I'M IN LONDON BABY!

I can't believe it took me the entire day to get to London. I got to the Hbf at around 11am and it wasn't until like 6:30 or so that I finally got to the hostel. I haven't really done anything since I got here because I wasn't really sure what was open on Sundays after 7pm. :\ I've basically been surfing the web since I got here. There's movie night at the hostel and there's like 20 something people just hanging out at the lounge and I just joined in. I find it quite weird how most of them weren't talking to each other though. People were just concentrating on the movies or just staring at their own laptops. Anyways, I'll explore London tomorrow. The Space Odyssey is playing right now and.....it doesn't look that interesting. I mean, these people have to talk more or something. If I was watching this thing by myself, I would definitely fall asleep.

My RyanAir Experience

Dude, budget airlines in Europe or maybe just Ryanair is super strict on how big your baggage can be. I packed all the lighter stuff in my suitcase because I knew that would definitely be weighed. So this meant that my carry-on was massively heavy and I had to stuff everything in my duffel bag. It was such a workout just carrying my stuff to the main station. I attempted to walk to the main station from my flat but that only lasted until I got to Pariser Strasse. It was around 11am and I wasn't sure if I would make it to the airport shuttle on time, so I had to ditch my walking plan and take a tram :( There goes 2.40 Euros. Anyways, I was going through security and I was forced to throw away from liquids because I couldn't fit it into the 1L bag they forced me to buy (0.5 euros! that's freakin expensive...but I guess they can do that because there is a demand with limited amount of time since Hahn is literally in the middle of nowhere. Where else can you get the bag right?). I originally packed extra shampoo and conditioner but I had to throw away some of it because it didn't fit in the bag :( I hope I have enough for 3 weeks. I'll have to use it sparingly! Anyways, I was forced to throw away from liquids and I tried to make it look like my bag was not heavy at all.

Then came the hard part. I was supposed to force my stuffed bag into this 50cm x 44cm x 20cm thing to make sure my bag was the correct size. -___- Since my bag was quite overstuffed, it was a bit tricky. I squished my bag as much as I could and when I tried to put it in the thing that tests for size....it didn't make it. The lady asked me for my boarding pass so she could check my bag for THIRTY-FIVE FREAKIN EUROS?!!? WHO THE HELL WOULD PAY THAT MUCH!! So I ran away from here and huddled in a corner to reorganize my bag. After much efforts, I got it to fit into the thing, but....it kinda got stuck when I tried to take it out. And the freaking lady told me "see, it doesn't fit. If it fits, it would go in easily and come out easily". I'm like thinking, dude, it's in the thing, it freakin fits. Don't freaking argue with me what the definition of "fit" is >:O Point is, I was worried that I would be forced to pay the fee to check it in. Phew! I made it!

During the take off, I have to say I was kinda worried for the plane. There was an intense humming sound as we were trying to get through the clouds. It was like an old lady wheezing! When it finally landed, it had a slight hop and it took like 10-15 seconds to decelerate to a normal speed. I was pretty worried -__- Anyways, I'm kinda worried for my second Ryanair flight from Paris to Venice. Hope it will be alright!

Anyways, I'm going to continue watching my Korean drama and then I'll be a crazy American tourist tomorrow :P

Germany Reflections

Sadly, I think it's about time that I close and sum up the Germany chapter in my life. Today was the last day of my internship and......(insert sob story here. I initially wrote like a 500 word essay about how sad I am about leaving, but blogspot couldn't save the entry properly and so I lost it when my computer froze -___- Anyways, the gist of it was that I'm really sad that I have to leave Germany because I've grown quite attached to the people here. When I said goodbye to them on Friday, it really didn't feel like a goodbye that would last forever but more like one where I would see them again on Monday at work. It is really a weird feeling when you know mentally that you are about to leave, but it just doesn't feel like it. Iono, I can't write as sad as before because all the tears have already been shed like an hour ago for that post. You can't just start up that emotion again for the same exact reasons--posting on a blog. Anyways, I hope that we will all stay in touch and I that I will see them again sometime in the future. I know that when I see them again, there might be slight awkwardness due to time, but stuff like this happens. Time will go on and our relationship will probably deteriorate from friends to acquaintances and so on. It's inevitable with the distance between us. The fact that things will never be the same again is really strange. I have developed a routine of sorts while I was in Germany and soon I'll be thrown into a trip around Europe and then back to reality back at home. Anyways, I can't reenact what I felt when I initially wrote this post.)

