June 29

Haha, I ran the new reaction today.  It even went well, and ran really crazy cool.  At one point when I was adding a solvent, it changed colors pretty drastically about 3 or 4 times (same solvent).  Twas fun, and the product turned out ok, I think.  We based the procedure on a paper that Dr. Heckmann found, and I noticed during the course of doing the reaction that they either outright lied with some numbers (giving an amount of grams and moles that do not agree) or were very vague.  Apparently people don't do science for the joy of expanding our knowledge of the universe.  Who knew?  So we will see tomorrow if I actually made some good substance with a decent yield.  Here's hoping.  Dr. Heckmann showed a group of youth through the lab today, which was interesting for them hopefully.  I had another German lesson with Oliver today, which was nice; there is always more to learn, and more mistakes to make.  After work, you might be surprised to learn that I watched soccer.  But what you would never guess is that I also ate an apple while watching.  Anyway, I also figured out, during the course of my run what the recipe is for a not horrible run.  It is simpler than you might think.  The first and only thing that you need to do is not fill yourself with carbon dioxide before you go out.  For those who do not know, much of the water that you buy here is mineral water, which can be bought with bubbles.  In the intent of having a more authentic Germany experience, and because I find it quite refreshing, I have started buying water with gas.  That gas is bad because it means that there is also carbonic acid in it.  It turns out that every time I have started running after drinking mineral water, it goes poorly.  So, I did the opposite and things worked well.  Also, on the way back during my cool down, I walked past an old lady sitting at a green light.  It was like her eyes were connected to the light via fiber optics, but the traffic light was flying away from her so quickly that it looked red to her.  I caught her eye, pointed at the light and gave her a thumbs up and just kept on walking.  For some reason, that was the impetus she needed to understand that it was in fact ok to go.  Maybe they should have thumbs up and down instead of red and green lights.  The part I enjoyed the most about the whole thing was the astonished look of recognition, then the waving of both arms off of the wheel in thanks.  By enjoyed I think I mean that I am afraid to walk alongside the street in Ingelheim now.  In other news, the Portugal-Spain game has been pretty great so far.  Hard to expect less I suppose.  Oh, and also, I got to have a short Google chat with Mark my roommate today.  He will be going to work in Singapore for the rest of the summer working on his own and his brother's film stuff.  That is pretty cool.  In even more news, the German station that is displaying the soccer matches here, really likes to do slow motion segments of players doing things.  Usually it is just running or tackling, but they just showed a goalie doing the thing where you blow air through your lips and let them wag about all crazy like.  Good stuff to be sure. Also, kudos to the people who spot the poorly made physics joke/observation that I made.

June 28

Today I did a reaction with Barbara.  Whenever that happens, I always learn more about the little things that I am doing wrong.  That is very much a good thing.  She does it differently than Dirk does, little stronger perhaps, but I appreciate it a little more I think.  It went very well, and everything turned out like it was supposed to.  It was probably one of the craziest reactions that I have done so far, because it was a surface reaction, where the powder stays as a suspension, and reacts with the liquid being dropped in, to form another suspension.  That was cool, and it evolved a lot of gas, which is always cool.  I talked with Dr. Heckmann about my little project that will be starting soon.  It should be fun, but certainly a challenge.  It involves making a side product that a reaction produces, as a reference substance so that it can be characterized; that will be tomorrow, as well as a German lesson.  I also found out that I was paid for my time in May.  I'm not sure why I didn't expect to be, but for some reason I was just assuming that I would be getting three months of wages no matter how long I worked.  So yeah, nice surprise there, and a good explanation for why there was extra money in my bank account when I checked it on Friday.  So, I spent it all right away, on a telescope that does not fit into my apartment because it is too big, and doesn't give a good view of anything.  Actually, I did walk over to the book store.  I bought two books and got one for free.  Two of them were children's books, or at least Encyclopedia Brown, or Boxcar children level, and the third was the Hobbit.  I hope to make it through the first two, and then attempt the Hobbit.  I looked through the first two for a bit, and it looks like reading in German is going to be a bit of a challenge.  I also had the wonderful chance to talk to my parents this evening.  The rate here is like €1.00-1.50 per minute, but that kind of looks like the way it is going to be.  At this point, communication can be done through e-mail, but it is just wonderful to hear voices.  I also tried to use my microphone today to create a voice recording.  It picks up voices poorly, but I just remembered that I have a camera with video capabilities, so that will probably be better.  Oh, and also, I got a wonderful e-mail from Cam today, in which he gave me a wonderfully written and engaging look at his experience in Cincinnati this year.  Cam, you are awesome!

June 27

Today church was at 11:00 and a combined service with St. Michael's catholic church, right next door.  Unfortunately I could not remember if this was the one abnormally timed Sunday or not, so I got there an hour early.  Fortunately, the grounds of the Bergkirche are wonderful for just sitting and doing nothing.  So naturally I just sat there for an hour, looking around and doing nothing.  At a couple of points, people walked past, and one man with his tiny little daughter and puppy remarked to me something in German, which I told him that I did not understand, because I am a jerk…actually because I could not understand.  He said laughed, said, "No problem" and kept walking.  I looked it up later, and he had remarked either that I looked deep in thought or melancholy.  I would like to think deep in thought.  The service was pretty cool this morning.  I am starting to know the songs better too, which is good.  One of the ones we sang today involved a lot of colors, talking about diversity; every time one of the colors was named in the song, the people with that color bulletin had to wave them in the air.  That was pretty great I suppose.  I certainly enjoyed it.  After worship I went home and had some leftovers for lunch, watched some soccer and took a wonderful nap.  I then got up, listened to a podcast, and took another nap.  Napping is fun.  I was supposed to meet the Canadian student at a Biergarten to watch the soccer match between Germany and England, however it turns out that they only have public viewings for evening games.  Quite the drag.  It was not all bad though, because I went back and watched it at the Turkish restaurant that is directly below my apartment.  It was a slow day there, so I watched it with two of the workers and who I assumed was the owner.  They were very nice about me just coming in and watching the game there by myself.  I asked of course though.  When the game finished, Germany was of course victorious, and the streets were filled with loud noises, yelling, honking and general yelling of, "Deutschland‼" by some small children.  After the game I listened to another podcast and took another short nap.  Today might have been the laziest day that I have ever spent anywhere.  I did manage to do laundry and the dishes, but really little else.  I think it was nice to just laze about.  Now I am recharged for another week of exploring culture and language maybe?  We will go with that.  Also, NCIS is on…in German of course.  The voice actor they chose for Ducky is quite hilarious, and not exactly the best choice I think.  He sounds like an old Australian rather than an old Scottish man.

