July 21

This morning I almost ruined two reaction batches, which was really, really lame.  One was a miss-read, and the other one, which I could recover from barely, was me just being stupid and forgetful.  I am going to go to bed earlier tonight, which I hope will help.  A wonderful e-mail came from home, confirming that Dad got the new job, which I am quite excited about.  After two and a half years it is a wonderful positive answer to prayer.  I am also pretty happy for Dad, because now he doesn't have to worry about having three jobs.  And, after I got past my two miss-steps the rest of the day went alright, because the reaction takes 6 hours to complete, which is essentially the rest of the day.  When it completed, I had a German lesson with Oliver which is always fun.  After work it was a quiet night.

July 20

We planned a little for Berlin today at work and got our hostel lined up.  I did my second to last reaction for the project I am doing with Barbara, and set up some stuff for the one I'll do tomorrow, which is the most difficult one and of which I am always a little anxious about.  After work I went to ALDI and picked up some peach iced tea and milk.  I ran this evening and it was pretty hot.  I'm starting to wonder if days like these are even worth posting at this point.  I could maybe just write: It was ok, nothing special happened.

July 19

Today was my 23rd reaction that I've done now.  Things went well, and as far as I can tell, everything went as planned and with good yield.  We are starting to plan our stuff for Berlin and getting our trains and hostels picked.  At work I chatted with Nathan for a while which was wonderful, as well as Qi, who I had met in Munich and lives in Mainz.  She had some tips for Berlin, which was nice, and I also found out from Prof. DeRooy that the group had arrived in Berlin and has started classes.  However, one of the coolest things that happened today was that a podcast that I was listening to had Walter from Stargate as the guest.  As far as I am concerned, that is pretty much the coolest. 

July 18

This morning I got up early for a two hour train ride to Weinheim, where Karla Veldink's friends, the Pestels, live and go to church.  I got there on time, and with only one small hitch, was able to walk over to the church in time for the services.  It was a baptism service for a lady who had recently come to the church after having been in and out of other churches somewhat sporadically, as far as I could tell from her introduction of herself to the congregation.  After the service I talked with a man who did the photography for the church, but worked for the German government's version of the FCC, dealing with wireless interferences and how to fix problems in places like military installations and airports.  He was really cool, and I wish I could remember his name.  It was on the tip of my tongue, but I completely forgot it now.  He introduced me to a man who works at Roche, which had been purchased by Böhringer.  Not my Böhringer it turns out, but Böhringer-Mannheim.  Apparently that is what my taxi driver had been talking about, which explains why I knew nothing about it, and why no one had ever mentioned a Mannheim location to me.  After the service, I managed to meet Dörthe Pestel, and had lunch with her and some other ladies from the church, as part of the Baptism celebration.  I met Christian (Pestel) briefly after lunch before heading off with a man and woman from the church (whose names I actually never got even though we spent the whole afternoon together) to a golf course to learn about golf.  If you would like to know exactly what the man looked like, and I mean exactly, look at a picture of the man who plays the corrupt Senator in the film 'Shooter.'  The two may as well be identical twins.  From how they explained it, I assumed that we would be playing golf, which I am bad at, so I was prepared for the worst J.  It turned out though, that a large group from the church was going there to learn about golf.  In Germany, golf is not very popular, and is thought about as a rich people's game.  Apparently the people at the course are trying to change that perception and make it more accessible to more people.  So, I got to learn about golfing in German, take some swings on the driving range, putt around and play a mini scramble.  And by mini, I mean mini.  If you want to understand how small the "course" was, picture a mini golf course, then separate the hole locations a bit and add about 20 yards of "fairway".  Now, I am certainly no good at golf whatsoever, but compared to people that have never golfed before…I still wasn't very good.  It was fun though, and we ended up tying for the win in the scramble.  The driving range did help, because the people who were explaining the game were actual golf professionals, and whereas previously I had no idea what I was doing wrong, now I have a foggy clue.   After golf, we had some pizza from the clubhouse, which was actually real Italian pizza, cooked by an Italian man, and it was free for me, and possibly the whole church.  In terms of ways to end a day, that was a good one.  Essentially the only name that I remember from Weinheim, aside from Christian and Dörthe, was another pastor named Ben, who was 29.  He was a cool guy, and on my team in the scramble.  I really liked that people felt comfortable speaking German and having me try to speak German back to them.  Typically what happens is that I will say something in German awkwardly, then the other person switches to English and then I really can't practice listening in German.  Today I got to speak a lot of German, which was mostly out of necessity.  I could do that again.  I really didn't speak with the Pestels much today, other than with Dörthe at lunch, but really felt welcomed by them and especially their congregation.  Also, the sermon was easier to understand, than the service at the Evangelical Bergkirche here in Ingelheim.  The train ride back was as uneventful as the train ride there, and though it cost me €31 to get there and back, it was entirely worth it.  Not only did I get to meet some cool people that Jim and Karla know, but I got to attend a worship service that was more of the style that I am used to in the U.S., and they even played a song in English, because the youth were in charge of worship today.  I can't remember the exact name, but it was David Crowder Bandesque, and had a very upbeat danceable rhythm to it.  It is pretty popular here, and I should really be able to remember it, but no matter.  It was nice, because it was very familiar, and I could really sing it out, in my native tongue.  Oh, and as I am going to bed, after having a wonderful chat with my family, who just brought Katie somewhere again today, I am watching an awesome movie about giant snakes and creatures out of 'Avatar' fighting the typical U.S. Army, mixed with a crazy ‚Lord of the Rings: Return of the King' last battle scene, where it looks like they are in Mordor, even though they were just in New York City, and holy crap there are two giant snakes fighting each other right now run-on sentence.  I'm sorry, did I say snakes?  I meant snakes without wings that can fly.  So far, this movie has combined 'Cloverfield', 'King Kong', 'Lord of the Rings', 'Avatar', 'Alien vs. Predator', the newish cartoon movie about the Norse/Viking kid who tames a dragon, and quite honestly I wouldn't be surprised if they threw in a bit from 'Juno' in the next couple of minutes.  Yes, that was a poorly made joke.  But seriously, this movie is amazing.  My final observation from today is that German TV-show producers don't pick convenient places in the action to place commercials.  They put them in the middle of whatever in the world they choose.  It's kind of nice, because now I know that they will be picking it up in the middle of an epic CGI fight, instead of wondering what that wistful look in an actor/actresses eyes means.  I really need to go to sleep now.