It was the last day on Friday so I was required to present my results in a talk. I wasn't too nervous before my presentation, I mean I could have been a lot worse :P However, right before my presentation (like 10 minutes before, or the part where I waited 15 minutes till everyone was present as I was all alone at the front of the room), I was pretty nervous. I could feel that my heart rate was accelerated and my hand was shaking. I was pretty worried that when I was using the pointer that it would totally go all over the place due to my shaky hands. Good thing it went well even though I spoke a bit too fast. I mean, I naturally speak kinda fast and I tried to slow it down or at least keep at normal, but it was still too fast. Sorry guys. Also, Sven prepared some pre-made questions for me but I was super obvious that they were premade. He asked me a question and I answered in like 2 words or so. It's kinda like....it's an essay response question but you answered in fill-in-the-blank format :P Sorry Sven. Well, hopefully I'll get more experience with these presentations and it will come out more naturally next time :)

After the presentation we went to Tina's flat to have lunch. I tried some Bavarian sausage which I thought was alright even after it was lathered in this special mustard. Part of the reason why I didn't like it as much as I should is probably cause I am not the hugest fan of mustard. Nonetheless, it was pretty good. Afterwards we had a gift exchange. The lab gave me a pizza made of gummies (it was presented in a pizza box and each component of the pizza was an individual gummy. For example....bacon was a sour belt, there was some chili pepper gummies, etc.) and a mug that was very representative of Mainz. It is decorated with the mascots of a broadcasting company here in Mainz (or was it Germany?...no...I think it was Mainz) and every time I use it, I'll think of my internship. As for what I got for the members in the lab, I got Tina a box of chocolates from Hussel. Initially I was planning to get some sort of jewelry or something, but I knew that could go horribly wrong and could be tossed to the side forever. So I went for something safe like chocolate. For Florian I got him the Playbook and Bro code book from How I Met Your Mother (in German). I was probing Florian pretty much the entire week and he shot down every one of my ideas. I thought, maybe a Nike+ product, but he doesn't like running and what's the use of a pedometer like thing if you're running on a treadmill in the gym. It already tells you everything you need to know. Weightlifting gloves? Nope, too fugly apparently. Something gaming related? He probably had everything he needed and he shares games with Benjamin...so it was very likely that I would give Florian a repeat. Sooo....I strolled around after work for a couple of days and finally got him these books from the bookstore. When I saw them, I knew he would appreciate them :) For Sven....I got him something online like two weeks ago but it hasn't arrived yet :( I was checking the mail diligently for the past week hoping to finally see it in the mail, but sadly....there was no sign of it. It was not until Thursday, the day before the gift exchange, that I received an email telling me that the address didn't work. So I had to provide the clinic's address to ensure that Sven would receive it somehow. So on Friday, Sven was pretty much present-less except for a bar of 82% chocolate (the darker the better!) and he will just have to wait to see what it is. For safety precautions, I will not mention what it was yet just in case he finds this blog :P Anyways, by the end of the day we said our goodbyes and I ended up crying a little bit :( Oh wells.

At Tina's after my presenation

These past few days I haven't really done much because my friends aren't really around in Mainz anymore and I couldn't get into contact with David, sooo...I spent it watching Heartstrings, the Korean drama. Darn you Wen! Now I'm sucked in!

Whelp it's almost time to catch my flight to London and this time I'm definitely going to the right airport :) I'm really going to miss the people here in Germany and I really hope that I will see them again. I will miss the cafe culture here where I can just lounge around outside a cafe and sit there for hours without the waitress/waiter rushing for me to leave. I'll miss all the breweries and many other things. I will definitely miss my lab the most and I hope that I will see them again. Overall, Germany was a good learning experience. I can now do multiple laboratory techniques with some level of confidence :P and I guess I am slightly more independent now. It was the first time I was in a foreign country truly alone with no knowledge about the language here, but I must say, it went quite well. Although I had Sven for help and support whenever I needed it, so maybe I'm not as independent as I think :P Anyways, it's time for me to head over to London and the rest of Europe! Good bye Germany! I hope I'll be back soon!

My flight to Vienna

Recently, I read from the Yahoo homepage that this professional tennis player booked a flight to the wrong Carlsbad. I thought, man was she unlucky. However, today I encountered a very similar situation. From the very beginning, I thought I was supposed to board at the budget terminal because my flight was extremely cheap. So I planned everything out: which bus I should take so that I would make it to the airport with plenty of time to spare, when I would be getting back, etc. Although I had everything planned out, I almost missed my shuttle because I couldn't find the "N stop" (It was by the A, B, and Cs. I thought it was in alphabetical order by the main station!). Luckily, I got help from the information desk as to where this stop was located. I got on that shuttle JUUUUUUUST when it was about to leave. Phew! The entire bus right to the airport was a total blur since I didn't get much sleep last night, I totally just passed out. When I finally arrived and got off the bus, I realized that I was literally in the middle of nowhere as the bus drove off behind me.

The fields surrounding the airport

The budget airline terminal (that small building on the right)

I was still so out of it from my deep sleep nap that it really took me five minutes to even figure out which direction I should walk towards! I mean look at that building above, does it scream airport to you? No. Anyways, I leisurely walk towards the freeway signs that said "Terminal" because that was the best clue I had to where the airport was. Eventually, I got to see the airport above. I calmly go to the bathroom and I'm totally ready to go through the gates, except these ladies stopped me and asked me where I was heading (I think they had no more flights that day and they were wondering why someone would want to go through the gates). I told them "Wien" and they were like what? They asked for my boarding pass and then they told me the most horrid news ever. I was at the wrong airport and they told me I was not going to make my flight. My heart just dropped, I barely grasped the situation. I was thinking, my flight is at 9:45 and it's currently 7:30 or so, how is it possible that I can't make it even if I was at the wrong airport. Apparently the real airport (main Frankfurt airport) was around 110 km away and I literally stranded in the middle of no where. I asked the information center and she told me the next shuttle to the real airport would not be for another 45 minutes or so and the shuttle would arrive at the real airport just as my flight would depart (It takes 90 minutes to get from Frankfurt Hahn to Frankfurt Main). So I'm just freaking out about how to salvage the situation and I thought that maybe I could take a cab there. Apparently the 110 km cab would cost me 180 Euros or so, that's like my flight!

