Well, I figured since I’ll be starting at the university on Monday, I should probably update my blog. I’m going to go ahead and blame the long gap on the fact that we lost our internet for a week. Well, it’s been three weeks now, I believe, since I last wrote and a lot of things have happened. I ended my internship in Grasslandwissenschaft and started and ended another one that was in Plant/crop quality, and now, like I said, I will be auditing lectures at the Uni. In between there someplace I went to Hungary and did some other cool stuff. I’ll just write it as it comes to me.
Internship
So, my last week with the grassland science people was fairly uneventful. I basically got to work outside one day, and that was it. I had to make the final measurement of the grass heights. Other than that it was counting grass, entering data, and so on. It was kind of frustrating since I wanted to start in plant quality that week, but it got pushed back, even though they didn’t need me. Oh well. I got a nice little going away card from them; it was quite pleasant. I still go back to visit every once and a while.
The next internship was in plant quality. Basically, it’s more like what I wanted to do in the first place. There’s different experiments going on with strawberries, potatoes, tomatoes, and even potato chips. My first day I titrated a solution that consisted of dissolved, freeze dried strawberry powder. What that means is I measured how much acid was in the strawberry by adding a base to the solution (a base is basically the opposite of an acid. When mixed they form water and a salt). When I write down how much base I needed to neutralize the acid in the solution, I can determine the amount of acid that was originally there. The process is quite slow and the work was extremely boring after a while, but that’s why iPods were invented.
After that day it went a little better, or at least it was more interesting. When I was working in Grassland science I got to see one of the projects that involved different types of tomatoes and different ways of growing them. There was wild ones, ones you see in a store, big ones, and tiny ones, grown either hanging or left on the ground. Well after they grew them they were subject to a few taste tests earlier in the year. The participants were asked to grade taste, juiciness, sweetness, ect. Then what I did is take the remaining tomatoes and test them in the lab. I measured juiciness, sugar content, and acidity, which involved using all sorts of cool machines and stuff. A blender to liquify it, a giant refrigerated centrifuge to separate the solid from the liquid, and a refractometer (or something like that) to measure the sugar content for example.
Other then those two things I also worked once more with the strawberries. I did this whole big process involving different chemical reactions in order to measure the Phenol content. Phenol is a common antioxidant found it red stuff or blue stuff and sometimes yellow stuff, such as strawberries, blueberries, and other brightly colored fruits and vegetables. That was pretty cool. I got to use a photo-spectrometer hooked up to computer. I felt like a pro. After that internship I got a nice little coffee mug, pen, and bag from the university as a thank you. It was quite lovely.
Excuse me while I rant (actually a lot smaller than my original rant)
I’ve been devouring podcasts like crazy: “Radio Lab”, “This American Life”, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”, “All Songs Considered”, and I’ve even started with BBC and NBC daily news podcasts. As a result, I’ve been quite up on things such as the election coming up in the states. I apologize if you agree with them, but some of the interviews that I hear of Tea Party members makes me a little bit embarrassed to be an American. And being American, I often get questions about what the heck their goal is. I still have no idea. In fact in one interview I even heard a man use the Bible and Christianity to support using fossil fuels. No joke. “God created the earth for us to utilize. . . I read my Bible,” he said. Really? God created the earth for us to utilize, and not to preserve? That’s not the way I interpret it. I don’t think I ever read “You have heard that it was said ‘Be fruitful and increase in number,’ but I tell you ‘DRILL BABY DRILL!!!!’” but maybe I missed that part. I just want to see some people suggesting constructive ideas instead of just being anti-whatever they need to to get them in office. I’m afraid this movement is making our conservatives more conservative and our liberals more liberal and inhibiting our ability to compromise. If the Republicans do win the majority in both the Senate and the House, I want to see them work with the president instead of against him. By the way, I know the Tea Party does not even represent a significant percentage of the American people, but it’s the only thing that gets covered here, which bothers me a lot. Sigh. . . rant over.
