Last Post from Germany

So this is officially my last post from Germany.  It's sad that this trip had to end, but I can't wait to be home and see everybody!
I forgot to mention what happened Tuesday through Friday (today).
Tuesday, we went to research to present our powerpoints about our research to our mentor scientists.  That was really nerve wracking, but we all survived.  Afterwards, we went shopping and bought lots of chocolate! Wednesday, we had to make another presentation, but this one was about our experience in Germany.  We hadn't really worked on it so we were going to meet early in the morning at JWS so I woke up at 7 and missed Dr. Braun so I couldn't catch a ride to the school.  I got ready and waited for the bus in the rain.  The bus left at 8:15 and I got to the main station at 8:45.  I then took bus #62 to get to the school, but I had absolutely no idea which street to get off at.  I picked a random street and had to walk around for an hour and a half - walking almost a 5K and finally made it to the school dripping wet just to see that Amy and Krista hadn't informed me that they weren't coming until 11:00.  Once they did arrive though, we worked on our presentation and presented it - it went quite well.  The ceremony they had was nice and a lot of important people like the Minister of Education came to give speeches.
Thursday, we ended up going to school with the German students.  We sat through Economics- in German, Biotechnology- in German/English (actually a really interesting class where in vitro fertilization was the topic of conversation), English, and Biotechnology again.  After Biotechnology, we all went through a window and picked apples.  I went home with Alex and ate at her house and then Erika drove us to Melanie's house where we watched the Bourne Identity and Supremacy.
Today, we went to school again here for the last time and went to P.E. and Math.  P.E. was a lot of fun because we played one game where you have to throw a foam ball at people like dodgeball except there's a king that you're trying to get out.  We also played a game where you have a huge ball and you have to use any method you can to get it into your goal.  That was a lot of fun!  Math was interesting because we were split into teams (Amy and I with the Germans, and Krista with the other Germans) and they played a strategy game like Chess on the board, but to move you had to get the math problems right.  Once the Germans found out that Amy and I were good at math, we had to answer all of the questions.  Krista however didn't get to play at all because the one person who knew German wasn't even participating.  After school, we went out into the city for a little while and bought more presents.  Now I have to start packing for tomorrow.  We leave at 7:30 and our plane takes off at 11:40.  We'll be back in the states at 1:20 pm tomorrow so I should be home by 4!
TIME TO PACK!


Goodbye (in different languages):


ba bye - creole


totsiens / tot siens - Afrikaans (standard)
koebaai - Afrikaans (informal; derived from English "Good-Bye")
vaarwel - Afrikaans (formal)


elalleqa - Arabic


khodaa haafez - persian


aabar dekha hobey - Bengali


Donadagohvi - Cherokee


Hagoonea' - Navajo


Ahoj - Czech


Sayonara / さよなら (if you will not see them for a long time) - Japanese


Auf Wiedersehen - German
Bis dann - German
Tschüss - German


Viszlát! - Hungarian


Ciao - Italian
Buona sera - Italian


Adieu - French [add-ee-uh] 
Au Revoir - French (aw reh-VWAH)


Hejdå - Swedish


Aloha - Hawaiian


Le'hitraot - Hebrew
Shalom - Hebrew


Aavajo - Gujarat


Bye, 
~Kiersten

Leipzig: Day 3 + Sun & Mon

Leipzig Day 3 in a brief overview:
    - Visited the restaurant where Goethe spent most of his time writing
    - Ate at said restaurant
    -Went window shopping
    -Saw an awesome theater show including acrobatics, singing, magic, and jokes in German
    -Went to the Potato House restaurant: waited for over 2 hours for our food that wasn't even good
    -Walked around Leipzig and explored
    -bed
Sunday:
   -Drove back to Pforzheim (8 hours)
   - Watched the USA vs Japan Women's world cup Championship: one of the most intense games thus far
   -Saw Japan win the game and all the people back in Japan celebrate
Monday:
   -Worked on presentation for tomorrow at research
That's all for now and I have to finish my presentation and figure out what the plan is for tomorrow.
Ciao,
~Kiersten