Of course in this situation, I had to call my emergency number. I dialed Sven for SOS and he basically talked me through what I could do. I could book another flight or take a cab and try to make it. However, when he heard that the cab would cost 180 Euros, he said that would be too expensive and you can not be for sure if you can make the flight. So he said the best thing to do was to get my ass to Frankfurt Main via shuttle and talk to the people there to maybe hold my flight or book another one. So I bought myself a ticket to go to the real airport and the entire ride there, I kept looking at road signs to see how much longer it would take me. During the entire ride, I calculated that if we went 66 miles an hour or so, we should make it to the airport in 1 hr. However, the bus driver was going so slow! It had to range from 40 mph to 60 mph and sometimes slower. It was so frustrating! I have to mention, it was pretty sad when the shuttle went past the area that I run at (it was around 9:10 at that time)

I got to the airport with 10 minutes to spare so I run into the airport to head to the A gates, but that required me to take the skytrain! GAH! Sucking time out of me! It's like 9:42 (with my flight departing in 3 minutes) and I reached the Lufthansa help desk. Gasping for air, I asked if there was anyway they could hold the flight or get me on another flight and they told me they will do their best. After 3 agonizing minutes, they told me my flight has already left and I would have to rebook :( I was just dying at this point. I have never missed a flight in my life, and this is how it happens...I GO TO THE WRONG AIRPORT. They sent me over to the ticket counter to purchase a new ticket and guess what?!?! The nice man behind the counter (Mr. Lopez) went through some back doors and GOT ME A FREE TICKET FOR THE FIRST FLIGHT TOMORROW!!!! OH YEA BABY! So now I'm prepping to camp out at the airport. Mr. Lopez told me about this nice spot that had seats without the medal in between so it was a nice place to lie down :) So now I have four cushioned seats allll to myself. I think I'm going to work on my paper though since I know I'm not going to do it when I'm in Vienna.

Anyways, today was very stupid of me to go to the wrong airport. But despite that, I was very lucky to meet the nice man behind the ticket counter to give me a free boarding pass. The situation was salvaged :)

Desserts

My lab is trying to make me fat before I go back to the States. Recently, we've been having tons of coffee and German desserts right after lunch. Two days ago, Sven bought me a pudding pretzel (right) because we have been talking about it for a while now. I wouldn't say I was pressured into it, but with my "sure....why not" attitude, I finally decided to try one. While we were waiting for our coffees, Florian notices a Windbeutel (left) and I thought that this was going to be a snack for another day. But Sven immediately bought it and gave it to me as a present. So here I am, after lunch arms filled with two different desserts and a cappuccino. Boy did I feel like a fatty after my filling lunch. Luckily, I split the pudding pretzel with Florian so I wasn't too much of a pig :)

Apparently, Florian and Sven were about to make a bet about when I would eat the Windbeutel (cream puff). Sven bet that I would eat the cream puff after 2 while Florian bet that despite the fact that I just at lunch, had coffee, and ate the pudding pretzel, I would still eat the puff before 2. They did not shake for the bet because Florian was not totally sure if I would eat it. However, immediately after I finished my pudding pretzel, I went for the cream puff. Obviously these guys don't know me well enough :P I never save food for later. It should have been an easy win for Florian. They told me about this bet as I was stuffing my face with cream puff. It was not pretty :P

Earlier this week, they bought me this nussecken (image from the internet because I didn't think to take a picture at the time. It's basically like a nut cookie/pie thing. It was pretty good, I liked the cookie and chocolate.

They've also fed me this thing that I can't pronounce. They described it as a cake that was dipped in chocolate (initially I thought it was a pear dipped in chocolate due to the shape). So they handed this dessert to me and dude! It felt like it had to be a least 2 pounds of something. Usually when someone describes something as a cake to you, you'd imagine a soft light cake. Well, not this thing. This has to be the densest cake I have ever tried. I was like holding a rock! It was pretty tasty the first few bites, but then the utils just declined like crazy! In the end I finished it and Florian tells me that dessert is usually for a family of 5 to be eaten in 7 days. I'm sure he was kidding, but that thing was definitely not meant for one person in one sitting. Well, too late :P I hope I won't be too fat when I get back.

Heidelberg - DAAD-RISE Meeting

This past weekend I had a meeting in Heidelberg for four days with people running the RISE program and other RISErs. The train trip down on Thursday was pretty short at 1 hr compared to other people farther away. Some had to take a train for 8 hours from Berlin before they got to Heidelberg.

The first day wasn't that eventful since the talk only consisted of the US, Canadian, and UK embassy giving us some sort of mini-speech. It was so insignificant that I can't even remember what they said. A past RISE student and a current German exchange student from California spoke to us briefly about their experiences and what has changed after their participation in the program. Most of what they talked about was how awesome Germany was which makes sense since the purpose of this DAAD-RISE program is to build connections with people around the world with Germany. They hope that in the future there would be more collaborations with researchers in Germany or for us to work there in general. At least that's what I think the whole purpose of this entire program and meeting in Heidelberg was all about.