June 26

Today might have been my most enjoyable day in Germany so far.  It was or course Saturday, so I slept in a bit, then went geocaching during the afternoon, and picked up 6 of them by riding all over Ingelheim and Gau-Algesheim on paths that I did not even know existed beforehand.  The pictures were taken while I was out geocaching.  One is of a Jewish cemetary that predates the World Wars substantially, and was the location of a geocache.  It was a bright, sunny, warm day and I got some nice sunburn.  I got to meet a fellow cacher, who pointed out where one of the caches was, after he saw me struggling a bit (he looked like the cacher type, and I could see he had some sort of handheld that was not a cell phone, so I didn't feel like I was giving anything away, by searching while he could see).  After the caching bout I returned, cooled down, had some food and a shower and watched some soccer before meeting Nadine and her friend on the train for Mainz to meet Dirk.  I met Nadine and Natasha just fine on the train, though we had to wait quite a while for Dirk, Tina (his girlfriend) and Tina's friend (She is American-German, but I cannot for the life of me remember her name; it was nice to talk to her, and she was very amiable.  Her father was in the army and based in Wiesbaden, and neither English nor German is a foreign language to her) to arrive via Straßenbahn (streetcar).  They finally came, and we went together through the packed streets to the city center that is near the Dom.  If you think of the Hudsonville fair sans animals and packed into the streets of the old part of a stereotypical German city, then add copious amounts of alcohol consumption, you will have a pretty good idea of Johannisfest in Mainz on Saturday night.  It was actually a really cool atmosphere though, and there were really no crazy drunken people, just normal, safe levels of consumption (at least where I was; as we left there was of course the typical drunk crowd on the outskirts).  We sat the entire night over food and some wine, just talking and listening to some American music classics (classic rock mostly: Smoke on the Water, American Pie…, some Elvis and others) as well as some German ones.  The German songs were completely outweighed by the American ones though.  I talked as much as I could in German, for a while with Natasha, Nadine and Dirk, then later with Michael, one of Dirk's friends, and finally with Christian and Sonja, some more friends of Dirk.  They were all nearing 30, which made for some great conversations, about philosophy and culture differences.  I used bad German, they used good English and it was all good.  After a wonderful night of hanging out and talking with people (the only bad thing was the U.S. losing to Ghana, which I was actually not able to watch, but don't really care, because I had so much fun with Dirk's friends), it was time for Nadine, Natasha and I to separate from Dirk, Tina and her friend to head back home.  We bought our ticket and were running to get to the last train…and then it left without us.  That was not so cool.  We ended up finding a taxi and combining with two other people for a much more expensive trip back to Ingelheim.  That really doesn't even bother me though, because of the fun I had just hanging out with some people for the first time in maybe a month (except the awesome times watching football with Dirk, Matthias and Christian of course).  Ah, I cannot say enough good things about this evening.

June 25

I'm pretty glad that I was able to get the reaction finished today, even with a decent yield.  It has been the most difficult one that I've ever done, but on the third try, it went!  I start another one on Monday, which I prepared for this afternoon.  At work I was able to get caught up on procedures and things like that, in preparation for my project next week as well, so that is good.  Perhaps even more notable, is that at work I bought a plane ticket to Rome with Marc and Joe.  We will be flying there (somewhat cheaply at €63 there and back) for a long weekend.  I really hope that my debit card works with this, because it definitely did not work so well buying books with it over the internet from China.  I am really looking forward to this, it should be fun.  We are also rather concretely looking at a trip to München in July.  Hopefully we can put the Castle Neuschwanstein (Disney castle), Dachau and the Eagle's Nest into that trip.  Berlin will also probably be in July, which will be fun as well.  It is about time, but our travel plans are finally coming together.  Hopefully I can also visit Petra and Edward in July.  This weekend however I will be much closer to home, in Mainz, with Dirk his girlfriend and two other friends for Johannisfest there.  Of course it will be full of soccer-watching, as every day has been here (also, Wimbledon), and some geocaching on Saturday (I have been pushing it back).  It is a wonder that I do anything but some running and watching soccer.  I actually have learned some legitimate German from watching soccer on German television though.  Anyway, this afternoon I ran for a bit and of course watched soccer.

June 24

Well, the first half of the coupling reaction went well, so I started on the second half today.  I got a late start due to several factors that I could not control, but was started nonetheless.  I even managed to go about things quickly on the new reaction, which is not typical for me, because I like to think new reactions new completely before I do something (which is a good policy in general maybe?).  In any case, things got done, well and on time.  The only hitch in the plan came at the end, when I was warming a separating funnel, and the Teflon stopcock expanded and cracked the whole thing.  I then apparently did not heat the next one sufficiently, because my solution crystallized as I was doing the separation (BAD‼).  With the aid of a dryer, and some help from Sabrina, I was able to take care of that whole fiasco, and finish the reaction mostly well.  Dr. Heckmann came by toward the end of the day and we talked for a bit about education and what I will be doing next week.  I was waiting for the reaction to cool a bit so that I could seed it with crystals, and while we were talking it apparently was cool enough that the movement of the stirring caused it to recrystallize by itself.  That was not really a problem, but it would have been better if I could have seeded it before it had reached that phase.  Oh well, at least I have product.  We will see if it crashed out tomorrow.  I really hope the product is pure…I would prefer not to have to do this crazy reaction again (who knew that inert conditions required such patience?).

After work I had about an hour to eat and drink before Sportfest.  It was at the Blumengarten Stadion in Ingelheim, which is a cool sports complex.  There were all sorts of track and field events.  Thomas, Stefan and I did a Staffel-Lauf (relay) where we each took a 1km leg.  There are some crazy good athletes at Böhringer, that is for sure (also, some very active older people).  For our relay, Thomas took the first leg, I the second and Stefan finished it up.  Unfortunately, the first leg did not go so very well.  I managed to catch and pass two older runners in my leg, which I would have been embarrassed to lose to quite honestly, and we ended up finishing in 12^th place with a time of 11:05.  Nicht so gut, aber…it was ok.  We got some good exercise and had fun.  For some reason, at the end, the back of my throat was incredibly dry, so for the rest of the night I've been coughing like I have emphysema and no amount of water, mineral or otherwise can take care of it.  Maybe a night of sleep will help.  It had better.  It was another crazy day of football as well, with Italy of course being knocked out of the tourney.  Japan played well too; those penalty kicks were quite fantastic.  I really cannot believe the amount of soccer that I have been watching.  Tomorrow though, I plan to do some geocaching in the area, which will be fun.  There are a lot of them around here.