Leipzig: Day 1 and 2

Sorry about the lack of posting, but we have been enjoying East Germany and hanging out with other teenagers who actually try to speak English with us.  We have been touring Leipzig, going to museums and listening to stories about how the Berlin wall was built and destroyed and how the Monday demonstrations took place in front of the church directly in front our motel which has turned out to be a lot nicer than any hotel I've ever stayed out.  It's really upscale.  We've had a great time hanging out with the other students from Pforzheim and learning more German.  Tonight, we went exploring around Leipzig and in the hotel.  I also bought a European jacket, which I think is pretty classy and not too expensive.  Tomorrow, we are going to see a play of some sort so that should be fun and then on Sunday we have to drive 8 hours back to Pforzheim and watch the USA play Japan for the title of champion in the women's world cup.
Now that you're up to date, I'm going to head to bed.
Night,
~Kiersten

Wow...it's been a while since I've posted

    It's been a while since I've posted anything so I have four days to catch you up on.
Sunday: worked on presentation for research and watched The Island along with Stardust later that night.  A good do nothing day.
Monday: Research and Stuttgart.  We went shopping, but didn't find anything and I was going to get Starbucks, but the line was too long and it was expensive so it wasn't worth it.
Tuesday: Research and chilling in Mannheim.  We went and laid in the grass in the park, but a police officer walked by and apparently you aren't aloud to lay in the grass there, but luckily he was nice about it and offered us a bench nearby instead.
Today: It started out normally with us making all of our connections, but the return home was a different story.  We left research at 4:10 and had to be back at the station to make the 4:36 train.  We briskly walked to the tram, but missed it by 30 seconds, which meant that we were going to miss our train.  We all wanted to get home early in order to see the USA vs France game on TV so we wanted to be home around 6 meaning we had to find an early train.  We looked up times and found a train that would get us there quickly, but Krista stopped to get pasta and Amy mentioned that we had 30 seconds to catch the train.  When we got the platform, the sign said that the train was delayed 15 minutes, which soon turned into 20, then 25, then 35 minutes.  Amy went to check other train times and while she was gone I followed Krista into a market to look at chocolate.  We returned to the platform to find Amy missing and we couldn't find her anywhere.  We looked on our platform twice and searched the station, but had no luck.  Our train finally arrived and we couldn't find Amy so we decided to get on, hoping she caught one of the other trains going to the station.  We arrived in Karlsruhe and still couldn't find her.  We were worried and somewhat bored and so we made a short video on my computer saying that we officially lost Amy.  When we got off of the train we headed to her bus station just in case she made it there and lo and behold she was there!  We exchanged stories and it turned out that she had gotten on a train on a different platform because she thought we had already left her, but we ended up in Karlsruhe ahead of her (faster train) and we had both ridden the same train in different compartments to Pforzheim.  It was a domino effect starting with the red light that prevented us from reaching the tram to get to the station.  Those 30 seconds cost us an hour of waiting in the train station, and two hours of worry.  It was funny though thtat we missed Amy's return to our platform in Mannheim because we were fascinated by the chocolate in the store (mostly Krista haha).
I got back to Braun's house and turned on the TV to watch the USA vs France game.  The USA won 3-1 and while watching it, the commentary went like this: something, something, something in German, Wambach, something, something, Wambach, something, Wambach, something, something, Wambach.  I think there was a theme in the coverage.  Now that I've brought you up to speed, I'm going to go pack for Leipzig this weekend.  It's an 8 hour car ride that I'm not looking forward too, but I'm excited to see East Germany.  We leave tomorrow and won't be back until Sunday so it should be fun.
Talk to you later,
~Kiersten

Heidelberg

Today started out with biking around Nussbaum, which was an interesting experience given the bike I was riding.  It was a bicycle that cost over 2,000 Euros and looked like a professional one.  It was hard to get used to how it worked and I almost got run over in the process, but luckily I learned how to stop just in time.