Ungarn
Thats German for Hungary. They didn’t like the “H” I guess. I went to Hungary last weekend, from Thursday night until 1 in the morning on Tuesday. Our little town’s soccer team has a partnership with another little town’s in Hungary called Aba. No, not ABBA, Aba. They’re actually about 4000 in population, double the size of Ebergötzen, but a small town nonetheless. It’s about 80 km south of Budapest, but at the same time a world apart. Aba is very old-fashioned, poor looking town in my opinion. It’s still very agriculture based, with plots of crops mixed in between the houses. I’m talking about good old family farms, that you don’t really see in developed countries anymore. It was something that I’d never really seen. The houses are not so well maintained and there probably hasn’t been a new one built since forever. The streets look dusty and worn out, although there isn’t really any pot holes. They do, however, look more like dirt roads than paved ones. Budapest is completely different. It’s a big city with beautiful architecture and even a gigantic modern shopping mall that reminded me of the Circle City in Indianapolis. Next to it Aba looks rather pathetic.
But anyway, we were there because of this partnership. We did play soccer at 11am on saturday as a friendship game type thing, but other than that it was just a bunch of eating and drinking. I ate soooo much food. This one night we basically got a huge platter per 4 people with a bunch of goodies on it, and we weren’t limited to just one. Schnitzel, deep-fried mushrooms, chicken breast, flank steak, fried eggs, rice, vegetable mix, and onions. . . ‘nuff said. It was delicious. Then, after we were all stuffed full of food, they were like “dessert?” and we were like “Heck yes!” and they gave us crepes stuffed with nutella-like chocolate deliciousness and topped with whipped cream. Oh and there were sprinkles on top, just for kicks. I was so full. And then this drunk guy bought me a Weizen beer even though I insisted that I didn’t want it because I was stuffed to the brim and Weizen takes up quite a bit of room. Yeah, I had to pretty much stay put for an hour before I could actually move.
But not all of the food was that well appreciated. Ok, I’m jumping forward in time a bit now to our last dinner in Hungary: the notorious fish soup. They served us this traditional Hungarian soup in which they tood a huge fish, chopped it up perpendicular to the spine, and dropped it in. Every bowl had a chunk of fish in it shaped like a U (part of the spine and ribs with the meat being around the ribs). I honestly did not think it was that bad, but you just had to get past the way the soggy, overcooked fish looked and not be grossed out by taking out the spine and ribs. But, yeah . . . It made this one guy puke even though he hadn’t even drank anything. Other people were puking for the very opposite reason. They drank a bunch without eating anything, because the fish soup looked gross.
So, back to Saturday, we went to a big festival after the soccer game. What we did was get into the back of a horse drawn wagon and ride around the town in a parade, stopping only to drink wine, eat food, and dance some traditional Hungarian dances. I mean, we didn’t dance, rather the other people participating in the parade. Some other carts carried the dancers, who were kids dressed in traditional clothing. There was even one dance where the girls danced around with big flasks of wine on they’re heads. It was pretty cool. The wine was the focus of the festival, so I got to try all sorts of different wines that were all made right there. Actually, not all of them. That stuff take a toll on the system after three hours of parading, so I eventually stopped and switched to the tea.
And that was that. Afterwards we went to the pathetically tiny disco there and danced it up. It was a good time, especially for the sober people. Some of the people that were not so sober started relationships that they largely regretted the next morning. So it goes. I found it amusing, considering they couldn’t really communicate to each other. Oh and at the end of the night, like 3am, this guy decided to push a little too hard on the door, broke the glass, and then proceeded to run away. My host dad, being the good policeman he is, chased after him in vain before returning and instructing us to be very careful going home. It was kind of frightening, but ended up not being a big deal because there were so many witnesses and they new that we didn’t do it.
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Budapest was on Sunday. Like I said, we visited the big, beautiful, touristy buildings and statues. There’s a really nice area that’s on top of a mountain looking over the Danube (I think that’s the translation for “Donau” right?”), which had a beautiful view of the whole city, including the really cool looking parliament building. There was also this gigantic church. Because no great European city is complete without a gigantic church.
Yeah, so that was it. I explained Sunday night already. Nothing else really to say there, besides that these kids drink like crazy. Sunday these two guys had drunken 13.5 liters of beer, starting at 8 in the morning. While drunk they challenged me that if they could reach 15, I would have to drink a bunch of shots or something, but I convinced them that I should just have to sing instead. So I promised to belt our National Anthem if they made it, as long as they promised to sing the German Anthem if they lost. Well, they lost and I’m still waiting on the German Anthem to be sung to me. How disappointing.