June 23

Oh man, I am shaking right now.  The U.S. just beat Algeria, in the final minute of course, as everyone knows.  My shout echoed throughout the buildings around my apartment and it was glorious.  The slightly less glorious thing was that I had to watch the England-Slovenia match instead of ours.  They did flash to ours every once in a while, but it was not enough.  Wow, what a change in mood!  Soooooo happy right now.  Landon Donovan is my hero to be sure.  What makes it even better is that during halftime I had time to head over to the corner Bäckstuber and pick up some delicious apple streusel.  Also, I bought two rolls called Roggi; eating them was like eating bread surrounded by an armadillo shell.  Perhaps I will not buy those again. 

So at work today, I did the first part of the Suzuki Kupplung for the third time.  The color looked better today though, and we had new materials, so hopefully that means good things for me.  We met the new azubi today too.  Her name is Tamara, and she will be joining us around July 15.  I don't quite know how much English she speaks, because she was only here briefly, but hopefully very little, so I can keep practicing.  I got the second part of my mini-project for Dirk done today as well.  Whew, I still can believe Donovan did it in the 90^th minute.  I'm just glad we weren't robbed twice of legitimate goals.  Oh wait, we were.  No matter though; water under the bridge.  So, hopefully I get to work tomorrow and have good HPLC news, and can take care of the second part of the reaction.  I also picked up some geocaching coordinates today at work and had some good chatting with Dave and Giff.  Chatting is always a good thing, especially when reactions take 6 hours to complete.  I think that I will do some geocaching either tomorrow or Friday after work.  It depends on how long the Sportfest goes tomorrow.  That will be fun I think, and hopefully not too different than caching here.  In other news, my new project will start soon.  I'm excited, and a little nervous because no one here has done it before, and I want to do it right and have legitimate results to contribute.  Well, it looks like another quiet night of soccer, with the German match coming up at 8 tonight.  This will probably not be the end of writing today.

Well, it was loud like usual, and Germany won, which is kind redundant actually.  In other news, the full moon looks cool over Ingelheim and the surrounding area.  So that pretty much was the end of writing.

June 22

Well, I finished another reaction today.  I'm still doing the reactions that test if water affects yield or not (and starting to get really good at doing distillations, which isn't saying much).  It went pretty splendidly.  Today we started planning a little bit of traveling as well.  It turns out that RyanAir can be pretty much as cheap as advertised.  We kind of have to work around vacation days and such, but it looks like we might be possibly going to Rome for a weekend in July.  We could get a flight for €30 to and from Rome, but because of our schedule, it is going to be more like €45 if we still do it.  It doesn't get much better than that.  So we'll see how that goes…hopefully it does go.  After work I stopped by the TMobile store in town to see if I could get another card here to use my minutes with, however, the phone was not capable of such a switch, quite sadly.  I shopped a bit at ALDI then, ran a bit to see how I will do on Thursday at the Sportfest (not so well).  Supper tonight was not a sandwich, but spaghetti with potatoes (getting some nice carb loading going on).  Sandwiches are good, but not-sandwiches are better typically; unless maybe it was a sandwich from Subway, or the sandwich from KFC that has two pieces of meat for bread.  That is probably a good sandwich.  There is some good soccer on tonight, but more important soccer tomorrow.  South Korea just equalized Nigeria; hopefully they can put another couple in there.  This is a crazy time for sports, with Wimbledon and WM on at the same time.  This is too much.  Combine that with a new podcast that I am trying…at least I'm engaged.

June 21

I did another step of the little project I'm doing for Dirk today.  It went fine; definitely more on time and with fewer slip ups.  Today I had another German lesson with Oliver.  They are quite fun.  We usually just talk, or he'll answer my German grammar questions.  It's also really nice, because I learn more about spoken German from him.  Spoken German, like spoken English is quite a bit different from its written counterpart.  Knowing the differences is pretty key if you want to speak fluidly and have it sound correct as well as be correct.  Oliver is a very engaging person, and even manages to make grammar interesting.  He thought it was quite funny that the German book from dad includes the "current" abbreviation H.J. (Hitler Jugend).  The book is good, but it is OLD‼  You bought the book used right?  Anyway, I had lunch with Barbara, Claudia, Marc and Spencer today.  Well, actually Barbara and I ate together (carrots and onions with rice in a great curry sauce), then sat with the rest when they finally arrived.  Claudia and Barbara know each other from when they were in the same apprenticeship class.  Very different areas of study though (marketing and chemistry).  After lunch I went back to my reaction, which was warming to room temperature and took and HPLC, showing 99+% conversion.  I'll do the distillation tomorrow, and finish it up as well.  I also started looking up flights to Rome and Spain.  They are rather affordable; we may be making a trip to Rome.  I would be happy with that.  We will see though, Joe and Marc don't have quite the vacation day freedom that I do.  After work today I went to the bank and finally got my PIN number for my account.  I can actually use the silly thing now!  I get paid soon too, so that will be nice.  I managed to inquire and get everything taken care of in German.  Terrible German, but German nonetheless.  By the way, I wish I could have seen the Portugal-North Korea match; that must have been quite embarrassing…this week is a big one for a lot of teams.  Our last match is on Wednesday, as is Germany's.  I sure hope they air the U.S.-Algeria match and not the England-Slovenia one.  I'm pretty confident they'll be airing Germany.  I believe we have a 16:00 match, so I won't have to leave work too early. 

June 19 Pictures

June 20

I got to sleep in a bit today, because church is at 10:00.  It was wonderful.  More and more it is becoming apparent how popular the Burgkirche is for formal events.  There was a baptism or dedication or equivalent this morning.  After church I made some lunch with the potatoes that I bought last week, and the wurst I've got around.  During the afternoon I watched some soccer and hung out, listening to music and other such things.  Today is Father's Day of course, so I went to Subway.  Well, I only went to Subway to get change for my €2 coins that don't work in the payphones.  I was able to competently and fluidly use German to get what I wanted, which is a small achievement obviously, but it still felt good.  I really wanted to talk to Dad today, but was very glad to talk to Jeff.  For some reason, today I was a little more homesick than usual, even though I got to see Joe and Marc all yesterday.  It was just so wonderful to hear Jeff's voice on the line.  I wish the calls didn't cost so much though.  Happy Father's Day Dad!  I'll try and call again sometime this week, hopefully when you are awake.  Ha, it was just so good to hear Jeff's voice.  As I left the booth my eyes were tearing a little bit with joy.  Much love to you all back home.  I do miss you every day.  Sundays here are typically relaxing, but would be better with some soccer at Oak Street, or some tennis perhaps.  Please don't worry though, I am enjoying myself here.  I got a good run in today as well.  It was the best one so far, so good that I was even able to sprint at the end without too much pain.  My goal by the end of the summer is to be able to run 7000 miles in a little over a fortnight; not an unreasonable goal I think.  The Brazil-Ivory Coast game just ended.  It was pretty good I guess.  I really am getting tired of watching grown men act like small children though.  Each time they fall down it looks like the other guy has chopped them in half with a cleaver or something.  Of course after the call has been made, they just get up like nothing had happened.  It's so predictable, common and stupid!  Play it like men please.  We all say, "When I get older, I will be stronger; they'll call me freedom…"  It's partly the player's responsibility to make the game beautiful.  Anyway, that was a fun little diatribe.  Gute Nacht (I just realized that it's nearly been a month already.  Hard to believe.).