After biking, we headed to Heidelberg and visited a student prison where the kids were kept if they misbehaved and they wrote their stories, engraved their names, and painted pictures of themselves on the walls of the prison. I even saw an engraving of the last name Schmidt on the wall.  We also visited the Castle in Heidelberg, which is the most famous castle in Germany.  After that we went shopping for a short time and I got a cute Germany bag, a few t-shirts, and some other items.  It was a lot of fun and now we're watching the Germany vs Japan soccer game.  Japan just scored a goal in thirty minutes of overtime and it was an extremely painful game.

I was just looking up the news for today and everyone is celebrating the birth of South Sudan and they raised the new flag in Juba today.  It's now official that all of the maps of the world are now out of date and we are experiencing history.  It's weird to think that some of the events I'm reading about that are going on now like the Arab spring and all of the revolutions in Africa are going to be written in textbooks years from now.  Well, I should probably head to bed now...

Nacht,

~Kiersten

Research and Stuttgart

Yesterday at research nothing out of the ordinary occurred besides the fact that I've been having problems with getting results and one of my films turned out completely blank, which is not a good sign.  Today, I redid the latter half of the experiment and it turned out that I had used the wrong secondary antibody.  Instead of using the HRP against mouse antibody, I used the marker lysate I had made previously that week.  They both had an 'm' on the top of the lid and I had assumed they both meant mouse.  Whoops...but now I have results and I have to work on my presentation and paper all next week.

Today, we decided to go to Stuttgart after research and it has the largest mall/shopping center in all of Germany. It was extremely impressive and the overall atmosphere and architecture made the trip worth it.  We only had time to go into one store because the lines were so long and there were too many people, but I did get some shorts.  Hopefully, we will be able to go back and get more clothes.  Tomorrow we're going to Heidelberg- tourist central, and there I hope to find things to buy.  Also, I learned from Krista that South Sudan is becoming it's own country tonight at midnight, which means that tomorrow all of our maps will be wrong.  And in England, people are camping out to see the viewing of Harry Potter 7 Part 2 and they ahve recreated Hogsmeade accompanied by wand shops, etc in England.  People have come dressed up in Hogwarts robes and are excited to catch glimpses of the actors/actresses when they arrive for the viewing.  Wish I was in England right now...It's sad that we won't be able to see the movie when it comes out even though it officially premiers here on July 12th.  That's all for now.
Adios,
~Kiersten

Just Another Ordinary Day *insert sarcasm*

Sorry that I haven't posted the past two days, but all that happened was that we went to research and I went running for 30 minutes straight on Monday.  Today, however, was a different story.

Today started out normally with us getting on the train to Karlsruhe.  Amy and I have a joint ticket to ride the trains and she was carrying it around in her hand.  We didn't have any problems until we got onto the train in Karlsruhe to go to Mannheim.  Amy realized that she no longer had the ticket in her hand.  We searched through all of our bags and pockets and even looked around on the ground, but to our despair, no ticket could be found.  We went to research as per usual and called Dr. Braun to see what we would have to do.  The ticket that we had lasted for the entire month and would get us anywhere in Germany, but it cost 400 Euros.  Amy was so upset about it and she spent most of the tram ride back to the station worrying about the cost and how she always misplaces stuff.

    We got off at the station and bought some fruit and train tickets to get us back to Pforzheim.  We asked all of service counters in both Mannheim and Karlsruhe if they had obtained our ticket and we searched the platforms for it.  When we were searching for a payphone to call Dr. Braun with (my phone ran out of money and the other girls didn't have theirs with them), Amy set down her laptop case.  She left it there and out of luck she passed by one of the attendants who had picked it up.  She almost lost both the ticket and her laptop.  It was not a good day for Amy and with no luck with finding the ticket, we headed back home.  When we got off at the Karlsruhe train station, there were train attendants standing around a garbage bin with water and it turned out that there was smoke coming out if.  My guess was that someone carelessly through a cigarette into the paper compartment of the trash.  It was a crazy day and I ended up spending $30 on a train ticket just today.  Dr. Braun purchased tickets for Amy and I for this coming week so we should be good until we are supposed to go to Leipzig.

     I forgot to mention that yesterday, there was a man on the train who could only speak French and he needed help to find out where to get off.  A woman who only spoke German asked Krista if she could help the man.  The woman talked to Krista in German, Krista translated to English for Amy, and Amy spoke French to the man.  It was interesting to watch this "language train" and I sort of wish there had been some need for me to speak to Spanish, but seeing as I have taken a year off from Spanish, it probably wouldn't have been pretty.    