Last Week
So, last week, like I said, was my last internship week before starting at the University. This weekend was pretty fun. It was relaxing at least. It’s starting to get super cold here. It feels a lot colder than it is, too, because it’s moist and windy as well. I watched our soccer team lose on Saturday and froze my butt off while doing it. I opted to stay inside most of the rest of the weekend. On Friday night my host parents had friends over to make some Gluhwein, which was pretty cool. What you do is get a big cauldron and put it on a propane stove, and then fill it with the bottled wine. After heating it up, they took a chunk of sugar, doused it with rum, and then burned it, letting the liquid sugar drip into the wine. What resulted was a sweet, hot, delicious drink. It’s normally for Christmas time, but seeing as it was really cold, they decided to officially start the celebrating. So that was a cultural experience.
Ende
That’s about it. As I’m now well adjusted here in Ebergötzen, I’m starting to get a little homesick. It’s always a little bit depressing watching my friends facebook statuses roll by saying stuff like “Going home for fall break, woo!” or “Heading back to Carmel this weekend, anyone wanna hang out?” while I sit there thinking “Yeah. . . how about in 8 months or so?” I would also like to point out that living in a small town with only a bus that comes every hour to access the city, plus being a university student, equals awful. The bus times are terrible for getting to the lectures on time, resulting in me just having an hour to burn in the cold mornings. And afternoon classes? Forget it, it’s so pointless because they are timed perfectly so that I would either have to wait two hours or go home only to immediately take the bus back again. Grrr. . . It makes for a terrible combination and it’s really hard to get to know people only going to morning classes, not to mention the fact that they already know each other from department orientation stuff that I wasn’t invited too, because the University apparently thinks it’s ok to let me turn in my form and then ignore me. . . sigh.
I promise I’m having a good time, though. It’s just turning into a rather frustrating transition right now that I don’t really want to deal with at all. Classes are looking to be decently interesting, and at least I’ll be learning a lot.
Skez
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Two Weeks for the Price of One!
Okay, It’s about time I get to writing this blog. I really didn’t have time last sunday to write it because I was hanging out with Zac, one of the two other Americans in Göttingen, which involved playing ultimate frisbee, so I was super tired that evening. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I was really just too lazy, plus I was not in the greatest of moods. But before I get to that, I should really tell you what I should have written in last week’s blog.
Birthday! Woo!
My birthday was indeed two Wednesdays ago, although really the celebration was the previous weekend with the half of my family that could visit. I was having an excellent week so far at work and I was in a really good mood by the time my birthday rolled around. I baked some cookies to bring to work like a good German would, and they were thoroughly enjoyed by my co-workers, although I really ate a lot of them, because the weather was nice that day, which meant that almost everybody was out working rather than in the actual institute (we have about three different locations where projects are going on outside of Göttingen). I also was out that day, but was back early so it was all good. That evening I visited a birthday party that someone else threw, because it so happened to be that he had his birthday that day too, less work for me. Not only did he have his birthday on the same day as me, but he also was turning nineteen, which was a funny coincidence, considering the chances that something like that would happen in such a small town. We had great weather that day, so they grilled some sausages and chicken breast. It was tasty to say the least. Yeah, so that was pretty much it, I got a card from my work and a little breakfast personal cutting board thing (if you know what I’m talking about than you’ve lived in Germany), and from my host parents I got a bonsai plant. Pretty cool little thing.
Week 1
I’m just going to call the week that I missed week 1 for simplicity. I got to work on a different project that week. It’s located in a field that’s a little farther away than the farm that I normally work at. What they’re doing there is experiments with different ways of mowing the fields, and seeing how that affects biodiversity which in turn affects food quality. There are 72 small squares with different grasses in each one as well as different intensities of mowing. That means a but load of sample taking. Tuesday and Wednesday we mowed with this machine that has two wheels and a these teeth in the front that move back and forth, cutting the grass all the way to the ground. We would have finished it all Tuesday but the darn thing broke (Technology, psh!), plus there was a ton of traffic that day, so we had to continue on Wednesday. Oh and by the way there is this 800 year old wall that is just kinda there like it’s no big deal. It’s pretty cool looking. Monday I was counting grasshoppers, but I think I talked a bit about that in my last blog already. All three of those days had absolutely beautiful weather, so I really enjoyed myself outside. Next week is looking pretty good too, so I’m excited for my last week working with Graslandwissenshaft.