June 19

I got an early start at 5:30 this morning, to get to Koblenz on time to meet Joe and Marc in order to head to Trier.  We made all of our connections ok, and then set out to take in the city.  We first came upon the Porta Nigra, which is a massive gate and plaza area in Trier.  When you step through it, there is the typical German looking Altstadt (old city) with all sorts of shops and cobblestone.  We headed to the Kaiserthermen initially, passing by the cool looking Basilika and beautiful Victorian gardens there.  The Kaiserthermen is the ruin of an extensive Roman bath facility.  It still stood rather stolidly and majestically though, with plenty to see underground as well.  When we first arrived, we came upon a school group there (on Saturday‼).  That would be unfortunate to have to do.  We took plenty of pictures there and then headed on to the Karl Marx house.  It is a museum, but not in the way that the Göthehaus was a museum.  There was no Marx furniture, but rather they had taken his house and used it to put up lots of information that you could read on the walls and such.  It was interesting, and I could actually read a fair amount of it.  That is encouraging, but even more encouraging was the lady at the Kasse assuming that we were German, when I bought our passes.  I wonder how Marx would feel if he knew that his house was making money for someone in a capitalist system.  Probably really happy, warm and fuzzy inside.  After the Marx house and all of the commie things there, we went to the Trier Dom which was another fantastic cathedral.  There was a market in the town square, which is typical of Saturdays, so we bought some fruit.  Joe got some strawberries, and I bought a kilo of cherries.  Speaking for my bowels, it is a good thing that plenty of sharing was going on.  Before we left, a quick trip to the Mosel River was in order.  It actually turned out to be rather bland, but was still probably worth going.  We had to wait a bit for our train, so we had some food in a café nearby (Joe a chicken sandwich and me a chocolate croissant).  They had wifi there, so I could download some songs I had been wanting, and update the blog again, as well as briefly talk to JB.  I didn't really have time for much else and didn't end up getting a connection the rest of the day, but it was nice either way.  On the way back to Koblenz we stopped in Cochem, which is home to a cool castle.  Unfortunately, by the time we got up there, they had closed for the day.  We admired the view though (there is always a good view from a castle), and then headed into town.  We'll probably come back to try and get into the castle another time, because it looks fantastic, and is one that you can actually tour decently.  In town we found a nice pizza place and had some German pizza and a local white wine.  It was a great ending to a long day (also a first for olives on pizza, and white wine).  The three of us took the train back to Koblenz where we separated, and I headed back to Ingelheim.  I didn't see them, but I could tell that someone or some group was drunk on the train.  You can drink in public in Germany, which is sort of strange to see, coming from the U.S.; it makes for interesting train rides though, that's certain (on another note, alcohol, trains and Vuvuzelas (that loud horn they blow at soccer matches here and in South Africa) should never be mixed; there were some enthusiastic Dutch fans on the train as well).  What a nice, long day.

June 18

It was a very busy day at work today so I got started right away and accidentally did an extra distillation. I was able to get the reaction done before my German lesson today and when I got back, the HPLC indicated that the reaction had gone to over 97% completion, which was just what I wanted to hear. Unfortunately, when I took apart the apparatus I failed to put the cooling tube back on, so I was using a heated and very much closed system, which is a huge no-no. I heard about this from Barbara when I got back. She was justifiably upset, and hopefully I don’t do that again. Rookie mistake! After that I got everything taken down without incident, washed and dried my crystals, and then headed by bike to meet Matthias and Christian at the Ingelheim Sommer Biergarten (an der Mole) for the Deutschland-Serbien match. It was a nice tight, loud atmosphere for watching a match. Today also happened to be incredibly gusty and windy down by the Rhein. The match didn’t turn out very well for Germany of course, which was unfortunate…for them. The U.S. match was an hour after that, and very few people hung around. Matthias said he was going back to his apartment to drink beer and cry. He’s a funny guy. I hope. I sat with some German fans (apparently of Fußball in general, because they were cheering for the U.S. and Slovenien evenly). It was a rough first half for us, but we of course managed to equalize during the second half and ended up with our second tie. I am quite sure that I was the only American there, which I think was pretty obvious. There were some Germans with an American flag and a big floppy starred and striped top-hat, but they might have been making fun. I tried a good weize bier that Dirk had recommended, and it turned out to be quite good. I did learn that I’m terrible at pouring beer into a glass though (don’t worry, no one was injured in the pouring of my beer). I stopped at Real on the way back, which is like a Target or Meijer equivalent to pick up some practical things like soap for instance. Tonight I’ll probably just watch some tennis or soccer then go to bed. I’m headed to meet Joe and Marc in Koblenz early tomorrow so that we can get a good day of sightseeing in. We’re going to Trier (a very Roman influenced city, which is claimed to be the oldest in Germany) and then to Cochem likely (which has a cool castle that Joe would like to see; castles are pretty cool all around, and they are hard to get tired of).

