Eager Beaver

8 weeks and 4 days and then I'll be back in the States again.  I have to say, I'm really excited.  Although the advent of Spring here in Giessen has caused the days to go by faster, in reality, they seem to be slowing down.  There is a drag on my life clock like an electron beam slowing down ion beams to reduce their energy spread.  What can I do about that?  Not the ion beam but my life clock.  Write more?  Well with the nice weather, Rachel and I will be going out more often and for longer periods.  I guess I could tell of a few adventures we've had in the past week or so.  

There is a castle that one can see from the train station in Giessen.  It looks close but is really 8 km away.  Since seeing it the first time we arrived in Giessen, we have wanted to walk to it but never got around to doing it.  We had a nice day forecast, made some lunch, grabbed our water and went out the door!  I had done some searching using Google to figure out the general path and it was crazy.  The path wound across big roads and whittled down to dirt paths through farm land.  Oddly enough, it didn't seem as far on the way back.  We figured that's because we definitely knew how far we had to go still.  The picture from the top of the tower is facing towards Giessen.  

In other news, a large group of my friends, an equal number of Americans, Germans and French, decided to attack the restaurant known colloquially as the XXL restaurant.  It was actually Der Waldgeist and it has some of the largest plates of food you'll ever see.  The burgers were at least 6 full size restaurant burgers put together.  Knowing my limits, I settled for 600 grams of currywurst, which was amazing.  My friend Jeff on the other hand was going for the burger and very nearly made it through it.  People from other tables were watching him as he tried to finish it.  Finally, he got smart and stopped before he killed himself.  He did have 2 liters of beer to finish as well.  Another friend, Gökhan, was not so lucky with his burger.  I'm sure he is posing in this picture, but the feeling was there in all of us.  Needless to say I'm thinking I won't need to visit again anytime soon.  Whew!

And finally, on Sunday Rachel and I went to the Botanical Garden to hear a live band from Kassel play.  I believe it was a fundraiser event for the garden.  The band was called "Beat That Chicken" and don't ask me to explain the name.  A soul/blues band with a full line up of instrumentalist: horn, bone, alto/tenor sax, bari sax, guitar, bass, keys, drums and two vocalists.  And they were pretty good.  I bought their CD and love it.  It was really interesting listening to the in-between song talking, in German, and the song lines, in English.  The female vocalist has a really good voice and the male seemed to be using a unidirectional microphone since I couldn't hear him half the time.  He was a little rambunctious and whenever he moved his mouth away from right in front of the mic you couldn't hear him anymore.  There is a free swing band concert on the 4th of July that we're going to hit up and a jazz innovations trio on the 20th of June.  Should be a fun summer concert series.  

That's the latest from Giessen.  More after the break.  Prost!

Perplexed

Ah!  June.  It comes after April showers and May flowers.  One might think that for a large portion of the Earth this leads to continuous sunny days.  But I can tell you that the number of warm sunny days this year I've had here in Giessen can be counted on 2 hands.  From what I hear, my home of Seattle has also been getting an extended winter.  Oregon and Montana as well.  What gives?  It's overcast and about a high of 19°C today.  This is not June 1st weather.  Does anybody have a handle on this conundrum?  I fear that spring will be glossed over altogether and I'll be forced to adapt to 32°C temperatures immediately.  Oh well.

In other news, today marks the day I first began counting down the days until my return to the States.  T-minus 69 days and counting.  

Stupid Questions

I just read a post on io9 that asked a question that irks me to no end regarding money and science.  Is it worth spending a crap-ton of money to prove [insert some science-y thing here] right/wrong?  That's the question?  I never really had a good counter argument that I really liked until I saw a fellow reader's comment back.  It went along the lines of "if we can spend crap-tons of money on movies that suck, why not on something more constructive like furthering humanity's knowledge."  Booya!  

Now, don't get me wrong.  I enjoy a beautiful CG romp of mayhem and destruction as much as the next guy, but if the plot is going to be crap it just isn't worth it.  This guy listed, among others, Transformers and the Star Wars prequels and I have to agree.  Big movies and all the money went into big names and fancy CG.  So what do we have?  2-3 hours of cool special effects, bad plot and a coaster (if you bought the movie).  I just wish that whoever funded these works of suck would consider sacrificing one movie's budget to fund a science project.  (Note: if they already do this, let me know and I'll apologize).  