The rest of the days were really just small tasks. I did some data entering, sample drying, weighing, and sorting, and other similar things. It was relaxing; I got to listen to music or podcasts while doing the tedious work. Which was good because my weekend was rather full.
Weekend 1
On Saturday I had planned to hang out with Zac for the afternoon/evening, but since my host brother and host dad were already going to a concert that evening, they invited us to go along. It made my host dad happy because he got to speak a little English again. The band was called “Swagger,” a band that played pretty much everything. They’re a cover band and covered everything from Peter Maffay to Rammstein to Black Eyed Peas. And they played A LOT from about 10:30 to 3 am, in fact. So, since we got back late, Zac just stayed overnight in the extra bed in my room and we hung out at my place the next morning too, until it was time for frisbee. I finally managed to work it out with the frisbee thing, and it was lots of fun. It was the first time that I really got to play on a serious team, as in they had legit drills and strategies, so I was pretty darn exausted. Not to mention I didn’t really know what I was doing, considering the instructions were always in German or broken English. I wasn’t really familiar with the sport vocabulary in both languages, so I was just screwed overall. Then I missed my bus, which made me mad because the busses come only every two hours on Sundays, so my host dad came and picked me up.
But that was just the beginning of the series of unfortunate things that happened to me over the next few days.
Last Week. . . oh joy.
So, where to start, where to start. . . On Monday the weather turned into a rainy cloudy cold mess. Fall is starting up and good days are becoming scarcer and scarcer. But of course the show must go on. We had things to do before winter shows up. We needed to move the animals to the third group of fields, which involves taking grass samples from both the field that they are moving off of and the field that they are moving onto (kind of like a before/after type of deal). So despite the rain I had to work outside, sitting in tall grass cutting the sample from the ground with my bare hands and then somehow managing to label the samples with a wet piece of paper. I did this 16 times before I could go home a cold and wet mess. Luckily I didn’t get sick, it was just a miserable experience. I especially don’t like the fact that it’s so quite since I’m by myself in the middle of a field and I end of thinking about things, which soon becomes non-productive thinking. It was just not the best of circumstances. Oh well, it happens.
Tuesday I went back out to the farm. The weather was still crappy and cold, but it was only misting, so a little bit better. I got through the work at least without having to worry about writing on wet paper, although it was still really wet outside. First we moved the sheep down to the barn where they got there hooves trimmed. That was pretty funny, because they basically put them in this sheep holding rack thing and then tighten it on their bodies in order to turn them upside down and cut the hooves. Just something about a device specifically designed to flip a sheep upside down amuses me. Well, we did that with every group of sheep (four times I herded them down to the barn and then back up to their new place to graze) and then also moved the cows to their respective fields, but they didn’t need trimming. After that I got to sit in a field covered with crap in order to take the samples. Again 16 samples, didn’t take but a couple of hours, but at the end I was displeased to discover that my iPod had fallen out of my jacket pocket. So I spent about forty minutes searching the three fields that it could have been in, and I found it again. Of course it was in the very last field. Eventually I managed to get home, although a bit late.
But that’s not the worst of it. I needed this whole time to talk to Professor Isselstein, the head of the Grasslandwissenshaften section of the Agrarwissenshaften department, about my auditor form which I gave to him on Monday to sign. So I was planning to do that on Wednesday, since I came back late (the due date was Thursday) With that little teaser I’ll move on to what happened on Wednesday.