July 17

Last night I intended to get up somewhat early and see how far I could get going south on my bike.  Well, I woke up and it was raining.  So instead I had a lazy morning inside waiting for the rain to stop.  Then I took a nice long bike ride in the afternoon for quite a ways between Ingelheim and Mainz.  It was picturesque, warm and hilly, so naturally it made for some good training (even better because my rear tire is not full of air, so I really had to work for it).  It ended up being a nice ride and a good day, in spite of the early rain.  I also got to see quite a bit of the Kreis Bingen-Mainz area.  There are a lot of windmills just chilling out there.  I like to see that.

July 16

No reaction today, but I did have the pleasure of making sure all my protocols were up to snuff, and writing them according to the new guidelines we have.  I got some great corrections from Barbara, and have a better idea of what I should be doing there.  She also told me that I shouldn't thank her for giving me more work to do J.  I had another German lesson with Oliver again which was great per usual.  Oliver knows so incredibly much about language, be it English, German or some Italian, French or Spanish.  They are all kind of intertwined with Latin, and so he has some great insights on word origins and how they relate and change to what we have today.  And I ran tonight even though it was hot.  It felt good, especially because I did not flood my body with acid beforehand.

July 14

I continued my ongoing project to increase yield today.  It is certainly repetitive, but that also means that I am getting good at it.  I had no problems with hazardous chemicals today, which made me quite happy.  I did however destroy a dropping funnel by knocking it over with my elbow.  That was less than awesome, but no one was hurt.  Overall though, I got the reaction done on time and smoothly.  Ramona visited yesterday (the Azubi before Tamara, whom I worked with during my first couple of weeks), and today the Azubi before Ramona came (Iris).  She is from the north, and spoke very quick German, in the Platt manner.  My lesson with Oliver went well again today, and I learned a lot about the cases and how they modify a couple more words.  We had lunch today with some of the people that Dirk first worked with at Böhringer, which was cool.  Tonight I went for a run which turned out to be not such a good idea.  It started out fine, it was just quite hot.  Then it started turning dark and within five minutes it was getting gusty and nasty.  Then it started sprinkling.  All the while I could have turned back, but why would I ever do that?  It turned out that I ran through the middle of a thunderstorm, from start to finish.  Looking back, I would probably not do that again, because I returned among massive downed branches.  On the plus side though, it motivated me to run really quite well and fast.  I guess that's something.  It was also quite cool to run in the rain; that was nice.

July 15

I did the same reaction again but differently today.  Nothing new there.  It is still always very interesting though, because I never really investigated thoroughly the effect of solvent use on yield.  It can make a substantial difference, of that I am now sure.  Today was a fun day, mostly because the weather was cooler and people were in better moods.  This weekend is still pretty up in the air, but at this point I think that on Saturday I might just see how far I can go in a direction on my bike.  That way my butt will be incredibly sore on Sunday.  Plus, I need to get ready for the DALMAC at some point.  Running is good, and it has really grown on me, but it is not exactly the same.