To summarize, it is a ridiculous question to ask when so much money is spent on other less useful things.  But it does not have to be just on science either!  Sacrifice a movie and feed some people for a month or restore a poisoned water supply or anything like that.  I would love to hear about that happening as well.  It's just that this article was related to science so that is the first thing I thought about.  

At it again...

School has started back up and that can mean only one thing: despairing over homework.  Of course this is only natural so there is nothing new to report.  I've only three courses on my plate for my second and last semester abroad here in Giessen, Germany.  Let's see:

Methods of Atomic Physics - a romp through practical applications of knowledge of atomic physics.  Things like tumor detectors and busters, energy from nuclear fusion and fission, types of radiation detection and so on.  Taught by an instructor from last semester and the class size is small.  Four of us non-primary-German speakers in the room means a vote by the German students have this class being taught in English.  Interesting.

Experimental Physics 6 - Atomic, particle and astrophysics.  That's all I know at the moment since this was a late addition to my schedule and I haven't been to a lecture yet.  The first homework assignment though is about particle accelerators so...yeah.

Quantum Mechanics - that which I have feared the most.  The very nearly non-intuitive subject that haunts my dreams.  I will be trying desperately to approach this class purely from a mathematical standpoint.  I also must pass this class since I do not want to take it again in the States.  Taught by the exchange coordinator who also taught our Nuclear Astrophysics course last semester.  He, let alone the subject matter, are nearly impossible to understand.  I do wish I had taken more German before coming here, but alas I did not know I'd be coming until 5 months before I left.  

That's all I'm taking.  On a lighter note I got a frisbee today so that I can relax outside in my own way.  Jeff has already promised to play with me.  I imagine calling him up on the ol' Skype and saying, "I need a break from homework.  Let's play."  In other news, the beer gardens are open again and spring is in full swing.  Cheers!

Finally it begins again

So I never mentioned on here that I was going to be visiting Amsterdam last week.  The whole trip came up quite suddenly in fact.  It was Rachel's birthday and she is Dutch.  Two and two together mean we went to Holland for her b-day and it was awesome.  She loved it and I loved it and I will write about soon.  Lots of good things to tell about that place.  

Meanwhile, school has finally started again this week.  It's about time is all I can say on that.  Two whole months off is not fun if you don't have money or things to do.  I can't tell you how often I've missed my 'library' from home.  My good friend Trevor sent me a box with, I think, 7 books in it and I've mowed through nearly all of them.  But that is beside the point now.  Now we have school and homework again so hopefully I won't be as lazy as I have been.  Also with the weather turning nice again, there will be more time for reading outside, and that is fun with any kind of book.

More on Amsterdam soon.  Promise.

Bus from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik

So our plan from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik was supposed to take us to the city of Mostar in Bosnia for a few hours first. Unfortunately, it seems life wanted to throw us a curveball for this one. The lady at the train station in Bosnia was so helpful for getting us two separate tickets for Sarajevo to Mostar and then Mostar to Dubrovnik. It just wasn't what I was expecting. The first thing that caught me funny was that the bus was actually just a large van with seating for 13 and standing room for 2, assuming no large amounts of luggage. It was amusing. The 'bus' had many stops and people would come and go, paying as they got on the bus. About 30-45 minutes in, we passed by a landslide that had occured. Police had the 2 lane road down to one as they cleared the road. The reaction of the woman next to me as our driver talked to the police suggested to me that somebody had been injured. Moving along though, we continue and begin to follow a river with misty hill tops. It was very pretty but pretty soon it began sprinkling. This would eventually become the storm that accosted us our first night in Dubrovnik. Anyway, about an hour in to the trip to Mostar and what turned out to be 45 minutes from Mostar, the traffic slows down and comes to a complete stop. People are turning around ahead of us and our driver gets out, lights a cigarette and starts jabbering with some other drivers. One of our passengers actually gets out and starts walking down the line of cars, which disappears around the corner of the mountain. Our driver gets in, pops a U and we head back. I wondered what we were going to do about the other guy and also how I hadn't noticed any other signs or way to get to Mostar. Our driver pulls off at a restaurant on the river. There doesn't seem to be any town associated with this restaurant. He says something to us all and gets out.