June 17

I got almost caught up with E-Lab today at work, and even had time to blow a whole lot of reaction mixture through a distillation column (I was searching for where I was losing suction, finally found it, but unfortunately chose to fix the problem while the vacuum was operating at full, so a good portion of my mixture got sucked through quickly rather than just the toluol). So to fix that, I have to distill it three times now to clean the system out. Go Steve. Plus, now I have to figure out how to say that I blew the reaction mixture through the apparatus in German, which will be quite the treat. Dirk did give me some cool German music today though (Lena, Peter Fox, Seeed and the Fantastische Vier), which was wonderful. I left work a bit early today to meet Petra and Edward here in Ingelheim. They were visiting Edward’s relatives in the south of Holland, which is relatively close to here (about 350km, so not that close). I tried calling them from a payphone first, but failed miserably and lost €0.5 while I was at it. Luckily I could hustle back to work and use a phone there with Barbara’s help. We ended up meeting at the train station, which worked well, then went to the Waldeck restaurant in their car. That’s the one that is near the Bismarckturm and has the tigers. I wish it would have been nicer weather today, because the view is great from the tower when there aren’t clouds and rain. There was still a decent view though, so that was ok. It was still a great place for a dinner, quiet with good food and a nice atmosphere. They bought me a fantastic dinner with two desserts! We talked for a while about just about everything (language, family, cultures), and I had a wonderful time. They are really cool people. Later this summer I’ll go visit them in the Netherlands, maybe a couple of times, who knows. It feels good to be full of tasty food…oh yes it does. Well, it’s soccer watching tonight, then sleep and plenty of distillation tomorrow. Woot! I can’t believe that it is already Cincinnati this week. Of course I’m quite jealous right now, it will be the first time since seven years that I won’t be going :(. I trust that God’s will is being done there though, and I hope that Britnee and Taylor have a fantastic first time meeting people and serving God with our youth. It will truly be a sad day if we lose that relationship as a church and youth group (I really can’t even imagine that happening though). I’m praying for you guys, especially Katie, because it’s her first time serving there; I can’t wait to hear stories. Anyway, like I was saying, podcasts, soccer-watching and sleep.

June 16

Ha, I’m writing this using the German keyboard layout. At work I’m getting so used to it, that it kind of makes sense to use it. If I get fed up with it though, changing is as easy as pressing Alt+Shift, to go back to the English layout. Today was a normal day of reactions, but most of the day was spent filling out my lab journal and catching up with that. After work I headed to McDonalds to see if I could get Wifi there. Fortunately they have it for free there. Unfortunately, you need a mobile phone to set up a T-Mobile account. I might see if someone at work can help me out with that. It takes a bit of time to get to McDonalds because it’s actually in Gau-Algesheim, but I could at least stop at LIDL on the way back and save the trip. Potatoes and apples, yum! After a sandwich and apple I went for a run to Großwinternheim and back, then had some leftover rice and wurst from yesterday, which was a fantastic combo. After some food I got my apartment ready and clean for when Petra and Edward come tomorrow. I’m not sure if we’ll end up even coming up here, but it’s good to be prepared anyway. As far as the World Cup goes, way to be die Schweiz! So much for Spanien going in and dominating. They showed the reaction of Spanish fans after the loss. They had been dancing and celebrating for the whole day, but were at that point quite quiet. Sad day for Spain, for sure; Marc at work will probably be a bit unhappy about that one.

June 15

Well, I write this as my heart is racing. Up until moments ago I thought that Windows had taken everything it and I have here with it down the drain. Very fortunately a simple system restore brought this box back to life. Wheeeeeewwwwwww…close call.
Other than that today was a good day. Work went by as normal with reactions to be done and lessons to be learned. After work I went with Dirk and Matthias to the Ingelheim Sommer Garten, along the Rhein to watch Portugal-Ivory Coast and have some beers. It was nice and breezy in a test with a massive projector. I enjoyed that immensely. After that I came back to the apartment and tried to do things with a stove that I’ve only dared do with an oven or rice cooker. I was quite fortunate to meet with success making some mustard, honey and curry rice, supplemented a bit differently with wurst. It was good though, and it was hot and it reminded me of cooking things back home (Who knew that honey, mustard, curry, butter and rice could be a good combination? Well, actually to be fair, my whole family does, but that is beside the point. It’s good, simple and pretty cheap and you don’t even need meat if you don’t have any around! Making it with German mustard really didn’t change the taste too much either. I’ve actually found that it works well to cook the ingredients into the rice rather than into the meat, then add meat or vegetables as I have them. I don’t have any measuring devices here but eyeballing it is working well nevertheless.) Anyway, the food was good, and the Brazil-North Korea match was interesting to watch as well. I really enjoy learning German and teaching a little English too. Dirk says he has holes in his stomach from all of the grammar and word questions that I ask him though. My first German lesson is on Friday, so I will have someone else to pester and learn from.

June 14

Another Monday come and gone now; they’re pretty much flying now. Well, one of my reactions was a failure again today. It’s the difficult one, that no one gets on their first try, but even so, it’s a little frustrating. I’ll try again tomorrow I suppose. I got started doing a batch today to test how susceptible a reaction mixture is to water. We only introduced 1% by mass, but water can do a lot of damage to the right system. We’ll see how that ends up tomorrow. Today Barbara checked how I was doing on writing in the E-lab journal. It turns out that I have plenty of things to work on. Hopefully I can catch some bad habits early and mitigate them as much as possible. Unfortunately there are a lot of things that I need to catch, especially concerning making technical observations in a language that I’ve learned for a semester. I’m praying for quick learning and to make mistakes as gracefully as possible (if that’s even possible).
After work today I headed to the shoe shop nearby to see if I could find a pair of cheapish shoes. Adidas is a German company, so I thought I might find a nice pair at a good price. I really could not have been more wrong there. They were really nice shoes, but at prices that were really not in my price range. Oh well, at least I looked. I then went to ALDI, where most everything is in my price range, and got some groceries for the week. They didn’t have any WhiteFlakes though! They’re delicious like Frosted Flakes, but were not to be found, so I got some Choko-somethings instead. Who knows, maybe they’ll be delicious. Also, I bit the bullet and bought some honey, and what I hope is mustard. So I can at least make curry chicken, or maybe just curry rice, because I don’t have an oven. I did manage to find a kilogram package of Jasmin rice here. That will be nice with some wurst or chicken I hope. Fußball is on a lot on German tv, so I can watch most of the matches that I want to. I watched Paraguay-Italy tonight and they just interviewed one of the Paraguay players who was fluent in German. I’m beyond impressed with him, and another Italian player who was interviewed as well in German. These Europeans are crazy good with their languages. It gives me some incentive I suppose. That way the next time I’m interviewed after a World Cup match, I can hold my own in an interview with the German press. I went for a run tonight to Großwinternheim and back, running the whole way this time, which felt great. I’m still incredibly slow of course, but at least I’m consistently slow. Well, I should stop watching World Cup stuff, stop writing and go to bed.