July 13

No reactions were run today; I got the yield from the one the previous day though.  It is better than all the ones before it.  If it ends up being the best, we will have to re-run it for confirmation later.  Today I sent an e-mail to Karla Veldinks friends, the Pestels.  Christian got back to me, and I think that I will be meeting them for worship on Sunday in Weinheim.  I looked up train tickets, and it is more than I would spend, but worth it to meet with them I think.  I was supposed to have a lesson with Oliver today, but he ended up having to pick someone up from the airport, so we had to reschedule.  That doesn't work well for us, because then I couldn't do a reaction today.  The work I did today was largely with getting my lab journal up to date and other things like that.  After work I did almost nothing other than take a nap, read and go to bed early.  Hopefully I will be caught up on sleep tomorrow.

July 12

So, today was a morning that came too quickly.  I could have gotten away with sleeping in I think, but for some reason I didn't…I should have.  At work I continued in the series of nearly identical reactions, tweaking a different part of it.  This particular reaction employs a particularly toxic chemical, which most are, but this one more so than most.  Let's be clear, if I thought that I were too tired to perform my tasks, I would have gone home, but I felt pretty good, not drowsy at all.  So I began the reaction then, and prepared all of the materials and had everything ready.  I had the noxious chemical in the dropping funnel and everything, however the nut-like piece that holds the stopcock in place was not screwed in all the way.  It should have been, but I didn't check it.  This led to the substance leaking out through the side of the funnel, and making a terrible mess in the hood.  This was bad; very bad.  I'm not going to say specifics, about the chemical, but I got it away from my reaction apparatus and closed the hood quickly.  We had to neutralize all of it, and wait for a bit for the hood to vent as much of it away as possible.  That was a great start to the day.  However, I got a big pickmeup from reading my e-mails this morning.  I got a comment and e-mail from Mum, which I love to read.  Basically anything anyone sends me is gold for me, even if it is just a short e-mail.  And Cam sent me an e-mail, which just absolutely made my morning as well.  Even though I had just screwed up pretty badly, I felt a lot better just from reading some e-mails.  It's not the same as talking, but it is wonderful still.  After I managed to get things cleaned up in my hood, I went for try number two, checking everything meticulously, and succeeded this time.  I've decided to stop trying to deflect blame, even when it isn't my fault, something I picked up from someone I respect in Cincinnati a couple of years ago.  It is not fun, but it builds character, and makes you focus more on your own actions and their consequences.  Practically however, this meant cleaning up the container in which the container of the toxic chemical was housed after being berated for leaving it dirty (container within container).  I was in no danger of course because I was careful and had all manner of appropriate protection; however the residue was the result of the last person who had used it.  It wasn't my fault, but there is no benefit in passing blame on something that has already happened, one more intangible thing I've learned over here.  After lunch then, things were going well, and I had set up my distillation apparatus for the umpteenth time and was about to commence the distillation until I realized that the stirrer was not on.  I then turned the stirrer on, with the vacuum on, which apparently is not a good idea, because I then succeeded in blowing a good portion of my reaction mixture through the cooling column, for the second time since I have been here.  Who knew that such an innocuous action would have such unfortunate consequences?  Not this guy.  At this point, I kind of wanted to go home, and just call it a day, but that wasn't really possible.  I got it all taken care of eventually, and at the end of the day, Barbara cheered me up by telling me that in the next lab, they wrecked a stirrer today (difficult) and told me some stories of things that she had done epically wrong, or what some previous interns had done.  I was glad to be able to laugh for a bit.  I think today was just a bad day, because I didn't feel all that tired until the very end of the day (incidentally, I fixed that with an extra dark coffee/ espresso combo).  I'll get some more sleep tonight, and hopefully that will help.

July 11 (2)