I though I was going to be staying in the institute on Wednesday, but of course the other field (the one I worked on the week before, with the 800 year old wall) needed some help. I really didn’t have the right clothing so I needed to grab my rubber boots and my rain pants. Oh and I had to buy my lunch on the way there. Luckily I had my rain jacket though. So we soon left to the field, on the way putting a hole on the back of the pickup truck. We almost got stuck in the mud driving through the pasture to get to the research fields and ended up getting stuck in the mud on the way back. After shoving it out of the mud and getting the car all dirty we had to take it somewhere nearby to get it washed. Well, when we washed it we discovered a really big oil leak coming from the underside of the car and found that we were no longer able to drive it. So I then had to wait on someone else to pick us up from Göttingen which is about a 40 minute trip one way. When I finally got back, after hitting a fox I might add, I had already missed my bus so I went up to Prof. Isselstein to talk about my registration form and was not pleased to discover that I needed the signatures and stamps from all the departments that I signed up to take classes in. Lovely considering the due date was the next day.
The cool thing was that I got to work on this giant tractor thing that day though. It was awesome. Basically this thing was a giant mower that mowed the grass onto a conveyor belt that dropped it onto a conveyor belt that wasn’t moving so it could weigh the grass and then it shot the grass out the side with the second belt. I sat in the back of the machine waiting as the part of the mowed grass was blown through a tube to me (part of the grass is separated and comes to me, while the other part drops down to be weighed). I then bagged and labeled the grass and but it in a big sack. I really had to work fast, because by the time I stapled and labeled the bag, the machine was already on the next one. It was really lots of fun. The machine looks like a mix between something you’d see in a Doctor Seuss book and a horror film.
So like I said, the beginning of this week was not so good. In fact it was pretty awful in general, but things turned up. On Thursday I got to work inside and I went into town to talk to the student secretary about my auditor form. I got the deadline extended, so everything’s good with that. Then I got to go home early. Friday was basically the same, except I collected all of the signatures and prepared them, since the office closes early on Fridays.
I found an international church that I’m going to go to, which I’m really looking forward to because I’d be nice to meet and share fellowship with some new people. It’s been really hard trying to find people that I can actually connect with and relate to since I’m in this small town with a bunch of people that are younger than me and that I just wouldn’t be able to be friends with. Not because they’re not nice or anything, but just because they’re not really my type. Hopefully at this church I’ll be able to meet some cool people, because they are all basically in a similar situation as me. They’re mostly foreigners who have come to Germany for different reasons, but want to still meet some people, which is hard to do because of the language barrier. Plus they give a bible study in German for people that are trying to learn German, like me. So I’m going to go to that if I enjoy the regular service. I haven’t been able to go yet, though, because this weekend. . .
Relaxing, fun weekend. . . aahh. . .
Friday night my host sister came. She’s really nice and I enjoyed spending time with her and my host parents this weekend. My host brother is starting to get on my nerves a little bit. The twins were okay, but they didn’t really interact at all, just were on the computer or TV all the time. Marcel is much different, but he has lately been really getting on my host mom’s nerves (and I think my dad too). I really don’t understand it, because he clearly got thrown out of his mom’s house for some reason, and now he’s living by us with his dad, and annoying the heck out of them. He’s always complaining about small things, just digging and digging until someone blows up (my host mom usually, which just makes things really awkward for me), or blows up himself. I’ll give you an example: Just the other day my host dad made a home made pizza. It was awesome. It had cheese and tuna and pineapple and spicy peppers, just amazing. In fact he always cooks really good food. Well there happened to also be a little bit of ham on it as well, a good choice if you ask me, but apparently Marcel really doesn’t like ham on pizza and specifically asked for him to leave it off. Well he complained and whined and then finally just ate bread instead of this delicious pizza, just because it had a little bit of ham on it. Now this child (actually he’s twenty which makes it worse) is living at his dad’s house for free, and getting fed delicious food every single day, and he has the nerve to complain about it. Not just about that, but a bunch of different stuff. For instance, he complains that he wants to go into town to sit in the sauna but my host dad doesn’t want to pay for it. I mean really? His life is not hard, if I were in his position I would be sucking up to my family in order to not get kicked out a second time, but he’s borderline if you ask me. Of course, I don’t really have any say in the matter, and it’s something that I will leave for them to discuss. I just wanted to vent because it’s really frustrating sometimes, the things he says.
Anyway, back to the main point of this section. Friday night we played a German game similar to “Trouble” called “Mensch ärgert mich nicht.” and then I taught them Euchre since we had four people (me, my host parents, and my host sister). It was tons of fun even though I epic failed at the first game.
