything...just burgers with nothing on them! Crazy!) and one of the most incredible baked potatoes ever. I don't know what was in that sour cream, but it was awesome..... Anyway, after that it was nearly 5 o'clock, and we were both exhausted and a bit grumpy, so we decided to go back towards the train station. There was a train at around 6 that we decided to take to go home.

Unfortunately, I didn't really have time to do any souvenier shopping, and I also didn't get to go up in the hot air balloon to get a really good look at the city.

Overall, I'm glad I went, but one day I would like to go back to get a proper look at the city and do some of the things that I had wanted to do but didn't. Maybe on my next trip to Germany!

Home again, home again jiggety jog...

Hallo all!

And here is a short and exhausted post to let you know that I made it back from Hamburg in one piece. I have now been up for nearly 20 hours, however, and am about to fall over. Expect a post from me sometime tomorrow, but probably not until late afternoon my time because I intend to sleep until I wake up and not feel guilty even if I don't roll out of bed until 3 PM.

Hamburg

Hey everyone!

I managed to get in touch with Jim, and he and Tracy are going to Hamburg tomorrow morning just for the day. Unfortunately, my free rail pass expired today, and a normal ICE train ticket will cost me 120 euro for a round trip, so I will be traveling separately and will meet up with them in Hamburg. This also means that I will have to catch a 6 AM train (so I need to leave my room by about 5:15 AM). But, my train ticket will only cost 20 euro, including the return trip! Whoo!

Anyway, I'm going to go to bed now, since I need to be up in...oh....4 hours or so....

I love you all, and I will be sure to tell you all about my trip when I get back!

Comings and Goings

Hallo all!

By the way, this may be a bit random, but it is going to take me a while to get used to saying "Hello" again when I come home. I've gotten quite used to saying "Hallo" instead. In fact, I've grown so accustomed to it that I tend to use it even when talking to native English speakers here. But anyway, that is just a bit of a random side note.

In other news, Monday was quite an exciting day. Steffi and Gudrun came back from vacation, Mattias was back from being ill, and we got a new practical student, who unfortunately knows next to nothing about molecular biology. She seems to be very nice though. Pingkalai has her preparing fly antenna (poor girl...I wouldn't wish that job on anyone). So the lab was literally packed with people again. And David came back from his vacation on Wednesday. So now everyone is back. It's so much fun to have a full lab again, especially since last week there were maybe three or four people there at any given time.

Tuesday night was certainly interesting. One of the Americans here (he isn't from the RISE program, but he spends a lot of time with us anyway) was leaving, so we all got together to say goodbye. It was a lot of fun. It is rather sad to see our group slowly dwindling. But anyway....we all walked Frank to the train station that night (he was going briefly to Switzerland before he came back to Germany to fly home). I had taken my bike (and by my bike, I actually mean Steffi's) with me so that I could get home faster, and I wheeled it up to the train platform with me and parked it. We were all saying goodbye to Frank, when one of the other guys knocked into my bike and turned it over. The bike lock, which was sitting in the basket, flew out and fell down between the platform and the train tracks. Yikes....not good. The basket was also a little bent, but I managed to straighten that back out again.

Anyway, there wasn't anything we could really do about the lock until the train left, so we finished saying goodbye to Frank. After the train pulled away, one of the guys jumped down to retrieve the lock. At first I was really relieved because it looked like the lock was fine.......and then I noticed that the key had broken off in it. I managed to pull it out, and I can still lock up the bike, but I'm going to have to go out sometime in the next few days to buy a new lock for Steffi. ::Sigh:: Oh well. Apparently I can buy one for a reasonable price at one of the nearby supermarkets.

Erm...really, that has been the only eventful thing from this week. Steffi has started this new thing where she only speaks to me in German, and I can only answer in German. It is great practice, but it makes my head hurt sometimes. Hehe. Oh well. It's a shame that we couldn't have done that the entire time I've been here. I would be nearly fluent by now!

I still don't have any plans for the weekend, but I'm sure I'll think of something. I think that Jim is going to Hamburg, and I would love to go too, so maybe I can send him and email to find out when he is leaving and then tag along with him. We'll see how it goes. One way or the other, though, I'll let you all know what my plans are!

Love you all!