July 11

For Sunday, we decided to head to Dachau in the morning and the Deutches Museum in the afternoon.  Dachau is of course a very dark and sobering place to visit.  We toured the grounds, and walked though the museum.  The museum is located in the buildings where the incoming prisoners were processed.  It was pretty haunting to walk anywhere in the camp, but particularly to go along the steps that the victims did, seeing visual evidence and reading about the brutality that took place.  Much of what I learned I would like to forget, but the images and reports of the brutality are difficult to, and should not be forgotten.  After the processing area, we looked through the reconstructed barracks that were there for the prisoners, and walked past the foundations of all the rest of them to the various memorials that have been set up.  I can't stress enough how somber the entire place is.  We then went through the crematorium building and gas chamber as well.  That made for quite the morning, but I think it was important to see the depths of what we are capable of as humans.  For the afternoon we went to the Deutsches Museum, which was a rather different atmosphere.  It is extremely expansive, and covers most any technical topic or part of technology, new or old, that you could think of.  We split up to see it, because we all have different tastes and headed off.  I of course went directly to the Pharmaceutical exhibit.  It focused more on the body and things like that than actually the process of making a drug; however it did focus on that as well.  They focused on St. John's wort and its extraction.  When they showed the organizations and people credited with putting the exhibit together, Böhringer was quite prevalent.  I liked how they presented the history of drug preparation, along with explaining a bit of how drugs actually work.  After that I toured many of the various exhibits, which are too many to enumerate.  Suffice it to say though, that I was able to mosey about very contentedly, perusing many cool engineering and technological achievements.  I could have stayed in there for several days just looking around at exhibits.  We left the museum at closing time, went back to the hostel to collect our bags, and barely missed the second-to-last train that we could have taken back.  So, we waited for an hour until the last train that would be able to take us home arrived.  The trip back started out well, we made good time, and passed through stops like normal.  Then we came to Stuttgart.  We sat on the tracks there for a couple of hours.  Initially they said that trains would be held for the ICE connections in Mannheim, which was where we needed to go.  Then we kept on sitting there, and sitting there and sitting there.  There were policemen on the train and we just were not moving.  Eventually they couldn't hold the trains anymore, and from what I could tell, they never gave us an explanation for why we weren't moving.  After two hours, we began moving again, but kind of did the whole start and stop thing for a while.  Before the two hours were up, they started giving out drinks free at the Bistro on the train, so the three of us had a Beck's beer each.  They were cold, which was nice, but it didn't make up for being stuck on a train for many more hours than expected with no explanation.  In any case, we made it to Mannheim after a long while.  They kept open the service station there for us, and it basically came down to those with missed connections (most of us) waiting in line to get Taxi vouchers.  I was happy to not have to sleep in a train station while waiting for an early morning train back to Ingelheim.  It did however mean that I took a 60km cab ride from Mannheim to Ingelheim at 1:30am after an already long day.  My driver was a Turkish man name Bünalt or something like that.  He was cool, and I got to practice my German, which was good enough to converse with him over a variety of topics.  It's fun to talk in German, because it's good for the learning, and you pick up pretty quickly on where you need to improve, which is still most places for me.  The problem with speaking German is that conversely, people want to practice and show off their English ability, which is typically good.  I was glad that this was not the case with Bünalt.  Eventually at around 2am I arrived in Ingelheim at my apartment, completely exhausted.  I unpacked briefly and hit the sack for about 4 hours of sleep.  I am writing this on Monday, because had I written it yesterday it would have been incomprehensible.

July 10 (2)

July 10

For our only complete day in Munich, we decided to take a free walking tour in the morning.  It was nice, and we got to walk around the inner city area and see a lot of the sights.  I like walking around by myself, but it is also nice to have a guide who can tell you stuff that you might not know otherwise.  There were a variety of churches and other important historical buildings that we saw.  We went by the Hofbräuhaus, which is a famous Biergarten there as well.  I met a guy from Singapore, who I talked to for a while (named Neo Kai) as well as some guys who had just graduated from UNC, and a guy from Utah.  There were quite a few Americans on the tour with us in fact.  After the tour, we headed over to English Garden, to check out the Chinese tower there and have a beer in the Biergarten there.  It was a nice day, and ideal for walking about, as long as there was shade.  We were a bit lost on the way there, but came upon a member of the tour that we had been on, who knew where he was going.  We went with Stanley, a Chinese guy from Hangzhou who lived and worked in Ontario as a software engineer.  He was fun to talk to for Joe and I, because we have been to Hangzhou.  Marc actually slept for a bit after a beer, for which I can hardly blame him.  I tried to steer the conversation to things not necessarily pertaining to China, but it was difficult.  After a beer, we walked along the river in the park, which was full of bathers and people just lying around.  There were so many people along the banks that there was almost no place to sit.  We ended up finding a place at a bend in the river (it was constructed and re-routed using a cement trench), where people would fly past in kind of a frenetic lazy-river sort of fashion.  The water was cool and refreshing.  After sitting for a bit, we headed back, to do some more sight-seeing.  On the way out of the park, we came upon the place where the river enters the park by kind of dropping in.  There was a group of guys surfing in the river, on the natural wave that is formed by the water entering.  A lot of people were standing around watching, so we did for a while as well.  It was really cool, and some of the guys were really good.  One of them could even spin in complete circles and get air in the river.  Following our park tour we headed back into the city, to get a view from a church tower that over-looks the whole city.  This is when Stanley left us.  He was a lot of fun.  You could see the whole city essentially, including the Olympic stadium and Bayern-Munich's stadium.  We saw the Glockenspiel again, only this time from above.  After climbing the church tower we bought a few groceries at Rewe, then went back to the hostel to eat, watch Germany play Uruguay and plan Sunday.  It was a good game, and we watched it with a very international audience.  After the game we had a warm Munich beer each (I don't know why we bought the beers at the store, because we knew that we had no access to refrigeration).  The funny thing was that they didn't taste that bad warm, but that is something that I will not do again either way.  We then retired to our room, and I talked with Qi and Cris again for a while before going to bed.  I also met Shay (I think that's what it is at least), who is from California, and is traveling through Europe for a couple of months, kind of planning it as she goes.  Getting to sleep was kind of difficult there because it was incredibly warm, and the streetcars and normal cars were pretty loud, but it wasn't unbearable.  Oh, I should also mention that our room included a bathroom, and in related news, I met a Canadian who was familiar with YoungLife (I was wearing my tree shirt) and had been to several camps in the States.