After the meeting with everyone in the RISE committee introducing themselves, we bused over to a brewery that was kinda far out. During the entire bus ride, Karen and I were trying to build up some courage to talk to some new people (especially the ones with the English accent, Karen has the hots for those ones LOL.) In the end we didn't really make any new friends on the ride to the brewery. Since it was such a fail to meet new friends on the bus, we decided that we'd sit with some new people so we wouldn't get locked into sitting with people we already know. Once we sat down at a table, we were immediately approached by a waitress asking us what kind of beer we wanted (light or dark). That lady is like a hawk, she came within 10 seconds! The people we sat with were pretty nice except the two MIT guys kinda just talked to each other. At one point they were talking about grades I think, they were probably just talking to measure each other up and compare who is better. The two dudes had some pretty major bling going on, they were both wearing their class rings (at least that's what I think it was). They didn't really socialize with us much, they were probably just being super exclusive, since they're both from MIT and all. Anyways, the meal was alright (buffet style since we were such a large group) and I ordered a second beer. There were some random conversations and mostly small talk so I don't really remember what we talked about.

Afterwards we went back to the hostel and then we tried to find a bar near the area that Kurtis spotted before. However, it started to rain and we thought we were going in the wrong direction so we went to the bar that was located within the hostel (it was a humungous hostel that could fit 300+ people, it was more like a hotel in hostel form). I just had a cocktail at the bar and chatted with some new people. Karen, Kurtis, and I didn't want to drink too much or stay out too late since we had company visits the next morning so we didn't go out to the old town with a bunch of other RISE students.

The next day we woke up bright and early to visit companies the program chose for us to visit. We could have gone to BASF, PI, Merck, and lots of other companies. I was assigned to go to Merck, a pharaceutical company, which I have to mention is not the same Merck in America. According to our tour guide, the two Mercks used to be one company but after WWI, the company split. I'm not totally sure on the details, but the history is on Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_%26_Co. ) . The visit was pretty interesting, it made me feel that going into the industry for research would not be that bad. Honestly, it didn't seem too different than going into academia. According to some of the people who work there, they decided to go into the industry because they liked a beginning and end to their work. For instance, in academia, you are focused on one topic for the rest of your career. In my lab for example, they will be studying ADAM10 and how it affects the body when it is upregulated or downregulated, or how it can be induced or whatnot. Ok, that was a super bad explanation but point is, working in the company allows you to explore different topics. You aren't focused on one specific enzyme forever. I don't know, I think going into the industry can't be that bad. I can kinda see myself doing it and possibly not hating it. I mean, if there's always something new to do at a company, why not? At least I wouldn't be bored. But I don't want to put down my hopes to become a doctor just yet. Maybe I could try to pursue an MD/PhD but I know my GPA is not high enough to get in. *sigh* Why is life so hard.

Anyways, the visit to Merck was nice. I never knew what it meant to go into the industry so I never really thought much about it. Now that I know what going into the industry is all about, it is now a path I can think about seriously. I can already see my dad being super sad that he let me go on this internship since it might be the one thing that stops me from being a doctor :P

We arrived back at the hostel at around 5 in the afternoon so Karen and I just had our free dinner and lounged around. At dinner, we met some guys and we played foosball with them while drinking some beer. When Sarah and Kurtis finally came back to the hostel from their company visit, us and a bunch of other RISE students decided to head to the old parts of town. We bought a 20 bottle crate of beer and two six packs and went by the river at a park to just chill out and drink with other RISE students. Anyways, as you can see on the left, that is a tally of what we had to drink (we made that the next day). We first had 3 beers by the river. During this time, I was trying to master the skill to open a beer bottle with another beer bottle. I have to say I totally failed at doing that. I opened the bottle a little bit and so it just leaked most of the time. I did however succeed in opening a beer with a lighter though. It's a lot easier. Three beers,

three tries, ultimately failed to open another beer with a beer. Afterwards, Karen, Kurtis, Tanner (a Canadian we met from the river that is also in the RISE program), and I went bar hoping in the old town area. It was an entire street of bars, and we just went into each one and

got a shot pretty much. I have to mention that I had to pee during our walk there so I was preeeetty delusional during our trip. I mean come on, with three beers in my belly, how can I not have the urge to urinate. In the end, we snuck into a restaurant to use their toilet. So relieved by the end of it :P Anyways, got to the bars/clubs and drank lots. Keep in mind all these shots probably occurred within 2-3 hours? This may seem like a long time, but if you're light weight like me, it was preeetty crazy.