Saturday I hung out a bit with Zac and Trinitie, both Americans on this program in my area, and we talked for a while. Then I went home and chilled, which was nice. I got Starcraft 2 in German, which I’m pretty excited about, although the vocab is a lot different so I’m learning a lot of new words. It’s actually kinda frustrating sometimes when I don’t understand the hints that they give me on the mission. Eventually I figure that out, but as far as the plot line goes, it’s really hard to follow. Sunday we took my host sister back to the Bahnhof in Kassel and said goodbye, but before that we walked around a park in Kassel where a giant Castle was. There’s one castle on a hill with the statue of Hercules that has a huge fountain at the bottom of the hill. It only runs for about 15 minutes every couple hours or so I think, but when it starts it really goes. It’s just one huge fountain that forces water up above the trees, which are impressively tall themselves. With the sun in the mix as well they fountain was really pretty, with a huge rainbow forming on the side. It was really cool looking, just because it was sooo much water.
Ende
So, that’s the end of that. I don’t think I’m going to proof read so if there’s any errors, just deal with it, I don’t feel like going back. Oh, I must say that Blasmusik is going really well. I have my Trombone now and we’re actually improving quite a bit. I guess all the music was new before, but now we can play it much better. It’s tons of fun! Thanks for reading, peace out.
Skez
Birthday! Woo!
My birthday was indeed two Wednesdays ago, although really the celebration was the previous weekend with the half of my family that could visit. I was having an excellent week so far at work and I was in a really good mood by the time my birthday rolled around. I baked some cookies to bring to work like a good German would, and they were thoroughly enjoyed by my co-workers, although I really ate a lot of them, because the weather was nice that day, which meant that almost everybody was out working rather than in the actual institute (we have about three different locations where projects are going on outside of Göttingen). I also was out that day, but was back early so it was all good. That evening I visited a birthday party that someone else threw, because it so happened to be that he had his birthday that day too, less work for me. Not only did he have his birthday on the same day as me, but he also was turning nineteen, which was a funny coincidence, considering the chances that something like that would happen in such a small town. We had great weather that day, so they grilled some sausages and chicken breast. It was tasty to say the least. Yeah, so that was pretty much it, I got a card from my work and a little breakfast personal cutting board thing (if you know what I’m talking about than you’ve lived in Germany), and from my host parents I got a bonsai plant. Pretty cool little thing.
Week 1
I’m just going to call the week that I missed week 1 for simplicity. I got to work on a different project that week. It’s located in a field that’s a little farther away than the farm that I normally work at. What they’re doing there is experiments with different ways of mowing the fields, and seeing how that affects biodiversity which in turn affects food quality. There are 72 small squares with different grasses in each one as well as different intensities of mowing. That means a but load of sample taking. Tuesday and Wednesday we mowed with this machine that has two wheels and a these teeth in the front that move back and forth, cutting the grass all the way to the ground. We would have finished it all Tuesday but the darn thing broke (Technology, psh!), plus there was a ton of traffic that day, so we had to continue on Wednesday. Oh and by the way there is this 800 year old wall that is just kinda there like it’s no big deal. It’s pretty cool looking. Monday I was counting grasshoppers, but I think I talked a bit about that in my last blog already. All three of those days had absolutely beautiful weather, so I really enjoyed myself outside. Next week is looking pretty good too, so I’m excited for my last week working with Graslandwissenshaft.
The rest of the days were really just small tasks. I did some data entering, sample drying, weighing, and sorting, and other similar things. It was relaxing; I got to listen to music or podcasts while doing the tedious work. Which was good because my weekend was rather full.
Weekend 1
On Saturday I had planned to hang out with Zac for the afternoon/evening, but since my host brother and host dad were already going to a concert that evening, they invited us to go along. It made my host dad happy because he got to speak a little English again. The band was called “Swagger,” a band that played pretty much everything. They’re a cover band and covered everything from Peter Maffay to Rammstein to Black Eyed Peas. And they played A LOT from about 10:30 to 3 am, in fact. So, since we got back late, Zac just stayed overnight in the extra bed in my room and we hung out at my place the next morning too, until it was time for frisbee. I finally managed to work it out with the frisbee thing, and it was lots of fun. It was the first time that I really got to play on a serious team, as in they had legit drills and strategies, so I was pretty darn exausted. Not to mention I didn’t really know what I was doing, considering the instructions were always in German or broken English. I wasn’t really familiar with the sport vocabulary in both languages, so I was just screwed overall. Then I missed my bus, which made me mad because the busses come only every two hours on Sundays, so my host dad came and picked me up.