June 13

Church was pretty full again this morning. This time it was because there was a group that visited on a bus trip. It was nice to have a full church to be sure. Also, there was a different pastor this morning. I’m understanding more and more of what is spoken, but am still woefully insufficient in comprehension most of the time. It will come I suppose; hopefully sooner rather than later. In the last couple of days I’ve also discovered how much my Spanish has really suffered. I really hope it comes back quickly with some study. After church I ate the spaghetti and bratwurst that I prepared on Saturday then went for a nice long bike ride to tour some of the surrounding towns. It was a nice day for it, but my butt hurts from the seat, quite a bit. It was certainly worth it though, because the countryside is beautiful and the towns are picturesque (as I’m writing this, Ingelheim is being filled with the sound of carhorns and all other kinds of horns and yelling; Germany won their match against Australia maybe 10 minutes ago). I took a nap for a bit after studying my German book and using the software. I really need to get my noun genders down. It will make me a much more confident speaker; right now I hesitate the most while speaking because I don’t know which article to use. Grrrr… Naps are becoming more common for me here. I like them a lot. I read some tonight, then watched the Germany-Australia match, which has just finished. Germany pretty much dominated, to be sure. People are probably going to be pretty happy at work tomorrow. As for me, happy for them, but wish we could have pulled out the win rather than just a tie. Oh well, good night.

June 12 (2)

June 12

Ok, so getting to Frankfurt went well this morning.  I left a bit later than I would have liked because I learned that the automatic ticket machines do not take €50 bills, which was all I had left.  Luckily a lady showed up to work at the Bahnhof office today, and she could give me change.  I think it's a combination of talking quietly and having subpar German skills, but I find myself having to repeat things a lot.  So I got to Frankfurt right around 11:00 and headed to the Goethe house there, after getting a map from the Deutsche Bahn desk.  By the way, Frankfurt Hbf is much bigger than any of the other ones that I have been to so far.  It was crazy big for a Hudsonvillian like me.  The Goethe house was pretty cool.  It was a typical old house of a writer, but interesting nonetheless.  I think that I had everyone at the cash register and one of the guides fooled into thinking that I was a German.  I felt pretty good about that.  I can be good in certain situations (probably just in the houses of famous authors) apparently.  I held the door open for an older couple, and the lady said, "Thank you," so I said, "You are very welcome."  She then told me that my English was very good, to which I replied, "It had better be."  It turned out that they were from Illinois and visiting Germany for a bit.  After the house, I headed to the Frankfurt Zoo where I spent a couple of hours.  Student rates saved me quite a bit today, and only the zoo asked for I.D.  Apparently a Calvin card is ok here, which is wonderful.  After seeing a lot of animals, and many other empty cages, I had some wurst and gouda sandwiches then headed out.  After that it was to the Dom there, which was fantastically beautiful like the one in Mainz.  StPaulskirche was in the area as well, so I went to check that out too.  It was essentially the birthplace of German democracy, and John F. Kennedy gave an important speech there.  It had to be rebuilt after pretty heavy bombing during WWII, but it looks fantastic in its restored state.  On the way there I passed by a rally for Iranian democracy that was taking place very appropriately in Frankfurt.  After that I went to the Willi Brandt Platz which was nearby (he was a Bundeskanzler for Germany, like Angela Merkel is currently) and hung out for a bit, taking pictures of the new tall buildings in the area, then headed over a bridge on the Main River for a view of the skyline.  Frankfurt, like many German cities, had to be rebuilt after the war, so unlike less heavily bombed areas it has a pretty cool modern looking skyline.  It certainly retains a lot of charm though.  I headed to the Hauptbanhof after that, rather tired and ready to go back to Ingelheim.  I had some trouble finding a connection back to Ingelheim for some reason, so I decided to try the ICE to Mainz, just for fun (it's a bit more expensive, so I typically don't take it if I don't have to).  In Mainz I connected to Ingelheim on one of the trains that goes every hour, and arrived back with plenty of time to see the U.S.-England soccer match, and catch the end of Sam Querrey's match at the Queen's Club in England.  It was incidentally a German that he beat.  Haha!  It was also quite the match to watch versus England.  There was not as much honking of horns when we scored for some reason (England neither), so I made some noise out of my apartment window to make up for it. 

June 11

Well, in terms of reactions for me it was a pretty slow day.  One of the oxygen sensitive reactants had been compromised, so the reaction only made it to about 80% which was not good enough to continue.  It was then too late for me to start it again because of the long reaction time, so I spent a lot of time filling out my e-lab journal and looking up what I have to do for the next one.

Today was fantastic though in terms of mobility because Thomas' old bike came today.  It is not quite my size, but it works swimmingly for me.  Barbara bought a lock that I can use for the summer then give back to her, which was very nice.  I can lock it up in front of my building and have much better access to the area.  In fact, after watching some soccer and tennis (S. Africa and Mexico was a great match by the way) I took the bike for a spin to the Rhein, then back to Ingelheim in a massive loop that would have taken me half a day by walking.  It was fantastic!  I'm pretty excited for the possibilities of where I can go now with this thing.  Tomorrow is a visit to Frankfurt, so hopefully that will be fun as well.  Hopefully I can catch the U.S.-England game tomorrow…we'll see about that one.

June 10

I did the preparatory part of the Suzuki coupling today, with all of the crazy steps to insure that it stays flushed with inert "Stickstoff" or Nitrogen.  It was a long reaction, so I had a lot of time just to sit around and look stuff up on the internet or chat with Dirk and Barbara when they were around.  I also recorded an excellent yield on the previous reaction that I did, which was cool.  After work I watched some tennis, read some, had some food then ran a bit.  This time I remembered to record how long it took me to "sprint" a kilometer (or at least my sad version of a sprint).  It was not what I was hoping (3:52, a bit longer than my target of 3:20, but not terrible I suppose), but there is still room for a little improvement by the time Sportsfest comes around.  Apparently I'm to start some German lessons pretty soon, so I'm excited about that to be sure.  My noun-gender memorization leaves a lot to be desired at this point unfortunately.  I can't believe that it's Thursday already, the week went by pretty fast.  I think that I will head to Frankfurt for sure this weekend, it should be fun.  I'm planning on making it another day trip and heading out early.  That way I can be back for Sunday worship and to watch the German soccer match at a Biergarten "public-viewing".  There is supposed to be a public-viewing over the Rhein in Mainz as well, but I think I'll stay closer to home and try the Ingelheim local brew while I'm at it.

June 9

I finished another reaction today involving a ring closing and consecutive cutting step.  It was cool, and I got to do a vacuum distillation as well.  Going to work is like having a really long O-Chem lab with really fun and knowledgeable people to hang out with.  It's great because if I do something wrong, they immediately tell me.  Fortunately I have a better idea of how things work, so I am making fewer procedural mistakes.  I also know my way around the lab better now.  There are really only a couple more reactions for me to do in the campaign, so that is exciting.  Also, tomorrow is the first part of the Suzuki "kupplung" coupling that I get to do!  At this point I'm planning on traveling to Frankfurt on Saturday.  Barbara gave me a bunch of ideas for things to see, so that should be fun.  Other than that it's been a quiet night of reading, listening and trying to learn.