Anyways, at one point we say some people order some shots that were ON FIRE! So I'm like, dude, I got to get me some of those. So we asked the bartender which shots could be lit on fire and he said B52s! So I tried to order 4 shots of B52 but they were not served lit on fire. So I'm like what the heck?!?! I just brought our drinks back to the table and then tried to light them on fire. They were lit very briefly but did not stay lit up. Total fail on my part. So Tanner thought he'd give it a try and ordered 4 more B52s from the bartender and asked how to light them on fire. Apparently you have to put your lighter/fire on the drink for a pretty long time to get them lit. So Tanner has them all lit up at the bar so we're super excited. He decides to bring the glasses of shot that are ON FIRE to the table which.....may or may not have been a good idea. But hey, we weren't totally there. He brought 3 of the shots to the table without spilling a drop but for the last one...he spilled a bit on the table so then the table was ON FIRE!!! (and so was Kurtis's hand cuz he spilled some of it on his hand while trying to pick it up). So I ended up blowing out all the B52s :( Later on in the night, I felt my hair and one side definitely had a different texture. I looked at it and guess what I found....burnt hair -____- I didn't even know when it happened! (well I do, but I didn't know at the time when my hair was actually on fire). Good thing only a little bit of it was burnt off. Don't worry, my hairdo is still symmetrical :).

4 beers and 10 shots later (throughout the night), it was time to head home at 2:50am because the bus leaves at 3 or something at Bismarkplatz. So we start treking back but Karen saw another bar, so we had to go in and have another shot :P At this point, I felt a little bit queasy and so I didn't have another one but one of the dudes wasn't too far gone yet, so I had to order him a shot. Since it would be quite sad if he had to drink the shot alone, I ordered a shot for myself as well (2 blowjobs, one each). Ok, I didn't drink the blow job correctly because I didn't feel like it at 3am and I'm pretty queasy so I didn't do the lift shot w/ mouth then tip head back thing. I just downed it like a normal shot. To be honest, I don't remember how it tasted like, but it was probably ok. Since it was already way past when the last bus came, we had to walk back to the hostel and we didn't get back until like 4am. On the way, the boys had the urge, so they had to pee in a bush/tree. Of course none of us really cared because if you have to go, you gotta go :P

That night I threw up a little bit before going to bed. I made the mistake of not eating a little bit or at least drink a lot of water before sleeping so I felt quite queasy until lunch. So that morning we were supposed to listen to presentations from other RISE scholars in the program this summer (they volunteered themselves to talk about their project). I was very curious as to what type of person would submit themselves to such torture. There were a total of 5 students that were presenting from the biology section of the program. Only two of them were actually pretty good in that they explained their project well and the pulled the audience into what they were saying. The other students just seemed way too nervous and didn't really explain their projects well enough so that people in the room understood what their project was about. The entire time, I would be wondering what is the point of their project (it's significance in the real world) and what exactly they were doing to prove whatever they wanted to prove. Some of the not as good presenters didn't really seem like people that would volunteer themselves to do something like this. It's possible that they were probably just trying to challenge themselves and whatnot.

Anyways, as I said earlier, I was pretty queasy so I couldn't pay attention to everything they were saying (this could be why 3/5 presenters weren't that good to me, but Karen agreed!). Near the end of all the presentations, I was basically tuning them out and trying to control the weird feeling I had in my throat/stomach telling me that I might have to throw up. Thankfully I did not, but afterwards, we were supposed to have lunch so I tried to get rid of this queasy feeling in the lady's room. Sadly, I couldn't do it and I am not skilled enough to stick a finger down my throat to make myself throw up. I eventually threw up a little after I smelt the food and threw up outside by a bush in front of a good amount of people. That was pretty embarrassing.

Hold up, in defense I was drinking that much last night because it was Kurtis's last night in Germany and I was never going to see him again probably. Also, I want to say I knew what I was doing and I wasn't going to do anything stupid that would endanger myself. As I was drinking, I was gauging my condition as well. I realize that my blog posts consist of a lot of drinking and I don't want to be seen as an alcoholic when I come back to the States. It just happens when anything post worthy happens, I'm drinking. On normal days, I'm just at my flat making pasta for myself to eat. Otherwise, I would be out at a cafe with Karen/Kurtis/Sarah to have a nice dinner with some coffee or something.

Ok, back to the weekend. I'm going to zoom through this because I've been writing this post for a week now and never got around to finishing it because I'm being too detailed about boring stuff. Anyways, we toured around the city and I moved into a different hostel in Heidelberg that afternoon (I couldn't book an extra night at the hostel I was already staying at) and then Karen and I trekked over to the park by the river for a BBQ hosted by one of the RISE students located in Heidelberg. We bought beer (2.5% girly stuff) and some meat on a stick.

Pondzie inside the castle, you can see parts of the town and the river in the background.