July 8 and 9

Today is Thursday, and I pretty much just spent it getting ready for tomorrow morning, when we travel to Munich.  I bought some food and got my things together.  We leave early tomorrow morning, for a long day of traveling.  At work though I did another reaction for Barbara, and got a yield that is quite high; certainly higher than expected, which means that there are probably some more impurities than usual.  I will be interested to see what the yield on the next reaction scheme is, but won't know that until Monday.  Anyway, it was another quiet night.

Friday was a little more exciting and fun.  We met on the train in Mainz at about 6:30am, then transferred at Frankfurt Flughafen to Munich, taking Intercity Express trains the whole time.  It was nice, and relatively quick for us.  We arrive in Munich at around 10:30am or so, found our Hostel and dropped off some bags.  We were there waiting for the train that would take us to the Eagle's nest, when Marc realized that his EurailPass was back in his bag in the Hostel.  That ended up costing us an hour in the Berchtegaden area, but no matter.  What can you do?  We got to Berchtesgaden through Freilassing, and started looking for a way to get to the Eagle's Nest and back, however a man in the tourism office informed us that it was too late for a visit.  Instead, he recommended that we check out the Königsee nearby.  That turned out to be a wonderful choice and even though we didn't go to the Eagle's Nest, we did still get to see it.  And in either case, we were still in the Alps, which are rather beautiful.  The Königsee is a nice, cold Alpen lake, surrounded by mountains.  We initially just plunked down and sat with our feet in the water, but then Joe found a boat rental place nearby, so we rented a rowboat for an hour (the last hour we could have) at €3/person.  We rowed for a while until we could see the church that is located on the lake, then decided to go for a dip.  Of course we had all forgotten our trunks, so we swam anyway.  There were a lot of people swimming all around the lake, and we just picked a spot, dropped our drawers and swam around in the cold clear water in our boxers.  It was incredibly refreshing and gorgeous.  A lake fit for a kind indeed; and naturally, we got some good pictures.  On the way back we talked with a corpulent, drunk Bavarian man.  He was there with his wife for their anniversary, and incredibly hilarious.  His accent was difficult to understand, but we got to practice a little German, and watch him roll around on the ground, and flop about like a seal in the water.  The best part was watching him roll about though.  After the Königsee, we headed back to Munich on our railpass.  Our connections worked out ok, although we nearly had a hiccup.  In Munich we got to our room and settled down.  I met a couple new people who were staying there (our room was coed with 8 bunk beds).  The first person I met was Cris, a guy from Poland, who drives bands around in his van, even though he is a Master of History.  Apparently teaching in Poland is not very lucrative (and from what he was saying, not much is lucrative in Poland in terms of employment).  He was in Munich because his van had broken down, and the people at VW, who make the van could not fix it (a German company not able to fix a German vehicle, in the place of its origin?).  He was not pleased to be there, because he was losing a lot of money, and the shop was taking forever to get the thing back up running.  I also met Qi Xia, who is a Physics Ph.D. student studying in Mainz of all places.  She was visiting Munich for the weekend, and was a lot of fun to talk to.  It turns out that she is from Suzhou, which is COOL, because that is where the Katester is from.  We got to bed somewhat promptly to get a good start on Saturday.