June 8

I started a more difficult reaction today at work (and Dirk was back, which was great), which started out well.  Tomorrow I get to do the most complicated reaction in the campaign (Suzuki coupling anyone) as well as complete the one I started today.  Twill be an interesting day for sure.  But today I just went to ALDI and stocked up on more food.  I'm feeling pretty good about the fridge now.  Also, I'm listening to the Jordan, Jesse Go podcast that I downloaded…a nice 2 hour reminder of English to be sure.  I've decided to train a little bit for the upcoming Sportfest by doing some 1 km "sprints" or at least as fast as I can.  Yesterday I timed one in my head, rather inaccurately.  Today I brought along my cell phone with its stopwatch, and instead of starting the time, selected the lap function.  It was a fine practice run, but I hope next time to have some idea of how fast I can do it.  I've also taken to studying one of dad's grammar books that I brought along to memorize verb conjugations and vocab.  Hopefully that will help my speaking quite a bit.

June 7

I did another reaction today then after work went for a run and watched some television in German.  I'm not sure the extent that it helps me learn German, but I don't think it can hurt.  A normal day to be sure, but a beautiful night for a run.  I even found a nice 1 km stretch that I can run to practice for the BI Sportsfest in a couple of weeks.  My initial timing of it (in my head, counting) had me around 3:20, but I don't hold that number to be very accurate; I'll use a watch next time.

June 6

Marc, Joe and I went to the Burgkirche this morning for worship.  Compared to last week the place was empty; we were three of maybe at most 20 people there.  I probably should have been prepared for the disparity between a "celebration" service and "regular" worship, but it still caught me off guard.  There were no other young people there, quite unfortunate.  After worship we headed back to my apartment for some sandwiches before heading to the train station and Mainz.  I had been there last Saturday of course, but Joe and Marc had not, so I could at least show them the highlights before they headed back to Koblenz.  We bought a day ticket that the three of us could ride on, quite a bit cheaper for them at least.  We did this on Friday as well, and it proved to be quite economical.  It was good for Rheinland-Pfalz, so we could unfortunately not go to Köln or Frankfurt with it; I'm sure we'll figure something out with that though.  We had great weather for visiting Mainz.  I took them to St. Stephen's church with the Marc Chagall windows, then to the Dom and for a walk along the Rhine by the Rathaus there.  When I had been in Mainz before, they were preparing the Natural History Museum for Museumsnacht and alas I could not go inside.  However today, as every Sunday, admission was free, so we spent some time there admiring the natural history of Rheinland-Pfalz.  Many of the animals and plant life were what you might see in Michigan, but the geography and natural features were certainly not.  They had some manatee skeletons there (Seeköhe I believe), which I did not expect to see in a museum here though.  After we visited the museum I tried a few times in vain to find a wireless connection to use.  There must be somewhere in Germany with an unsecured connection.  I wasn't able to find one in Ingelheim either yet.  Diane mentioned where she had found one, but I struck out there.  I'll just have to keep looking I guess.  Arriving at the station following our afternoon tour, we barely missed the train heading back through Ingelheim to Koblenz, but they come through on the hour, so we visited the little garage sale type thing going on in front of the Hauptbanhof for a bit then just hung out in the shade.  The train ride back was short for me, and probably not too long for the other guys either, but we did run into a little rain, which was the theme for the rest of the evening as well. 

June 6

Marc, Joe and I went to the Burgkirche this morning for worship.  Compared to last week the place was empty; we were three of maybe at most 20 people there.  I probably should have been prepared for the disparity between a "celebration" service and "regular" worship, but it still caught me off guard.  There were no other young people there, quite unfortunate.  After worship we headed back to my apartment for some sandwiches before heading to the train station and Mainz.  I had been there last Saturday of course, but Joe and Marc had not, so I could at least show them the highlights before they headed back to Koblenz.  We bought a day ticket that the three of us could ride on, quite a bit cheaper for them at least.  We did this on Friday as well, and it proved to be quite economical.  It was good for Rheinland-Pfalz, so we could unfortunately not go to Köln or Frankfurt with it; I'm sure we'll figure something out with that though.  We had great weather for visiting Mainz.  I took them to St. Stephen's church with the Marc Chagall windows, then to the Dom and for a walk along the Rhine by the Rathaus there.  When I had been in Mainz before, they were preparing the Natural History Museum for Museumsnacht and alas I could not go inside.  However today, as every Sunday, admission was free, so we spent some time there admiring the natural history of Rheinland-Pfalz.  Many of the animals and plant life were what you might see in Michigan, but the geography and natural features were certainly not.  They had some manatee skeletons there (Seeköhe I believe), which I did not expect to see in a museum here though.  After we visited the museum I tried a few times in vain to find a wireless connection to use.  There must be somewhere in Germany with an unsecured connection.  I wasn't able to find one in Ingelheim either yet.  Diane mentioned where she had found one, but I struck out there.  I'll just have to keep looking I guess.  Arriving at the station following our afternoon tour, we barely missed the train heading back through Ingelheim to Koblenz, but they come through on the hour, so we visited the little garage sale type thing going on in front of the Hauptbanhof for a bit then just hung out in the shade.  The train ride back was short for me, and probably not too long for the other guys either, but we did run into a little rain, which was the theme for the rest of the evening as well. 

June 5

We slept in a bit in Ingelheim this morning before heading out for another day of walking both up and down.  First was the Bismarckturm, which of course gives a great view of the area, then the tigers which are up there as well.  On the other side of the valley is the Burg Kirche with an overlook nearby that gives another great view.  I had gone there with Dr. Heckmann previously and by myself as well, but if you want to see Ingelheim that is the place to go.  Heading back to my apartment, we got some water (very necessary at that point), took kind of an unexpected but also necessary nap and then got pizza at the Turkish restaurant below my flat.  As usual the food there was fantastic.  It was then a trip to ALDI to stock up on the food that we had ravenously consumed, and some time for relaxing and watching a terrible German "teen drama fixer" show (of the Nanny 911 flavor) and an amazing bit of Stargate SG-1, dubbed.