     Digressing, on Saturday, the plan is to go to Heidelberg to shop, sight see, and watch fireworks on top of the castle.  I really need to start preparing for my presentation of my research because we have to make one before leaving Germany.  I can't believe how fast this has gone and that it's almost over.  I'm just now getting used to the routine, my lab, the Braun family, and I'm really enjoying myself here.  We've had a lot of adventures here and I hope to have more before we leave.  I will be sad to say goodbye to Germany, but I'm also kind of excited to be going home to spend time with my family.  It's going to be a bittersweet goodbye, but that is still a ways off so I'm going to enjoy myself here while I can.

      It's late here so I should probably hit the hay.

Tchuss,

~Kiersten

Swimming today

As the title of this post implies, we went swimming today.  It was 65F outside, but the place we went to was all indoors with a small outdoor pool.  It was actually a pretty big place with five or six different pools and hot tubs. There was even an indoor water slide.  On the pools was about 15 ft deep and there were diving boards that went up to 5 meters tall.  We swam for five hours and ate lunch and dinner there.  It was a lot of fun and it was good exercise.  I'm sure I will sleep soundly tonight.  Nothing else has happened so far, but I'll probably post again tomorrow when it's back to work.  Hopefully, we will all be able to get results this week because we are running out of weeks of research.  Next week, we are spending the week in East Germany- Leipzig, so we only have about 7 days of research left and we have to make presentations on what we've done in a couple of weeks.  I feel like our classmates have gotten more time doing research than we have, but we'll see how it turns out in the end.
Ciao,
~Kiersten

Women's World Cup: USA vs Colombia

USA: 3 Colombia: 0
What an awesome game! We arrived at the stadium before four (the game started at six) and we all painted our faces with watercolors (it was the only thing we could find).  Our faces actually turned out pretty cool with Amy and Krista painting American flags on their's and on mine was red, white, and blue stripes (I had on my American flag t-shirt).  Thirteen minutes into the game and America already scored with an amazing long shot that hit the back right corner.  It was a gorgeous shot and started us off on a good foot.  The footwork in the game was amazing too and it was interesting to watch the different moves by the women to pass, feint, and move quickly across the field.  Colombia got the ball into the goal and celebrated as if they had scored, but unfortunately for them they were off-sides so the goal wasn't counted.  The referees in the game where horrible because they didn't call penalties that they should have for both sides so it was very aggressive game, but interesting to watch.  In the second half, there was another amazing goal that arched from a long distance and got past the goalie and it was kicked by #15 who was not great at passing the ball, but was really good at getting around the other players with fancy footwork.  The last goal that was scored was a completely lucky shot because the ball should have been caught by the goalie, but it bounced off of her fingers and into the goal.  Overall, it was a spectacular game.  Our seats were the obstructed view seats so they only cost 25E instead of 80E so the view wasn't perfect, but we were five rows above the field so we could actually see the players' faces.  We also saw the second goal perfectly which was amazing and the players ran to our side to celebrate.  A lot of people took our pictures at the game because of our faces and one older gentleman commented that he liked the design on my face the best and then said, "Merci" (the red, white, and blue stripe make up France's flag).  There were a lot of cameras around and Krista and I both got to be filmed, but we have no idea what station it was for.  There was an American family across from us that got filmed by a different camera crew, and were told that it was ESPN so we were close to being shown in America.  There were a ton of people from the US, which was amazing and it was nice to hear people speaking in English.  There were even supporters from Colombia and they had signs saying "Te Amo Colombia" and sombreros with the Colombian colors.  The game was amazing and it was definitely worth.  We had so much fun and there were over 25,000 in attendance and the seats were sold out so we were lucky enough to go.  I have no idea what's planned for tomorrow so I guess I that means I get to sleep in.
Night,
~Kiersten
  