As we were walking to the river, Karen and I were approached twice by a bachelor and bachelorette party. Here in Germany, bachelor/bachelorette parties aren't like those depicted in American blockbusters/himym where there would be some crazy drinking and strip clubs. Instead, bachelor parties consist of a good amount of drinking at various locations (they usually have a list where they just check it off) and they all wear matching t-shirts. The groom is also expected to do very embarrassing things such as asking random girls for numbers or something (yesterday, we were approached by a groom dressed as a surgeon holding syringe shots of some mixed drinking. He was trying to sell it to us). It is a very embarrassing ordeal. Bachelorette parties are quite similar in the drinking and stuff and I think they tend to sell stuff to "fund their wedding". At least that's what they said. Alright, back to the ones that approached us. A groom approached us and got our number and a bride (I don't these two people were marrying each other because there were A LOT of different bachelor(ette) parties going on in this old part of Heidelberg) just handed us a lot of candy and penis cookies. Yes, that's right. Penis cookies. I think they just gave a bunch to us because it was getting dark and they had to get rid of their goods :P

The rest of the trip wasn't quite as eventful. I drank three 2.5% girly beers, each time attempting to open it with another beer and still failed. Afterwards, we went to the old part of town to maybe get some drinks but I didn't since I was still suffering from the night before. The next morning we just went up the philosopher's walk which is on the hill directly opposite from the castle and got a nice view of the town. The following picture is me at the top of the hill :)

I have to mention during this entire trip, I was very very happy sleeping in a bed with some sheets and a proper pillow. I don't remember if I mentioned this in a previous post, but after I moved into the new flat, I found that they didn't provide any bedding and so I'm too cheap to buy some. Currently a running shirt filled with more running shirts with a nice knitted scarf (makes the "pillow" more snuggle-able) on top is being used as a pillow. For a blanket, I am using a fitted sheet borrowed from another RISE student located in Mainz. Initially, I used my jacket as a blanket. You might think, why not just buy one! But then I'm just going to dump it/leave it when I leave and I already only have 2 weeks left! Don't worry, I'll make it :P

And that's pretty much my Heidelberg trip, near the end of the post, I cut out random details you didn't need to know about like lunch and blah blah blah, because come on, how interesting can that be. I'm going to finish the new post I started now :P

Internet

I know it was kinda weird how I haven't been posting on my blog after posting daily, but it's because I didn't have any internet at my flat! The place downstairs that helps you set it up was only open once every two weeks (now three weeks since I was too lazy to finish and post this last week :P) and I just missed it when I moved in -___-

After not posting consistently about my adventures, it's difficult to start up again. Similar to procrastination, once it's stop and the things you have to do/talk about pile up, the less you feel like doing it :P So, I'll just blast you guys through the last two weeks.

1.5 weeks into the internship

I found out quite suddenly through email that Daniel (the person I was subletting from) was returning from Greece the next day. So, I had to quickly pack my bags overnight and I left the flat the next morning when Sven picked me up to go to work. Throughout the day, I constantly called Daisy (the flatmate for the new flat) so that I could pick up the keys for the new flat but she failed to pick until an hour before work ended. When she did pick up, she told us that she would not be home until 7 or 8 o’clock at night (we ended work at around 5). Sven seemed pretty impatient during this whole ordeal and he decided to call the housemaster and pay a €15 fee in order to open the door to the new flat. We just needed to provide a contract to the housemaster to tell him that I was actually living in the flat.

When the housemaster finally came to open the door for us, he told us that the contract we had was illegal. There had to be a separate form submitted by the tenant to the StudentNetwork (the school owns the complexes) tell them that she was releasing her contract to me. So the angry man kept yelling at Sven in German and Sven continued to argue with him for another 15 minutes to convince him that we were unaware that Ekaterina (the person I’m subletting from) had not submitted the other form and that we had a separate contract written by Ekaterina telling us we were allowed to live there. Basically, there was a lot of screaming from the “angry man” (that’s what Sven and I refer to him as) and Sven trying to calmly talk to him and telling the angry man not to treat Sven like a child by yelling at Sven the way he did.

Well, in the end I was not let into the apartment and Sven refused to wait for Daisy to come back at 7 or 8 because we believed if we moved in that night, it would have been illegal since the StudentNetwork was not notified. We then drove to the town where Florian lived since Florian’s family owns a winery and his house doubles as a mini hotel (just 3 rooms available like a hotel). We got there and called Florian, but he said the rooms where booked until Sunday. During the entire time that we were waiting in Florian’s town for Florian to call us back (when we initially called him, he didn’t pick up because he was at the gym), it seemed like Sven was seriously panicking about how to get rid of me. Well, that’s how it felt like since he was willing to pay the €15 earlier and he was constantly calling Florian. I was thinking that it should be totally fine if I just stayed over at Sven’s flat. Maybe it’s a cultural thing and the fact that he was living with his girlfriend that he felt it was not right to have me stay over. I’m not sure what he was feeling at the time, but if it was me back in the States, I would relinquish my couch or something for a friend or someone to stay over if they needed it. I’m not sure what to feel about this and I don’t know who to ask to see if this was a cultural thing. (I wrote this section on Word a couple weeks ago but in hindsight, Sven was mostly likely just worried about where I was going to stay rather than trying to "get rid of me" as I put it before. Like I said before, Sven is a very nice guy and I don't know why I put it this way at the time. I guess it just felt really odd as I was experiencing it.)

