Good Morning, Alles

Hi all!

I'm still pretty tired, but I feel a lot better today. Yesterday was pretty rough. I'm sure it is because I got up around 1 AM (home time) and then had to sit around and literally wait all day. When I got to work, it didn't seem like it was going to be too bad because I was working on the second half of the in situ protocol, which was pretty lengthy. However, I got about halfway through, and then Steffi and I couldn't find the chemical we needed, and the only person in the lab that would know didn't come in to work (for some unknown reason). So, not knowing what else to do, we just stuck everything in the fridge and had to leave it. And suddenly I was out of stuff to do.

Oh, one really sweet thing was that Steffi invited me over for cheesecake at her house on Sunday. She said it was a good chance for her daughter to learn some English (she just started learning it in school) and she knows that there isn't much to do in Germany on Sundays, so she is going to pick me up on Sunday afternoon. I thought that it was really nice of her, and I'm very excited.

I went to a lecture with Martin and a few other people in the lab about a new microscope that the MPI was testing for a few days. It was actually being set up in our lab. The lecture was really awful and dry, but later in the evening I went to go take a look at the microscope, and it was very cool. It is very powerful, but the software to use it is sort of clunky and hard to learn. They claim that it is so much faster than a normal microscope (which it is) but the time "difference" between a normal microscope and this new one is probably negligible once you consider how long it takes to figure out the proper computer settings in order to use it.

I spent some time reading some articles, and watching David do his testing. I felt rather useless, to be honest. And, of course, I kept running back to the office to check my email. Finally, around 7:00 or so, (I'm sure it was mostly because he knew that I was making myself nuts) David said that he needed to run to the Klinikum to get some money from an ATM, and while he was over there, he thought he was going to get some ice cream. He wanted to know if I would like to tag along. So, of course, I did. By the way, German ice cream is awesome. It is so much creamier than the ice cream at home (it is more like Carl's and less like Cold Stone), and the flavors are to kill for. So, he bought me an ice cream cone (I got a scoop of Haselnuss and a scoop of Pfefferminz....YUM!) and we walked over to a nearby park to sit and eat because the weather yesterday was gorgeous. It was probably around 70 degrees and sunny and amazing. Anyway, I was much more relaxed by the time we went back to the MPI, and so I left not long afterwards.

Then I went to the grocery store to pick up laundry detergent so that I can wash some clothes today. Whoo! Once I got back from that, I decided to hang out and try my hand at doing some reading in German. So, I found Alice in Wonderland online in German and began reading that. It is taking a while, because I have to look up a lot of the words. Craig emailed me to let me know that everything was cool around midnight, which was wonderful!

One really really cool thing that I've started to notice is that I am understanding a LOT more German now. For the most part, I can figure out what is being said around me. When I first got here, everyone spoke so quickly that I couldn't even distinguish individual words from one another, much less understand what was being said. Now, though, I'm much better at keeping up, and I'm learning a lot of new vocabulary. I still don't speak it much (except with Steffi) but I am making a lot of progress with regard to my comprehension.

And that was my day. And now, I need to go to work, because I am a bit late. Love you all!