June 4

We got up early today, had a quick breakfast then headed to the bank and Hauptbanhof.  We chose to take a bit of a tour along the Rhine today by train, to see some castles and smaller cities.  The first city on our list was Oberwesel, with the castle Schönburg and a quaint town to boot.  There were some museums there and a city wall that remained as well.  We ended up walking up to the castle, which is now a hotel and restaurant, for a great view of the Rhine river valley.  There was a small walking path down the side that we never would have seen coming up, which we took down and was much quicker of course.  There was a small farmers market in town, where Joe bought some apples, which were tasty.  We took a pass on the museums in lieu of walking along the wall, seeing a tower and heading by train to the next town, Bingen.  You can actually see Bingen from the Bismarckturm in Ingelheim.  Bingen was pretty cool, because there was this massive park along the Rhine with a skate park, sports fields and what looked like a community garden, partly planted by school children.  We took some pictures of castles both in and along the river, then walked along the Rhine to Rhine-Nahe-Ecke, the corner where the Rhine and Nahe rivers meet in Bingen.  There are quite a few of these corners in Germany that we've seen so far.  They are typically breezy and very nice places to sit and watch ships pass by.  After a brief respite from walking we headed into town and walked up some more, (walking up hills has been the theme of my time in Germany so far, when it has come to sightseeing) because every cool thing to see is high up.  We walked up to see Burg Klopp, which offered another fantastic view.  The city and the whole valley was quite visible.  After that we were pretty castled-out, so we went for a walk past the Basilica St. Martin before heading back to the train station and a ride in air conditioning (rare here) back to Ingelheim.  Arriving in Ingelheim, we took a bit of a rest, I cooked some chicken and spaghetti, then we headed out for a brief tour of the nearby area, and even managed to find an ALDI much closer to me than the one I had gone to before.  At this point it was decided to head to a Biergarten in town.  Previously I'd had no one to have a drink with, so we took the opportunity to head to a Greek biergarten for a sample of the local pilsener and to hang out for a while.  When we first arrived, we screwed everything up by saying by mistake that we were here for food, which we were not, then giving our orders to two different servers.  Everything ended up turning out alright though, and we received only one bier each.  They also brought us some sort of Greek shot, with an indeterminate amount of alcohol in it.  It smelled and tasted like those green gumdrops, and I think is called Uzo or something like that.  Twas a nice and relaxing evening.

June 2 & 3

Today was "Friday" for us at Böhringer since nearly everyone was taking the actual Friday off, to make it a four day weekend.  Work was good as usual, and I make actual API (active pharmaceutical ingredient) today.  It recrystallized beautifully and slowly as it was supposed to.  I get to do a harder step on Monday, so I'm looking forward to that to be sure.  After work today I hustled home and got my things ready for a few days in Koblenz with Joe and Marc.  The train ride was absolutely beautiful through the Rhine River valley.  I would not mind taking it again and again.  They met me at the main train station in Koblenz, and we headed back to their place for some supper, a tour of the town and hanging out.  Initially our plan was to head to Köln or Frankfurt tomorrow, but those possibilities had some problems we realized, so it was decided to hang out in Koblenz for a day. 

 

We went up to the Festung today, which is a fortress that lies on a hill overlooking the whole area of Koblenz and the surroundings.  Twas nice and quite breathtaking especially after the climb up to it.  We hung out there for a while admiring the view, before heading down and walking along the Rhine.  The day was very sunny and warm, certainly a plus for sight-seeing.  When we got back into the Altstadt (old city) we decided to go for some Eis (ice cream) and went to what is supposedly the best place around, for some gelato.  That may have been the most delicious substance that I have ever eaten.  It was so intensely full of flavor that I hardly knew what to do.  It was like my tongue was being bombarded by thousands upon thousands of mangos and raspberries.  Needless to say, we were happy campers.  We headed back to their apartments after that for some supper, watching soccer, using the internet (on my own laptop, so I could get podcasts that I've been missing; I'm a pretty happy camper now) and laying about.  For the rest of the light we decided to head to a park along the Rhine, with a nice view of the hill with the Festung on it, and throw Frisbee a bit.  It was a nice end to the day.  Tomorrow we've decided to go back to Ingelheim and drop our stuff off, then explore Oberwesel, a city along the Rhine with a cool castle and other stuff to see.  After that we hope to stay in Ingelheim for the rest of the weekend.  A day pass will make this all substantially cheaper, so that will be nice.  Trains are wonderful here.  Just wonderful.

June 1

Another good day of work today; learning, always learning.  We're trying to get our plans ready for this weekend, as tomorrow is "Friday" and we have a 4 day weekend.  I even got to have a conversation with cousin Nathan today on Google chat.  That was nice.  The problem with talking to people is that some are sleeping and most aren't online by the time that I leave work.  I'm certainly glad that Nathan didn't fall into either of those categories today.  Right now I am planning on heading up to Koblenz, then traveling a bit around Rheinland-Pfalz doing day trips.  After work today I walked over to LIDL to get some groceries (meat finally! And nummy Nutella natürlich).  I found some "normal" sized bread for the first time today too.  That will be nice.  And chocolate…I bought chocolate.  And it's pretty good, even for being cheap.  After watching a spot of tennis I ran to Großwinternheim and back.  It's pretty amazing how quickly I'm getting back into running shape.  It's taken maybe three or four runs to get back up to speed; of course still far below what Jeff is running, and probably most other people I know, but still…I feel good about it.  I figured out my washing machine today too.  I have no dryer, but the little front loader has this crazy "sling" cycle (Schleudern) which gets them dry enough for me to put them on a rack that was in the room.  It works well, and uses no energy, and cools my room by removing energy from the air for evaporation (well, maybe not that last part).  The reason I say the sling-cycle is crazy is that when it gets going, it sounds like the apartment building is about to take off.  I would compare the washer to a small jet engine is what it comes down to.  But it is at least incredibly useful and it cleans my clothes.  I'm not sure that I like the FAA monitoring my bathroom though.

May 31

Today was a pretty normal/boring day.  I had a full day of doing reactions at Böhringer which was nice.  I got to talk with Barbara for a while, and we had a meeting this morning with the Analytical department.  It was fun because I mostly understood only a little of it.  Most of the parts where people laughed flew right by me (German puns are difficult to understand when you are completely concentrating on getting the gist of a sentence).  Overall though, the work days are very enjoyable.  After work I did little but work up all of the final cellulose data and watch French Open tennis.  It was threatening rain all day, so I really didn't want to get out and get dumped on.  I would have been ok, but now I finally have all of the numbers crunched.  Hopefully I can still get paid (I'm holding my thumbs until tomorrow).  I'm learning that what Prof. Pruim said is true: being immersed in German and trying to understand it all day can be tiring.