But that was just the beginning of the series of unfortunate things that happened to me over the next few days.
Last Week. . . oh joy.
So, where to start, where to start. . . On Monday the weather turned into a rainy cloudy cold mess. Fall is starting up and good days are becoming scarcer and scarcer. But of course the show must go on. We had things to do before winter shows up. We needed to move the animals to the third group of fields, which involves taking grass samples from both the field that they are moving off of and the field that they are moving onto (kind of like a before/after type of deal). So despite the rain I had to work outside, sitting in tall grass cutting the sample from the ground with my bare hands and then somehow managing to label the samples with a wet piece of paper. I did this 16 times before I could go home a cold and wet mess. Luckily I didn’t get sick, it was just a miserable experience. I especially don’t like the fact that it’s so quite since I’m by myself in the middle of a field and I end of thinking about things, which soon becomes non-productive thinking. It was just not the best of circumstances. Oh well, it happens.
Tuesday I went back out to the farm. The weather was still crappy and cold, but it was only misting, so a little bit better. I got through the work at least without having to worry about writing on wet paper, although it was still really wet outside. First we moved the sheep down to the barn where they got there hooves trimmed. That was pretty funny, because they basically put them in this sheep holding rack thing and then tighten it on their bodies in order to turn them upside down and cut the hooves. Just something about a device specifically designed to flip a sheep upside down amuses me. Well, we did that with every group of sheep (four times I herded them down to the barn and then back up to their new place to graze) and then also moved the cows to their respective fields, but they didn’t need trimming. After that I got to sit in a field covered with crap in order to take the samples. Again 16 samples, didn’t take but a couple of hours, but at the end I was displeased to discover that my iPod had fallen out of my jacket pocket. So I spent about forty minutes searching the three fields that it could have been in, and I found it again. Of course it was in the very last field. Eventually I managed to get home, although a bit late.
But that’s not the worst of it. I needed this whole time to talk to Professor Isselstein, the head of the Grasslandwissenshaften section of the Agrarwissenshaften department, about my auditor form which I gave to him on Monday to sign. So I was planning to do that on Wednesday, since I came back late (the due date was Thursday) With that little teaser I’ll move on to what happened on Wednesday.
I though I was going to be staying in the institute on Wednesday, but of course the other field (the one I worked on the week before, with the 800 year old wall) needed some help. I really didn’t have the right clothing so I needed to grab my rubber boots and my rain pants. Oh and I had to buy my lunch on the way there. Luckily I had my rain jacket though. So we soon left to the field, on the way putting a hole on the back of the pickup truck. We almost got stuck in the mud driving through the pasture to get to the research fields and ended up getting stuck in the mud on the way back. After shoving it out of the mud and getting the car all dirty we had to take it somewhere nearby to get it washed. Well, when we washed it we discovered a really big oil leak coming from the underside of the car and found that we were no longer able to drive it. So I then had to wait on someone else to pick us up from Göttingen which is about a 40 minute trip one way. When I finally got back, after hitting a fox I might add, I had already missed my bus so I went up to Prof. Isselstein to talk about my registration form and was not pleased to discover that I needed the signatures and stamps from all the departments that I signed up to take classes in. Lovely considering the due date was the next day.
The cool thing was that I got to work on this giant tractor thing that day though. It was awesome. Basically this thing was a giant mower that mowed the grass onto a conveyor belt that dropped it onto a conveyor belt that wasn’t moving so it could weigh the grass and then it shot the grass out the side with the second belt. I sat in the back of the machine waiting as the part of the mowed grass was blown through a tube to me (part of the grass is separated and comes to me, while the other part drops down to be weighed). I then bagged and labeled the grass and but it in a big sack. I really had to work fast, because by the time I stapled and labeled the bag, the machine was already on the next one. It was really lots of fun. The machine looks like a mix between something you’d see in a Doctor Seuss book and a horror film.