Umbilical Cords

During research today, Amy and I got to see one of the scientists in the lab obtain cells from a donated umbilical cord.  Apparently, there used to be a lot of donors a few years ago, but now the lab is lucky to get one a week. The researcher, Anja, took a syringe attached to a needle and pressed PBS through the vein (she called it, "ze ween") in the center to make sure there weren't any holes.  She found a hole and had to cut the cord with a scalpel and then she had to pump all of the blood out of the vein.  After that she used clamps and filled the vein with collagenase and incubated it.  Anja told us, "I am making fun with ze umbilical cord."  I love German accents!  It was one of the most exciting things that has happened so far in research.  I also got to work with DNA today and develop films too.  We are trying to find paint here for tomorrow's game, but so far we haven't had much luck.  We're going to try to go shopping in Stuttgart tomorrow before the game...I'm going to try to see if I can watch Pride and Prejudice on my computer tonight...
That's all for now,
~Kiersten

Intriguing People

Today on the train back from research, we heard a guy say, “Sorry” to someone he bumped into and we automatically thought American.  Krista asked the guy if he was from America or Britain.  The man said that he lived in America but was born in Iran and after living in California he moved to Germany and is now working in geophysics as a seismologist and he married a Russian woman.  His 18^th month old is now learning Farzi, Russian, German, and English.  We played with his son and talked to him for the rest of the train ride to Karlsruhe and as we were about to get off another man approached us and told us that he was from Michigan and he composes the music that plays in the short videos in museums.  I didn’t even know there were such people who did that.  He also plays the saxophone and loves Germany more than America because it has a lot operas and promotion of the arts.  He is now a professor in Karlsruhe, too.  It was so cool to talk to other Americans and they were so friendly, which is a definite plus.  I feel like the Germans would be nice too if only I could speak German. All in all today was pretty good and we got to meet some awesome people.

Adios,

~Kiersten

monday and tuesday (27 and 28)

Yesterday was busy so I didn't have time to post anything.  After research we went looking around Mannheim and ended up in a bookstore-- surprise, surprise.  Across from the bookstore were these two guys who were street performers called the Streetles (written like the Beatles).  We spent a lot of the time trying to find a Go Kart place where we were meeting Melanie's family to race go-karts.  We got lost of course- it seems to have become our specialty.  We ended up finding a whole bunch of blackberries and had fun picking them and eating them while we waited for Melanie's father to find us.  As we were about to leave, a guy our age talked to Krista in German and it turns out that he was from Turkey.  We left and went racing go-karts.  I think because it runs in the family (*cough* Dad *cough*) I wasn't half bad if I do say so myself :P By the time we caught a train back to Pforzheim, it was 11:30 and so I had to head to bed.

Today, wasn't terribly exciting...I had to pipet solution into 4,800 tiny tubes all day which was tedious work.  We ended up leaving early and Krista had to stay behind because she wasn't going to get out until after 6.

Bye for now,
~Kiersten

Sunday

Today, I got to go see a horse competition at the stables near the Braun's house.  It was actually warm today (80F) so that was nice and it cool to see the jumping competition.  We toured a monastery today, which turned out to be a lot more fun than it sounds.  I'm reading The Pillars of the Earth and it is a fictional story with action and adventure but also focuses on monasteries and how they are built, so it was interesting to apply the knowledge from this book to an actual monastery.  There was also a Renaissance fair in the square of the monastery and so I got to see sword fighting, Medieval skits, and tug-of-war with four teams and a wheel.  There were a ton of people dressed up and it was interesting to see the different costumes.  I watched the women's soccer game on TV, Germany vs Canada, and Germany won 2-1.  Mexico played earlier today against France in a scrimmage and lost awfully, so it was not a good day for North America, but hopefully Saturday will be better. I had maultaussen for lunch today and flammkuchen (a flat pizza) for dinner.  I'm exhausted so I'm off to sleep.
Ciao,
~Kiersten