Jeff goes up to our driver after about 10 minutes of us pacing and wondering what is going on. He tries English first but the driver doesn't speak it so he trys German. Bingo. Turns out German is your next bet after English in Bosnia. Anyway there was another landslide and we might be at this restaurant for a couple hours! Our layover in Mostar was only a couple hours but seeing as how there was nothing we could do, we got espressos and then some food along with the other passengers. I bet that waiter wasn't expecting that much work right then! We keep our eye on our driver and a little over an hour later he head motions to us and we carry right on to Mostar. Luckily the bus we were going to connect with was also delayed (for the same reason? most likely) and so we did not miss our connection to Dubrovnik. That bus was uneventful. Pictures to follow in the future. Prost!

Big Trip

So Rachel, Jeff and I have a big trip planned.  Next Tuesday, the 23rd, we will begin a 16 day trek through 7 countries.  We will be visiting Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo, Hungary and Slovakia.  Our tentative itinerary is as follows: 

Sarajevo, Bosnia - (arrival) by plane - 3 nights

Dubrovnik, Croatia - by bus - 3 nights

Kotor, Montenegro - by bus - 2 nights

From Kotor to Prizren is currently going to involve an overnight bus from Podgorica, Montenegro to Pristina, Kosovo and a bus from there to Prizren.

Prizren, Kosovo - by bus - 2 nights

Skopje, Macedonia - by bus - day trip

Belgrade, Serbia - by overnight train - day trip

Budapest, Hungary - by overnight train - 3 nights

Bratislava, Slovakia - by train - day trip

Many of the hostels we've looked at, and have pre-booked, have internet so I hope to be posting tidbits of what we're seeing as we go.  That way I won't have so much to do when I get back, since my return to Giessen on March 11th is only 3 days before my sister comes to visit me.  

Day XI - 108 Weeks

So my continued life plan for living on a boat isn't exactly coming to fruition, but it is progressing.  I've given myself until my 29th birthday to make it happen and that happens to be in 108 weeks, give or take.  Why did I choose weeks?  Mainly because counting months would be to slow and counting days would be too tedious and silly.  Of course, you might say counting weeks is silly.  Well, so be it but I will make it happen.  There will be space enough for me to stand up straight (I'm a little shy of 2 meters) and there will also be a barbecue.  There will be cold beer, cats, and good times.  Mark my words.  In 108 weeks, there will be a blog here detailing my new boat.  I thought I should let you know now.  

Day VIII - Blah

I picked a heck of a week to start trying to write.  There is nothing going on here.  I did start working on the story, but I feel weird writing it.  I think I'm trying to get too much back story while simultaneously trying to introduce characters as well.  Of course, a real short story will probably be several pages and it would be silly to post such a thing here in pieces.  I guess I'll keep putzin' away at it in a Word document.

Meanwhile.

Today in my longing for home I came down with an intense craving for relish and onion on top of a ballpark hotdog.  A baseball game along with it was also part of the craving.  So strange.  And that is the order of the craving.  First it was relish, then that made me think of onions with it on top of a dog.  Then of course baseball.  Rachel then mentioned a bagel dog, the cream cheese and grilled onion topped polish dog in a big warm bun.  You get those after the game at the stand on 1st Avenue.  Hoo doggie.  

It's my friend's birthday today.  He is the other person from the physics department at the UW who came with Rachel and I on this exchange program.  He's a lot like me when it comes to birthdays.  We don't really want a big hubbub.  We just want to bond with close friends doing something we all enjoy.  Since I moved to Seattle, my thing has been going out to a brewery with a small group and hanging out.  He's coming to my place now and we're going to have a beer.  Cheers!

Day VI - Simple Things

It might be one of those days where I don't have much to say and must resort to simplicities.  I'm listening to the soundtrack from The Dark Knight.  I really enjoy how well Zimmer, the composer, not only manipulates his previous themes from Batman Begins into something new but also folds in music from the original movies.  I believe he did the same in the first but more subtly.  My favorite track from the album is "I'm not a hero."  It's long and contains many different motifs.  