July 7

This morning I started the base reaction that Barbara has run, then later I will change things up a bit in different ways, to see if we can't tease a few more percentage points into the Ausbeute (yield).  It went well I think, but of course I will have to wait until tomorrow, or maybe later, to see what the yield was.  The reaction took most of the day, and then we had a meeting (which I chose to go to) with the Analytic department.  It was supposed to go from 3-5, but ended up taking only a bit more than an hour.  I understood more this time, than last time, but still not too much.  The problem is that they are speaking technical German, and quickly.  Yeah, a bad combination for me; but really good because it all helps me learn.  After work today I had a bit of food, then went to get my RailPass activated at the station.  It is now good until September 7, and we will start using it this weekend!  After that was taken care of, I waited for a bit before taking a train to Mainz, then walking to meet Dirk there.  I actually came across Nadine first, and we waited shortly, until Dirk and his posse arrived.  Dirk and his friends are always a joy to hang out with.  This was my second public viewing in Germany, and the better one by far.  It was in the open, with a massive screen and tons of people standing around and cheering really loud.  Periodically there would be chants and always people just yelling nonsense (to me at least).  Vuvuzelas were not allowed, and you were not allowed to bring your own alcohol inside.  They even felt us up before we entered, I think for alcohol containers only.  They probably would have let me bring a knife, as long as it didn't contain alcohol.  Once again, I didn't have to by any beer there, because it just got bought for me.  I only had two though; everything in moderation!  It was a lot of fun, except that Germany lost.  The game was great though, and the atmosphere better.  I got to talk with Dirk's friend Kai for a while there.  I used German pretty much entirely; I liked him because even though he could speak good English, he spoke German with me, and did it in a way that I could understand.  Maybe it is because he comes from Hannover.  They are supposed to have the least accent there I guess.  He is a social worker with children and youth, for the government (kind of like a Social Services in the States).  Nadine drove there, so I was able to ride with her back, instead of taking the train, which was nice.  We talked on the way back about interests and such, and family; she wanted to know what I liked best about Germany.  I said the people, because they can be very friendly and not very friendly, and it is fun to get to know them, especially the people in my lab, and Dirk's friends.  Now that I think about it though, it is almost kind of a copout, because I thought that about China as well.  I might have to find something more specific.  That shouldn't be hard, since there is little here that I don't like.  Anyway, Nadine is really cool, and I am glad that I've been able to hang out with her.  Things are not so loud at all here in Germany now for an obvious reason.  It is unfortunate to be certain; at least I still have the Netherlands to look forward to.

July 6

Well, the typical reactions were run at work today, and I am now ready to do a special project for Barbara, trying to find a way to get better yields on the most expensive step in the whole campaign.  It was kind of a long day today, because my German lesson was at 16:00, which is essentially after work.  I'm not saying it wasn't a lot of fun and extremely interesting, however, it was longer than usual.  When I got home, I essentially just made some dinner quick, then waited until the Netherlands played against Uruguay.  It was pretty much a fantastic game, which sets up a potentially great final.  I cannot wait to see Germany play Spain tomorrow.  I am going to a public viewing with Dirk, and it should be awesome.  Especially if (when) Germany wins.

July 5

I feel kind of repetitive, but today I repeated a reaction with Barbara, but used starting materials from a different source.  Things went well, and I have more to do tomorrow, which is always a good thing.  The results came back from my project that no one has done before, and my product was decently pure, considering that I forewent a recrystallization step as was suggested to me.  The important thing though, was that it was the right product, which was confirmed by NMR.  That was exciting.  The new azubis came today as well (an azubi is an apprentice for the job that Dirk, Barbara and Sabrina do).  Ours is using a desk in another lab area, and I'm not sure what will happen when that person comes back.  We will just have to share I guess.  I introduced myself to another one very briefly, who seemed a little out of it.  His name is Stefan as well, which is probably the second best name a person could have.  After work I mailed some postcards and got some groceries.  This weekend I will probably pick up some more postcards, so hopefully more will be coming.  I can't promise that you will get one, but you might~.

July 4

At church this morning we had communion.  It was the first time that I have participated since coming to Germany.  At the Burgkirche they use bread like we do, but since there is a small amount of people, we stand up at the front of the church in a circle and drink from two glasses like Pastor Bob has, but drink white wine instead of juice.  They have two goblets that are cleaned and interchanged between every couple of people.  It was Independence Day today of course, so I wore my red, white and blue polo.  I may have sung the National Anthem a couple of times in my apartment, pretending to be at the Conference Grounds for morning worship.  I took another relaxing Sunday afternoon, watching sports, napping and listening to podcasts.  This is neither here nor there, but there is a Miracle Whip commercial on TV every once in a while that features a snotty "American" kid telling a German lady that in America, we don't do it that way, referring to making home-made potato salad, and other little things like that.  It then flashes to a barbecue with the kid's dad, who is a stereotypical cowboy, hick Texan, who comments with a terrible southern accent on how good the potato salad is.  I almost cried from laughing the first time I saw it…I'll have to try and get it on video some time.  This evening I ran my normal route without incident, then watched some of Apollo 13 and some of the Blues Brothers.  I really wanted a cheeseburger today, as I have not had one since coming here, and it was the Fourth, however, instead I had jam, Nutella and salami and gouda sandwiches.  Not bad, but not a cheeseburger.