So like I said, the beginning of this week was not so good. In fact it was pretty awful in general, but things turned up. On Thursday I got to work inside and I went into town to talk to the student secretary about my auditor form. I got the deadline extended, so everything’s good with that. Then I got to go home early. Friday was basically the same, except I collected all of the signatures and prepared them, since the office closes early on Fridays.
I found an international church that I’m going to go to, which I’m really looking forward to because I’d be nice to meet and share fellowship with some new people. It’s been really hard trying to find people that I can actually connect with and relate to since I’m in this small town with a bunch of people that are younger than me and that I just wouldn’t be able to be friends with. Not because they’re not nice or anything, but just because they’re not really my type. Hopefully at this church I’ll be able to meet some cool people, because they are all basically in a similar situation as me. They’re mostly foreigners who have come to Germany for different reasons, but want to still meet some people, which is hard to do because of the language barrier. Plus they give a bible study in German for people that are trying to learn German, like me. So I’m going to go to that if I enjoy the regular service. I haven’t been able to go yet, though, because this weekend. . .
Relaxing, fun weekend. . . aahh. . .
Friday night my host sister came. She’s really nice and I enjoyed spending time with her and my host parents this weekend. My host brother is starting to get on my nerves a little bit. The twins were okay, but they didn’t really interact at all, just were on the computer or TV all the time. Marcel is much different, but he has lately been really getting on my host mom’s nerves (and I think my dad too). I really don’t understand it, because he clearly got thrown out of his mom’s house for some reason, and now he’s living by us with his dad, and annoying the heck out of them. He’s always complaining about small things, just digging and digging until someone blows up (my host mom usually, which just makes things really awkward for me), or blows up himself. I’ll give you an example: Just the other day my host dad made a home made pizza. It was awesome. It had cheese and tuna and pineapple and spicy peppers, just amazing. In fact he always cooks really good food. Well there happened to also be a little bit of ham on it as well, a good choice if you ask me, but apparently Marcel really doesn’t like ham on pizza and specifically asked for him to leave it off. Well he complained and whined and then finally just ate bread instead of this delicious pizza, just because it had a little bit of ham on it. Now this child (actually he’s twenty which makes it worse) is living at his dad’s house for free, and getting fed delicious food every single day, and he has the nerve to complain about it. Not just about that, but a bunch of different stuff. For instance, he complains that he wants to go into town to sit in the sauna but my host dad doesn’t want to pay for it. I mean really? His life is not hard, if I were in his position I would be sucking up to my family in order to not get kicked out a second time, but he’s borderline if you ask me. Of course, I don’t really have any say in the matter, and it’s something that I will leave for them to discuss. I just wanted to vent because it’s really frustrating sometimes, the things he says.
Anyway, back to the main point of this section. Friday night we played a German game similar to “Trouble” called “Mensch ärgert mich nicht.” and then I taught them Euchre since we had four people (me, my host parents, and my host sister). It was tons of fun even though I epic failed at the first game.
Saturday I hung out a bit with Zac and Trinitie, both Americans on this program in my area, and we talked for a while. Then I went home and chilled, which was nice. I got Starcraft 2 in German, which I’m pretty excited about, although the vocab is a lot different so I’m learning a lot of new words. It’s actually kinda frustrating sometimes when I don’t understand the hints that they give me on the mission. Eventually I figure that out, but as far as the plot line goes, it’s really hard to follow. Sunday we took my host sister back to the Bahnhof in Kassel and said goodbye, but before that we walked around a park in Kassel where a giant Castle was. There’s one castle on a hill with the statue of Hercules that has a huge fountain at the bottom of the hill. It only runs for about 15 minutes every couple hours or so I think, but when it starts it really goes. It’s just one huge fountain that forces water up above the trees, which are impressively tall themselves. With the sun in the mix as well they fountain was really pretty, with a huge rainbow forming on the side. It was really cool looking, just because it was sooo much water.
Ende
So, that’s the end of that. I don’t think I’m going to proof read so if there’s any errors, just deal with it, I don’t feel like going back. Oh, I must say that Blasmusik is going really well. I have my Trombone now and we’re actually improving quite a bit. I guess all the music was new before, but now we can play it much better. It’s tons of fun! Thanks for reading, peace out.
Skez
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