It finally stopped snowing here.  It hasn't snowed in at least a day.  Yesterday it was primarily rain but we've had a lot of clear skies finally.  There were even several halos produced on the clouds.  They were so vibrant that the refracted light partially reformed into a second sun if you know what I mean.  It was quite bright.  

I think I've come up with a short story idea.  It's nothing to dramatic or over the top, just a simple story.  In fact, it's more like an excerpt if anything.  I just want to jump right in and get to my climax.  I'm going to use the last week of my 2 week experiment to write the story in parts.  If it doesn't take 7 parts, that's alright.  As a little teaser, my idea takes place on Mars, probably 200 years in the future, give or take.  I have to do a bit of research first to make sure I get a terraforming time frame right.  Or I may just screw it and say humanity created some new technology that allowed terraforming on a much quicker scale.  And like I said, nothing dramatic.  There are no bad guys.  If anything I suppose it's a moral story.  Hope it works.  Starting tomorrow!  

Cheers!

Day V - Missed It

Yep, that's right.  Day 5 was actually yesterday and I missed it.  But, my excuse is simply that I was on my computer for all of 5 minutes yesterday.  I had my test yesterday and, frankly, it didn't go so well.  Besides having difficulty translating the questions to a point that I understood the problem, the gentlemen who were proctoring the exam did not provide a lot of help.  One went so far as to say he wasn't allowed to answer questions.  I didn't want to ask a question about the problem, I wanted to ask what the problem was.  After that, there was only time to eat a quick lunch before my next class started and it wiped me out so much so that during the hour and 45 minute break, I took a nap.  Then with the end of class finally around 6, I went and hung out with Jeff, one of the other students from the States who also took the test, and we ordered pizza and watched Seinfeld.  Then I went to bed.  All in all, an exhausting day that didn't start out too well and ended with simple fellowship due to extreme weariness.  So, I try to make up for missing yesterday by writing about yesterday.  I hope that'll still count since I will write something different for Day 6. 

I started reading a new book.  It is Solitudes by John Crowley, the first book in a tetralogy.  I'm looking forward to it and will keep you posted.

An Experiment

Recently, I read a post that dealt with being a prolific writer of short stories.  I have had an interest in short stories, largely sci-fi, for some time and have wondered it I may have the ability to put ideas to paper.  The post suggests that in order to prolific one should write a complete story every week.  I don't know if I would even be able to start there, but I do have an idea.  Since I already have a blog, I propose to practice writing here first.  Rachel pointed out that like most things in life, to get better at it one must practice.  I am going to try and write something here every day for 2 weeks.  Even if it is merely me describing the music I'm listening too and what is happening outside my window, I will write it down and work on writing.  This post I read also mentioned that most if not all of one's short stories may never be read.  That's fine by me.  So prepare yourselves.  

Einstein Field Equations

Here in Germany I knew I would be probably yearning for some English, especially in my schooling.  As such, I signed up for a Nuclear Astrophysics class as some of you dear readers already know.  Also, this is a graduate level class.  I knew, or at least had heard, of the Einstein field equations and how they were supposed to equal 42 or some such thing...alright that last part is a lie.  I had heard of them before though.  So it turns out that this class seems to me to be more Cosmology than Nuclear Astrophys, especially since one of the first things mentioned in lecture was how we would develop the tools to solve the field equations in the first few weeks.  Here we are almost 2 months in and we recently got there.

I was amazed.  Why?  Because I was able to follow the steps.  These are 10-coupled equations.  You start with defining the metric which I think describes how the space-time you have should work.  On second thought I'm pretty sure that's wrong, but please roll with it for the purposes of this blog.  Anyway, you have to have this metric so that you can find the Christoffel symbols.  With the Christoffel symbols and the metric, you calculate the Riemann-Christoffel tensor and from that tensor, you use the metric to contract it to the second-rank Ricci tensor.  From the Ricci tensor, contracting with the metric again gets you the Ricci scalar.  And with all these pieces you solve the equations.  I was wowed.  I'm still not sure exactly what these equations tell us, but I'm pretty sure they describe the universe.  Holy cow.  