Anyways, point is that I wasn’t able to stay at Florian’s place and so I stayed in a mini hotel a few houses down from where Sven lives. It was a nice little place that was like a restaurant/hotel (entry through the front leads to the restaurant, and entry through the back/side was to the hotel). The room was small and fit for a single but overall it was quite nice. I’m not quite sure how much the room cost since Sven paid for it but it was good. (another thing I didn’t understand, I mean, wouldn’t it be cheaper to just let me sleep on your couch than for me to stay at a hotel? I just don’t understand….). Anyways, I’ve been internet-less since Wednesday night and I’m currently writing this on a word document on a Sunday night. I thought there would have been internet at the hotel since there was a sign that said internet, but when I actually plugged the LAN cable in, it didn’t work at all. I checked the cable and I noticed that 4 out of 8 of the mini wires within the cable was missing *face palm*. I don’t know how the hotel managed to buy a faulty internet cable or maybe they bought a phone cable and tried to change it into an Ethernet cable, but that was majorly retarded. Anyways, I basically just slept the entire time at the hotel because I had absolutely nothing else to do. I watched a couple Jet Li movies on my laptop, but that was only entertaining for a little bit. Like I said before, some things don’t cut it when you’re not procrastinating.

The picture to the right was taken from my room. Sven picked me up the next morning and we went to the university to speak to the StudentNetwork. When we arrived, it seemed like she knew our purpose there and told us the matter has been resolved. Apparently, the angry man had called the StudentNetwork to give them a heads up that two people (Sven and I) were going to come over in the morning to argue about the contract. Luckily, she told us that Ekaterina did leave a form telling the StudentNetwork that she was going to leave the rest of the contract to me. So we just went back to the flat, talked to the angry man and got my keys to move into the flat. During the ride to the flat, I realized that I had left my jeans with all my keycards at the hotel and I was so embarrassed when I told Sven but we drove all the way back to get my keycards (and my jeans on the side, but mainly for the keycards). Anyways, news spread like wildfire and by the end of the day Florian, Tina, and other people from the lab next door knew that I left my pants in some hotel. Sven said that he had to tell because he needed to explain why we were late to work. Excuses!

My new room for the next 1.5 months

That night I also made donuts with my friends. I learned that donuts were fried and not baked. You really do learn something new everyday :P Btw, they were uber delicious.

Blast through 4 weeks of internship

I'm going to update more on what I did these past few weeks when I come back from Heidelberg if I ever get to it. Here's a short overview of what I did.

***BBQ Monday to celebrate Benjamin's birthday; I bought 2 bottles of Jagermeister at 8 o' clock in the morning. I was pretty embarrassed :P

***Wine tasting at Florians (10 different wines--5 whites, 5 reds; Jagermeister shots); I also tried blood sausage which tasted more plain than nasty and I had liver sausage which had tuna texture. Pretzels and dip were also served with the wine so that we wouldn't get drunk too fast :P It was all very delicious especially that dip! I forget the name but dude, it’s freakin amazing! It’s some sort of cream cheese that is only made in this region. I really have to look up a recipe for it.

The wine was pretty good but I couldn't really rate which ones would be better and whatnot since I'm still not used to wine. It tastes a bit funny to me but I definitely like whites more than reds. During the wine tasting, Florian's sister gave a presentation about how the wine was made and how many acres of land was used to grow the grapes or whatever it was they used to make the wine. Before we drank the wine, we were always supposed to swirl the glass and smell what was inside the wine. Every time I sniffed my glass, I thought it smelled pretty similar. I couldn't really distinctly smell the scent of strawberries, cherries, or whatever fruit we were supposed to smell from the cup >.< By the end of the tasting, I was pretty tipsy. Not as tipsy as later in the week when I drank a beer tower, but I knew I was feeling it :P

Karen and me at the end of the wine tasting.

***Shared a 5L beer tower between 3 people (me, Kurtis, Karen). By the end of it, I was preeetty tipsy (you can probably categorize it as drunk). It took us around 2 hours to finish the tower because we didn't want to get too smashed. Afterwards I walked home and being so tipsy, it was kind weird :P

Our 5L beer tower.

We each had 1.66 L of beer and one shot of Jagermeister that was on the house. The picture above is just a picture showing our accomplishment. All done!

***I went to Cologne. I climbed all 509 steps to reach the top of the cathedral. It was pretty scary by the time I got to the top because at that point it wasn't just a stone spiral staircase where you wouldn't see the outside, it was more of a railing that I had to climb up and I could see the bottom a bit and I'm afraid of heights :\ The hike up the tower for the view was pretty hard, you can hear people wheezing throughout the staircase wondering if they're going to make it. Good thing I'm still in semi-shape :P Staring at the cathedral from the outside kind of messes with you. The cathedral is just so huge! and the shape, the color, and all the carvings in the cathedral really ruins your perception of the cathedral. The picture below is taken 100m away from the cathedral and I still couldn't even capture the main entrance into the cathedral. We spent a good amount of time as we were going around Köln to find an angle where we could get a good view of the cathedral. The last picture with the two of us was the best picture we could get sorta. We had to use our heads to try to block out the buildings :P That angle is the most exposed we could find the cathedral when you're farther away. Even with the cathedral so big, it's hard to get a good picture if there are always these buildings around and we couldn't sneak into a taller building, so we just made the best of it.