July 3

So, today was interesting.  I got up early to meet Marc in Koblenz before heading out to Luxemburg.  There was no actual confirmation between the two of us, so I was very glad to see him there and ready to go.  We made it to Trier alright, but then a combination of factors took us to the hole that is called Konz.  We hopped right back on the next train to Trier, and with our Luxemburg day passes took an ICE to Luxemburg City.  I won't say that it was a shock when we got there, but I certainly was not prepared for the French domination there.  German is of course spoken, as well as English, but it is mostly Luxemburgish I guess and French.  The way the signs are displayed for streets, and the fact that everything is in French there was a bit unfortunate.  We got around alright though with German and English.  When exploring a city, I will typically do not enough research, and then just figure things out as I go.  Today was no different.  Marc and I left the Hauptbahnhof in Luxemburg, then just started walking.  We saw a cool monument, and then asked someone where we were.  From that point on it wasn't so difficult, but per usual, we did end up seeing some government buildings and a closed library that you wouldn't typically see on a normal tour of the city (because they were entirely uninteresting).  Also, it turns out that Luxemburg City is air conditioned.  At a couple of points while we were walking down the sidewalk, there was very strangely, cold air blowing out of cloth that was hung down along the sidewalks.  Maybe that was not intended though.  We did get our act together eventually though, and saw the Bock Casements, which is an old fortress that dates back over 1000 years and was held by many different groups.  It was a lot of small spaces and stairs.  However, it was a perfect place to tour, because it was rather hot today, and underground stone passageways are quite cool to be in.  Also, there were cannons, so that was cool; who doesn't like a cannon?  After the Casements, we were kind of at a loss for what to do, so we just walked around the city, kind of looking for a place to watch Germany play, and kind of just walking.  We ended up walking for a while, finding not much of anything, except for a kind of cool looking city, and found a bar with some screens we could take advantage of.  Most people were rooting for Germany, which made sense, however there was a man near us who was clearly not.  At halftime I went over and asked him if he was from Argentina, in Spanish.  It turned out that he was in fact not, but for some reasons, that I still don't understand, was not for Germany.  He ended up being an incredibly interesting person.  He is from Bethlehem, and has been all over the world.  As a Palestinian, who trains police forces, he was eventually forced to leave his home, and has been living in Asian countries for the last 14 years.  He has lived in Laos and Cambodia as well as Vietnam I believe.  He can apparently speak the local languages and dialects from those countries, as well as English, some French, a little German, and some Spanish, on account of living in Spain for 4 months.  He has been in Luxemburg for 25 days and isn't quite sure what is next.  He had favorable opinions of Americans that he has met (apparently none of which want to return to the U.S., which he vehemently told me).  It is the power and the money that are the problem, not the people, but the governments.  He told me that he blames 10% of the Jews for what has happened in Israel, only those with a lot of power.  I got to read a song that he had written about coming from Bethlehem, and the struggle between wanting to return and have things be well again, and not being able to.  He even told me that he was agnostic; he was probably one of the most colorful and well traveled people that I have ever met.  His name is Jad by the way, Jad Aem.  That said, there are many things about his stories that I do not believe.  He seemed like quite the talker, but I think that the more important points that he had talked about were certainly based in fact.  I spent the whole second half speaking with him, which was quite the experience.  He said that if he weren't talking with me, he would be a lot angrier (Argentina was getting the game ripped from their grasp).  I was happy to have met him for sure.  Quite the character that man is (the paper that he had written his song on had some other writing that recommended a psychological evaluation, so that was another lens brought to the conversation.  After our beers and the match, we headed to the Hauptbahnhof, and headed back to Trier on the next train.  The train from Trier back to Koblenz took forever unfortunately, and it was incredibly loud in the beginning because of the recent blowout win.  They kept on singing and singing and singing these patriotic songs involving soccer.  Then when I got to Koblenz and had parted ways with Marc, I found out that my train was going to be a half hour late, which is absolutely unheard of with the Deutsche Bahn.  With about an hour to wait, I headed out into the area surrounding the station and managed to find an outdoor café with a TV, broadcasting the Spain-Paraguay game.  I was joined by a Japanese woman who was studying near Koblenz at a university, for her MBA.  She was very nice, and we talked briefly about where we were from, and why we were in Germany.  I believe her name is Aiko, or something like that.  Eventually her friend who comes from China, but lived in the U.S. and now works in Berlin came (her train had been late).  It was nice to talk with them for a while (she lived in Los Angeles, and her family comes from Boston), and have a beer, before my train came.  I took my leave, a bit after Spain scored the only goal (the beginning was quite the goalie skill display).  The train was late, of course though, likely because of the incredible abundance of soccer fans that piled out of the cars.  At this point, I am getting quite used to that train ride, because it goes back and forth pretty often between Koblenz and Mainz (stopping in Ingelheim).  On the ride back though, instead of listening to music I talked with an American soldier who was riding the train.  He comes from Washington state, and in the last 5 months has joined the Army and gone through BASIC training.  He was a pretty interesting guy, and it was nice to talk with another American for a bit.  His bag and shoes gave away his status (no one in Germany wears Asics, only Adidas).
So, though Luxemburg City wasn't the most interesting place that I have visited, it did have a lot of culture.  The best part was meeting the three people today.  I like meeting people from all over, and they made it interesting, coming from a wide variety of places.  I am tired though now, and am going to go to sleep in my bed.