On a related note, I discovered today that I am definitely a theorist, not an experimentalist.  Sure, I like to think I have a little engineering in my blood, but that's just from watching too much MacGyver as a kid.  I definitely prefer math and the cosmos to experiments with circuits or particle accelerators and what not.  I'm happy sitting at a computer analyzing light from start thousands of light-years away or manually calculating Fourier transforms.  Is that wrong?  

No.  Cheers!

Three Months In

It has been over three months since I moved to Germany to study physics for a year.  You may ask, "Hey Brian, how's it going?"  To which I would naturally respond with "great!" or "it's different, but alright."  But of course, on the inside there is something else that is going on that isn't quite on the level of 'great.'  Inside I'm a spinning turbine of unknown energies and power.  

What does that even mean!?

Got me, this is more of a free-verse-poem-prose-write thing than a normal post.  -rant, I forgot -rant as well.  So what's got me all riled and contorted into some weird brain fart thing?  Well...

I once knew a man in Reno,

who was very tired of Dino

and went from bored to crazy

with a great big oops-a-daisy

cause he didn't know what he said!

So I lied about the free and -verse and -poem part.  Anyway, it's the fact that my classes are in German.  Yes, I hear you laughing from here when you say, "but Brian, you knew what you were signing up for, didn't you?"  Of course I did!  That's not the point.  The point is in the crappy verse I just wrote.  Imagine spending two hours on a hard wooden seat while somebody who you know is intelligent and has something important to tell you jabbers on in a language of which you can follow about 50 percent at best.  This is what happens every class period.

I take notes and notes from boards or powerpoints have always made sense nearly immediately, be it straight math or straight physics.  The real beauty of my notes is from notes I make to the notes themselves, and that comes from the extra things the professor says while he isn't writing on the board.  My notes are crap! because of how little extra stuff I'm able to write down.  I'm borderline twiddling my thumbs sometimes when there is no writing happening on the board.  Thank goodness these professors don't have any odd mannerisms or I'd be caught staring to the point of mesmerization.  

I'm not saying the my German hasn't improved because it has indeed.  It's just that it's not at the point where I can learn as well as I know I can.  And I hope that made sense cause this is a rant and there is no time to correct typos or grammar.  So there.  

Cheers. 

p.s. Additionally and aside from missing Mac&Cheese, IPA, Kiss Cafe, small and intimate coffee shops, regular interaction with animals, my friends and my family, I have no complaints about living in Germany at all.  It's beautiful and the food is great.

Stuck in Wonder

Last night was a birthday party for a friend that I've made here.  She is from France and turned 21 yesterday.  I was under the impression that we were throwing her a surprise party.  Rachel and I helped our other friend from France to make her a cake from scratch (which I never saw again at the party which makes me think it didn't turn out).  I should also preface this little story by saying that the dormitories at JLU are spread out and each one leads somewhat to segregation in the student population.  Obviously my dorm has the coolest people in it and the others can just live with that.  See what I mean.  Anyway, surprise party, right?  No.  

Rachel and I show up to Jeff's dorm area and in the common area are already more people than I thought I knew and more and more people from the summer course kept coming through the door.  Turns out this wasn't a surprise anymore and that about 35, maybe more, out of 55 summer course students plus 4 of out mentors made the trek to come to our dorm building.  Not being very good with large groups of people, I promptly placed myself outside with Victor where we could have pleasany discourse and smoke a pipe.  Topics included The Doors, spirits, pipes, karaoke, Romanian drinking practices, beer and more.  

The real point of my story is the following.  While standing outside watching the people inside talking, I realized that I was in Germany listening to conversations around me in English.  Then I noticed that our mentors and some Russian students were talking in German, while the other Russian students were speaking Russian.  Looking in I saw the kids from Spain speaking Spanish or Catalonian.  I also knew we had several people here from Poland that were gathered together at that moment and I'm sure the birthday girl and the other girls from France happened to be speaking their native tongue at that moment.  It was just a very interesting revelation of what a diverse... I don't know... thing I'm doing.  There were more that 6 languages being spoken in an area no larger than 30 or 40 square meters.  It was cool and gave me pause for a moment.