I went to the chocolate museum while I was there and I have to say I was slightly disappointed. Going into the museum, I was expecting more of a chocolate tasting kind of scenario rather than exhibits about the history of chocolate and a section showing how chocolate bars are made. The part where they showed how they made chocolate was pretty cool, but as you guys might know, I'm not really good with history and so I don't like it. The only free samples I got was when I purchased my ticket and a cracker dipped in hot chocolate sample :(

***Drank cocktails to celebrate Tina's birthday with the entire lab. We finished work and then walked over just when it was happy hour :) So cocktails were only 4.80 Euro each. I had a Strawberry Mojito (it was only ok compared to the other drinks I had), Zombie (for the amount of alcohol it has in it, it sure was fruity!), Blanco 43 (it tasted like the left over milk after you finished eating all the cereal. Another dangerous drink :P), and two Coronas. I also ate a seafood Paella because I had a craving :P

Sven and I both had Zombies. This picture tells me that I need to lose weight. lol. As you can see from the picture on the bottom, the Zombie drink has two types of Rum, some 73% alcohol, and some fruity Brandy. Dangerous sweet drink :P

After typing all that out, I don't think I'm going to make another post for each event. Hope all that above was good enough.

What I've been doing at work

As for lab, things are going alright I guess. I learned how to make competent cells (they weren't that competent though, DNA doesn't seem to transform properly into the bacterial cells so I will redo this competent cell preparation). I learned how to transform a plasmid into the DH5-alpha cells and then extract the plasmid to be used for later experiments. I've been running a lot of agarose gels and we've sent the plasmid I obtained for sequencing. The results were just like how it looked like in the text books for the Sanger DNA sequencing method. Originally, I transformed three different plasmids into three different cell cultures but only one was successful in reproducing the desired plasmid. Apparently the other two plasmids might have been altered because of chemicals from the company we got the plasmids from. These chemicals probably won't allow us to store the plasmid for long periods of time at minus 80C.

I've been learning a lot of stuff and Sven is a really good teacher. He's very patient and would not mind explaining everything if I didn't understand. At the same time, he tries to get the correct answers from me before he tells me anything. Sometimes I get it right with my guessing (well, sort of guessing) but if not, he'll try giving me hints to push me towards the right answer. :)

Recently I've also been observing how Sven is creating a vector with a deletion in it. It's a pretty long process that requires a lot of agarose gels and eluting the DNA from the agarose gel after running it for 45 minutes. Sven's going to finish that experiment while I'm in Heidelberg.

As for my actual project, I've done four identical promoter assays to measure the effects of the transcription factors on promoter activity for various proteins (ADAM10, BACE1, APP, Control reporter vector). The actual time it takes to do this assay takes only two days, which is why I had a lot of mini projects. Hopefully my results are going to be ok. The standard deviations are a little high for some of the conditions but it might work. One of the problems I'm having is that the results I have aren't the same as Sven's. Apparently he's sorta done this assay before and I have not reproduced his results which implies my results might not be reliable apparently. But we will see when we analyze the data next week to see which values to exclude and whether results were significant.

I've also started the western blot of my project and I must say it's a lot more work than the promoter assay. There's so much well scratching and whatnot to get the lysate from the 12-well plate that my arm gets super tired. Then I have to resuspend protein pellets streaked across a 1.5 ml tube with just 15 ul and that takes like 3 minutes of pipetting up and down the tube. With 12 tubes, that's like 36 minutes of constant pipetting. My thumb was getting major workout by the end of it. My samples are currently in the freezer and ready to be loaded onto the gel. I'll get to see my results hopefully next week after my Heidelberg RISE meeting.

Anyways, talk to you guys in a week!

Johannisfest

As some of you may know, Friday was my birthday and my lab group was really great in that they gave me presents (chocolate, school gear, card), cake (they left it in the PhD student's desk and forgot about it until dinner though, so we're going to have dry cake on Monday :P with lots of tea and coffee. lol.), dinner, and hung out with me at Johannisfest.

Johannisfest is a 4-day long festival that begins on Friday and ends on Monday with fireworks and it is to celebrate John the Baptist's birthday. It's great that it coincides with my birthday :) So my lab basically took me out to dinner first at this church-now-restaurant and then we met up with another RISE participant's PhD student and herself (they were friends with Sven/Florian). Afterwards, we just walked around the festival and drank some wine/shots along the way. It's really great awesome when you can drink on the streets, if only they had this in America. I have to mention that when you purchase a drink at the festival, they charge you for the cup/glass your drink came in. So you can take your drink with you as you wander around the festival and just return the glass to a beer stand and get your money back. Great system :) So yea, we just hung around and drank beer :P

I also attended a lecture with Florian on Friday just to see how a lecture (hall) was like. The lecture talked about protein degradation (via ubiquination?), citric acid cycle, other cycles, DNA replication, and DNA repair. So I guess the class would cover both biochemistry and molecular biology. The professor seemed very nice and enthusiastic but he seemed to go through the slides quite fast. A lot of material was covered and I don't know if I could have understood everything if I had not taken the classes on these topics already. Based on my one lecture sample, it feels like lectures in Germany are pretty similar to those in the USA.

So yea, for the rest of my weekend, I just lounged around outside where the festival was located and listened to tons of live music. I tried more weinschorle (half white wine half sparkling water), lots of erdbeerbowle (strawberries in red or white wine), and a sangria :)

I think I also got slightly more tan today since I laid around in direct sunlight. There's a tan-line right on my chest now. *sigh* I wish I didn't tan that easily.