German Public Transportation

So the public transportation was not on our side at all today.  We started out the day planning on meeting at platform 4 to take a train indirectly to Heidelberg.  Amy and I both arrived there before the train was at the station and we were waiting for Krista and Erika.  2 minutes before the train leaves at 10:34, I get a call from Erika saying their bus was 15 minutes late and she still has to buy a ticket.  Amy and I decide that we can afford to miss this train, so we change platforms to wait for Erika and Krista.  This train leaves at 10:43 without us and still no sign of Erika or Krista.  We go up the stairs and find both of them trying to get the machine to work and print out a ticket, so that we can catch the next train at 10:47.  It finally prints out the ticket and we run to the platform just in time to see that the train has already left.  We missed all 3 trains to Heidelberg.  A train running at 11:23 would have gotten us to Heidelberg, but Amy's mentor, Jen (who was planning this whole trip for us--going to the castle, having tea, eating schnitzel, etc), called and told us that was a train that would take us straight to Heidelberg.  We had to wait around until 11:47 to take this IC (high speed) train.  We get on the train, find seats, and relax.  We stop at station after station and Krista starts wondering if this is the right train because the stop wasn't listed on the train schedule.  A man comes on the intercom in the train and in German says a bunch of random things and then I hear Heidelberg 12:20 (in German).  We all assume that it's a stop on the way to Nuremberg (the train's final destination).  We all look anxiously at the time as it becomes 12:30 then 12:40...After talking a lot with Jen and trying to find out why our train wasn't stopping, Erika went and asked one of the train attendants who tells her that the next stop is in Crailsheim, 45 minutes away and that Nuremberg in Bavaria is about an hour away (from Pforzheim Nuremberg is a 3 hour train ride).  After a lot of discussion and worry, we finally decide to just go all the way to Nuremberg, go sightseeing and exploring there and then return home later.

Nuremberg was an amazing city that was built for tourists.  There were fortresses, churches, architecture, museums, festivals, open markets, and anything else that might attract people from everywhere.  We walked around and got chocolate, looked at stores, took pictures of the ornate churches, went onto a tall fortress that overlooked the city (gorgeous view and it even had rooftop gardens), played foosball on an extended foosball table and really had a good time.  There were even people painted in all silver acting like statues reminding me of San Francisco.  We headed back to the train station and left Bavaria at 5:30ish and returned to Pforzheim around 8:30.  From there, Krista and Erika got on their bus leaving me to wait with Amy for Melanie's mom to pick her up and then I was going to catch my bus at 9:38.  I headed to my bus stop after Amy left and I realized that she had my phone, which wasn't a problem because I was going to see her tomorrow.  Soon I realized how bad of an idea that was.

When I got to my bus stop around 9:25 I look at the schedule for the buses and saw that I was mistaken about this bus and that the next and last bus was to come at 11 o'clock.  On closer inspection though I found out that wasn't true.  Apparently at 11, the bus didn't stop at 3 stations and one of those stations happened to be the one I had to get off at.  I had to find, try to translate, and use a pay phone to call Dr. Braun and after a lot of trouble with the phone, but I got a ride back to the house.

After that great adventure, it was about 11 when we got back and we headed to the stables to pick up Annalena.  There was a party going on to celebrate the horse competitions that are held this weekend.  I got my schnitzel and there was a band playing that had to be American because their English was perfect and according to Dr. Braun, their German was terrible.  They played songs from Michael Jackson, Pink, Elvis, and also some German songs.  It was fun hanging out their and I got to meet Annalena's friend who has had 9 years of English in school speaks very well.  She was extremely nice and we hung out until midnight.  Tomorrow, we are going to a Renaissance festival and to explore the monastery, which should be fun.  Today was so much fun and quite an adventure.
Hope there are more to come!
~Kiersten  