Second Week Down

I've been in Germany now for 2 weeks.  I'm not sure if I've fully acclimated yet or not since I had my first "I want to go home" moments today.  I think I did pretty good by making it to 2 weeks.  Last time I mentioned I'd finally been to the Lahn river which goes through Gießen and I was getting ready to do laundry.  Well, I went with Rachel and together, with some knowledge from friends who had done laundry already, we managed to each get a load of laundry done and dried.  I don't think I'm going to look forward to laundry day ever.  I have to go to a different building in my complex, down a flight of stairs and into a scary room with only 6 machines.  My predication is that it will be absolute chaos in there when the buildings are actually full of students instead of a quarter full for the summer.  

It's been really hard to be motivated to do anything the past week.  The 9 week intensive course of German I took before coming here pretty much wiped me out.  The 5 days after the class and before I flew here went by in a blur of packing and making sure I had everything.  Then this international summer course started and at the end of the second week, it's just like it is the 11th week of the intensive course.  I need a vacation because I'm completely burned out.  That and a nearly complete lack of money means that I am getting some good reading time in since I can't afford to go out.  

We go to Heidelberg tomorrow and it is probably a 1.5 hour to 2 hour bus ride down.  I hear from multiple sources that it is the most beautiful place in Germany.  I guess we'll see and I will get pictures out hopefully on Sunday or Monday.  No other news I guess at the moment except I'm still working on getting a link set up to pictures so everyone can see.  Until later...

Welche Sprache sprichst du?

Okay, finally done with one whole week.  It's astonishing how long it feels it's been when it's only been 8 days or so.  So much has happened that it feels like a month has gone by already.  The summer course goes well.  Quickly, here is the way my week will go for the next 3 weeks.  Everyday there are language tutorials/classes for 1.5 hours followed by a half hour coffee break.  Then another 1.5 hours of tutorials followed by lunch.  On Monday and Wednesday lunch is 1 hour followed by 2 hours of instruction that focuses more on culture and what not (still in German though).  On Tuesday and Thursday lunch is 2 hours followed by 2 hours of a workshop.  I picked the Zeitung, or newspaper, and will be writing a short article on the history of Gießen.  On Fridays classes end at lunch.  Yay!

I've wandered much of Gießen now and must say it is a very interesting city.  The combination of rural and urban is extreme.  I live on the outskirts of town, give or take, and have two giant fields and a forest (nearly) to walk between on my way to a major street with a McDonalds, Burger King, gas station and 3 large stores plus many smaller stores.  There is a large river, the Lahn, flowing through the upper part of the city which I finally went and saw on Thursday I think, maybe it was Wednesday... I just don't know.  

Today I need to figure out where and how to do laundry since I used my last pair of socks on my Frankfurt excursion yesterday.  There, I had my first Starbucks since getting to this country and it was also the largest cup of coffee I'd seen yet.  Folks, just be prepared when you get here for nothing bigger than a tall when you order coffee.  I've been around this town and every place has the same kind of automatic (but freshly ground) coffee machines and the largest cup is a stinking coffee cup size.  I want something bigger!!  Anyhoo.  I'm still working on getting a Picassa thing going so non-Facebookers can see all the pics.  I'll figure it out soon enough.  In the meantime, go here and select the Gießen album or any album name from the places we'll go.  Hope the link works.  Let me know if it doesn't.  Until later....ciao!

Willkommen: Deutschland

Well, the big day finally came.  I am sitting in my apartment/dorm room in Gießen, Germany...finally.  After all the buildup and anticipation for coming here since winning a spot in this exchange program, I have made my way at least by plane and by train to this medium sized university city.  I AM TIRED.  15 or so hours of flying with 2 connections but no break (our planes landed, we ran, the next plane took off), made for a very rough travel day.  But, because we flew into and through the night, our arrival plus lack of sleep made us think that only a normal 9 or 10 hour day had gone by instead of the 17 or 18 hours from first take off to arrival in Gießen.  Thus, I slept just fine Thursday night and awoke refreshed Friday morning.  There is much that happened just on the way here but I merely include pictures that hopefully will reveal what has gone on.  But I'll come back to those. :)

So, first full day in Gießen! What happens?  To start, I haven't had the internet and have really been aching for it, which just goes to show how much I must be addicted.  Secondly, since this is a summer LANGUAGE course, we had to take a test first thing (before Coffee!!) to determine which level group we should be in.  They are trying to make sure that beginners aren't stuck with more advanced speakers of German and vice versa.  I won't find out my results ever but will be told what group I'm in on Monday.  It was interesting and just like the tests I recently was taking at UW, but there were words that I didn't understand.  Moving on and please forgive the length, I want to say a bit.