July 2

Today I ran a reaction with Barbara, and learned some more things to do right next time. I also did a little work for Dirk, which kept me busy the whole day. I have even more to do for Monday, but things went well enough today. My lab technique is much better now, but I am constantly finding little things that I neglect; I gueß that’s a good thing. I had another German lesson today with Oliver, which was great. I always learn from him, even if it is just us talking about normal things, because there will be some part of the conversation that a German would have said differently (by some part I of course mean most parts), or some speaking tip that he can give me. It always seems like there is a much more simple way of saying things, compared to the way that I try to say it. Also, it was really hot today, which makes me glad that the lab is climate controlled. The Netherlands is playing against Brazil right now, which makes me happy, because I can watch some good soccer, and listen to a podcast as well. I am planning on going to Luxemburg with Marc and maybe Joe tomorrow, but they haven’t gotten back to me. I guess I just show up in Koblenz and hope for the best. That is the problem with communication for me here. If it doesn’t happen via e-mail, it really doesn’t happen.

July 1

This morning I didn’t have a ton to work on, but I did get everything in my hood in order, and one of my reactions finished up. Barbara and I went over the protocols that I have written of reactions that I have done since coming here. I was kind of dreading it, because the last time I did so many things wrong, but it was good, because apparently I have learned some things since coming here. During the course of our looking it over, Barbara just burst out laughing, after reading one of my sentences. It was for a reaction that had not run to completion because the ingredients that I used had been compromised by either air or moisture before I used them (not my fault), so the reaction had been scrapped after the first part. Apparently, instead of writing, “the reaction mixture went to waste” I had written, “the reaction mixture walked to the waste container.” I’m learning more and more that gehen is a false cognate for to go. It implies more of walking when used by itself, which was how I had used it of course. I also got a laugh when instead of saying that I was ready, I said a famous line that a German soccer player had once said. I am glad that people can not only understand me, but find my mistakes hilarious. If only I could be intentionally funny in German. I did a special little project for Dirk today, which was more little that special, but no matter, I still did something that he would have had to do, but trusted me with. We tested the solubility of a salt that comes up in production as a side product, in a variety of solvents (with the intention of using it to clean the equipment in the plant). Tomorrow I will write an official protocol of it that they can use later. I’m also doing a little project with Barbara, which I prepared for today at the end. The happiest part of the day though, was getting a confirmation e-mail for the DALMAC 5-day U.P. tour. I talked a bit with Nathan today, who got me registered (thank you again). That will be a lot of fun, and a whirlwind way to end the summer. I think we start biking maybe either the day after I get back or the next. After work I went to the bookstore here, and after looking through quite a few of them, settled on a German-English translation book. It has so many more words, and is actually current (zum Beispiel, no Hitler Jugend abbreviation in it). It was probably worth buying, so I don’t look up words that haven’t been used in 50+ years. I took another inadvertent nap today. It was hot, so I think I was listening to a podcast, then just fell asleep. What a life‼ So to avoid complete laziness I ran tonight, and strangely found that one of my toes was bleeding profusely. It is that dratted toe that bleeds when I cross-country ski, which is strange, because I wasn’t skiing (at least not that I know of). I only realized it after I kept on seeing these little red smudges all over my tile floor, which hadn’t been there before. Anyway, mystery solved. Good night.

June 30

I am writing this the day after it happened, and kind of coming up with a blank. It wasn’t a very significant day I am wont to believe. Work was fine, and I think that I may or may not have done a reaction. After work I did some German exercises, and I read one of the stories from a German book that I bought for children. The gist of the story that I read, is that there are two girls in a class, who like to hang out and say things to each other when the teacher is not there. They also like to spy on the boys, and become friends with another girl in the class through this spying. The way I read it though, it sounded like they thought that the other girl was a boy for a while, which I am pretty sure was not the intention. I’ll probably read the story again tonight to see if I can’t get a better idea of what is going on. Reading German is not like reading Spanish or English, or anything that I have done before. It is hard to get used to a different sentence structure, especially when they are long. The smaller vocabulary part of is difficult to be sure, but the sentence structure is what will probably take the longest to learn. Another notable thing was that I discovered Toto’s “Africa” today, which is a delight . Whenever I hear them say ‘Serengeti’ though, it makes me laugh, because they really want to force in the idea of Kilimanjaro being like Mount Olympus. Anyway, that is neither here nor there. I also found a legitimate German pop song that is in fact in German, and that I enjoy listening to. So yeah, today was reading and listening I guess.