Amazing

Today was simply amazing.  Research was fun and I got to do the entire experiment by myself, which showed me that my mentors trust me.  After research, we decided randomly to go explore Mannheim.  We now have tickets that will take us anywhere in Germany, so we might take advantage of that later.  In Mannheim, we took pictures around this building that had statues and carvings of Neptune, nymphs, and sphinxes.  It was a gorgeous building with beautiful fountains on either side.  After we finished taking pictures there, we went shopping.  (I will try to see if Amy will post the pictures on Facebook...she likes to play around with them to make them look better).  I didn't get anything, but there were a lot of cute clothes and they were really cheap.  I'm thinking about maybe entering a European style phase and getting skinny jeans or lose black capris, a red tank top, and either a black or beige fitted jacket or a denim one.  Too bad money doesn't grow on trees (: ...Amy got a really cute denim dress and Krista bought an outrageous shirt just for fun.  We took the train back to Pforzheim and we realized that there was a festival going on.  There are festivals every week in Pforzheim and this week it was a car show.  The cars looked really sleek and were a lot smaller than the ones at home.  I wasn't particularly interested in the cars besides their looks, but there was a concert going on in the center so we hung out there.  I went to the Turkish restaurant and got a meat sandwich with lettuce and chili pepper (I usually wouldn't have asked for this, but the employee insisted).  It was delicious and that is now one of my favorite places for food!  We walked around a lot and found a garden on the top of one of the stores's roof.  We had a great time and it was fun just spontaneously going to a festival that just happened to be in Pforzheim.  Tomorrow's plans are to go to Heidelberg, eat Schpatzel for lunch, visit the ruins of a castle, take lots of pictures, possibly drink tea, and shop.  Sunday, we are taking a tour of a monastery and going to a Renaissance Festival they are holding near the monastery.  According to my mentor, it's one of the most attended festivals and there are jousting competitions, people dressed in costumes, and a lot more.  I'm excited to tell you guys all about it.

Night,

~Kiersten 

France

We headed off to France today...It was a church holiday and the priests and their parishes walked in a parade from parish to parish, which was cool to watch because they carried the host underneath a canopy.  We drove an hour and a half to Strasbourg, France and it was so gorgeous especially with all the decorative architecture.  We walked around a lot and went inside the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Strasbourg.  That was my favorite part because the church was TALL and was so beautifully decorated with detailed sculptures, paintings, etc.  It was crazy how striking the cathedral was and every time I saw it, it took my breath away.  I had a common French cuisine at a restaurant though I forgot what it's called but it was three different types of sausages, three different types of ham, and sauerkraut (which I didn't eat...not a huge fan).  It was good though and we went window shopping, too.  Everything was so expensive, but I did happen to buy a pair of earrings for a Euro, which I thought was a good purchase.  Also, we took a boat tour of the River splitting Strasbourg and we got to see the building where the European parliament worked and we got to experience going through a lock...It was an interesting audio narrated tour, but the rocking of the boat almost put me to sleep.  We got stuck in traffic on the way back and it took us three hours to get back to the house.  I'm exhausted and I'm headed off to bed...
(P.S.- Mom, I'm almost done with the Pillars of the Earth, only 100 pages left and it is SO good! Love you!)
Talk to you later,
~Kiersten

Pick Pocketed!

I just realized that I got pick pocketed today! My iPod Shuffle and headphones were taken! : / They were in the back pocket of my bag and they aren't there any more...luckily nothing else was taken because I didn't put my bag down at all today, but I can't believe someone was able to take that without me noticing!