After the test, we had a Kaffeepause or Coffee break.  I met some new people there and would like to say a few words.  Victor, or as he is called at home Calin, is from Romania and does not know Germany very well, possibly at all.  He is here to learn.  His English is great and is an example of how messed up our country is when it comes to languages, but I digress.  Victor is a slow talker, not because he doesn't know how to say anything, but because he doesn't like to repeat himself.  Awesome.  Then I met two guys from Estonia (don't know where that is? look it up).  Pritt and Sander are interesting guys who also don't know German and have a thicker accent than Victor when they speak English.  On the train with Rachel, Jeff and I was a exchange student who will be here all year too named Yasmin.  She is from Turkey and has difficulty with German and English.  It has been interesting trying to talk with her.  Today, I tried to describe what 'humid' was.  It was difficult!  

After we were done with being introduced to the itinerary of the course, we were set loose for the day.  Rachel and I both didn't have internet in our rooms so we decided to head downtown and find an electronic store to get some CAT5 cabling and Victor, Pritt and Sander came along.  I will have to tell more about downtown on my subsequent blogs so be ready for them.  But I will tell you that outside the store we found our cabling in was a Biergarten.  Yes, I had a beer with Rachel, Pritt and Victor.  I had a dunkel or dark half-liter beer on my first full day in Germany.  It was right I think.  It was amazing sitting in an actual German beer garden drinking German beer and thinking, "Oh my gosh, I'm actually in Germany which is in Europe.  What am I doing!?"  So, pictures ensue since I don't want to talk too much.  Love you all out there and if you're one of the anonymous readers, I thank you.  

Pic1: Rae and I after 10 hours or so of flying.

Pic2: Jeff and I after 10 hours or so of flying. (Honestly, no clue what the Icelandic flight attendant was doing.)

Pic3: A view of the building I'm in (it's the middle one in the back).  I have a view to a wooded area.  It's nicer than the courtyard and the room is nice too.

Pic4: My first beer in Germany with new friends Pritt (left) and Victor (middle).

Rediscovery

With only 8 days until the great grand adventure, my panic attacks have begun to come more frequently and even while I sleep.  The intensive language class is ending this week and since it has slowed down considerably (i.e. all homework is now completed, 3 days ahead of schedule), I have discovered something amazing.  Well its actually a rediscovery.  

I like science.  I mean REALLY like science.

It's like a festering scab wound thing that you just have to itch and it makes it worse but it feels so good and you just have to itch it one more time because of some weird feeling it gives that makes it feel better than when it is festering, scabbing... i think you get the idea.  I just read the two latest issues of Discover and Astronomy magazine and I'm borrowing the May issue of Science (very fancy) from the Physics department.  And I'm reading almost every article.  Geography, Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, Physics, and yes Astronomy.  I can't get enough.  Just one quarter without taking any kind of science class and I find that I can barely contain myself.  I want to be doing two research projects and learning how to present my work with new computer programs.  I can't wait for these plane rides so I can just sit and read magazines.  If only I could get my hands on the Astrophysical Journal I'd be set.  Alas, that costs quite a bit.  

Anyway, this just makes me feel better about the choice I made in picking the Sciences. Even though it is really hard at times, I enjoy it and just need to find that special niche where everything clicks for me.  I know that I'm not going to be a super genius, but I still love reading up on everything.  Jack of all trades, master of some - that's what I'm aiming for.  Prost!

Holy Cow!

So there are only 16 more days that I'll be in this country and then I'm gone for more than 11 months. I feel like there is so much to do and Rachel has even more that she has to get done. We're scrambling trying to finish our intensive German class, I'm praying that I haven't forgotten some important paperwork, and we're both still trying to get our crap organized and/or stored. In fact, I must be back to my homework. Prost!