Interesting Day

Today was a lot of fun! It started out with us getting off on the wrong train station and having to get on a random train that we thought we might be able to ride to possibly the right station.  It was an hour long ride through Brushel, Heidelberg, and Mannheim.  Tomorrow we get new tickets and with them we can travel anywhere we want to in Germany.  We were half and hour late research, but the mentors didn't care.  i worked on another Western Blot today and got to do most of the experiment by myself.  One of the girls in the lab, Caro, had a birthday this week so we went out to a bakery to buy food and had a party/brunch.  It was kind of awkward because Amy and I were the only English speakers and we couldn't sit next to each other because all of the seats were filled.  Also, apparently Cheng (the Chinese man in our lab) was sad because no one talked English around him or translated anything and he was afraid that he might forget his English and that he was being left out of conversations and he's been here a year.  When asked about what Tanja thinks is the biggest difference between Germany and the US, she said the government and the life styles.  She said that if people accidently forgot one thing, then BOOM, they were put in jail :) Also, in the lab they received a new order of bottles that were stored in dry ice and Tanja brought some pieces of it to the lab so we could play with it for fun.  We put one piece in a plastic glove and added water and the glove expanded.  We then proceeded to draw a face on it with a pig nose and jack-o-lantern teeth.  We put one in a 15 mL tub and added water and watched the gas escape.  We added soap to it too and when the bubbles popped the gas flowed out.  We also put dry ice in an eppendorf tube (1 mL), added water, sealed the lid tightly, and then hid it behind one of the people in the lab and it exploded!  Tanja told me about how she once put some in a hot water bath and the gas filled up the entire room.  After we finished playing with the ice, we got out early and stopped for ice cream.
On the train ride back from Karlsruhe to Pforzheim, there was a mother with a 3 year old, a 1 year old, and a newborn.  Her sons were so cute and the 1 year old had the funniest expressions.  Our whole car was entertained by them.  We all made faces at them and imitated their sounds and actions.  There was this one middle aged, built guy who had a completely straight face and wheeled his bike to play with the kids with a hint of a smile on his face.  The 3 year old kids had some sort of candy and he went around trying to share it with everyone.  As we were about to get off the train, the boy stuck a handful in his mouth and spit them everywhere.  His brother came along and ate some off the floor, which was disgusting.  The newborn baby was so adorable though and slept for most of the train ride.  It was a very interesting train ride and it's nice to see how friendly the Germans are.
Digressing, on July 2nd, we get to go see the women's world cup for soccer (US vs Colombia) and we are painting up - red, white, and blue! Also, it's the summer solstice today.  There's no research tomorrow so I think we might be going to France tomorrow and then to a celebration in Heidelberg on Saturday so that should be fun.  More to come later.
Tschuss,
~Kiersten

Tuesday- Research

Today was pretty normal at research.  I worked most of the time on performing western blots on proteins, so that was the extent of today's work and nothing of much consequence happened on the trains today.  Krista did happen to make a friend with a guy with dreds because it looked like their bus had a flat tire...Not much to talk about today, but we have another holiday on Thursday (there seems to be a holiday every week here) so that should be fun though I don't know what we're going to do then.  I need to start buying things other than food here because that's all I've spent my money on so far...That's about it.
Adios for now,
~Kiersten

Sunday/Monday

Yesterday, Krista and I went running and we experienced a picturesque moment.  Picture the city in the background covered in a mist and in front of it are fields and fields of wheat. It's windy, so it looks like the wheat fields are actually water and the wheat is forming an undulating current. It's sunny, but drizzling at the same time -- the perfect weather for the perfect view.  I wish I could have frozen time right then because of how gorgeous it was, but of course time kept moving.  Later that day we went bowling and I scored above 100! That's right -- 101!
Today, we had research and all I did today was load gels and let them run so nothing exciting happened.  When we got back to Pforzheim, we stopped at a restaurant and got desserts.  I got Tiramisu, which was amazing! It was extremely good and I wish I could have had more.  Amy got panna cotta, which was okay but a little bland and it looked like flan.  Krista got spaghetti ice cream, which is also delicious.  When I got back to the Braun's house, we went out to eat at the most German restaurant EVER *sarcasm* -- Subway (: I was upset because they didn't have meatball subs, so I came up with a random combination of food that actually ended up tasting good.  I got chicken covered in Mexican seasoning, cheese, lettuce, cucumbers, olives, and chipotle sauce.  It was spicy and good.  Afterwards, we went walking around a town called Bretten and had ice cream there.  Lots of desserts today! It was really good, but now I feel full and should probably go to bed early because of research tomorrow.
See ya,
~Kiersten   

Weekend :)

I woke up on Saturday to Dr. Braun knocking on my door.  He asked me if I would like to go with him and his family to celebrate the 90th birthday of one of their friends or if I'd rather sleep over at Erika's house.  I quickly decided to stay a) because I wasn't dressed and they were leaving in five minutes and b) because I'd rather hang out with Amy, Krista, Erika, and Melanie who speak English (: I hung out at the house by myself and then headed over to Melanie's house where we played Rockband for a little while and watched movies all night...we watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Bend it like Beckham, Sherlock Holmes, and I.Robot :) After that I headed to Erika's house with her and Krista and spent the night here.  This morning Krista and I went running, which was pretty productive :) Today's plan is to go bowling, so that should be a lot of fun (: 
Auf wiedersehen bis morgan :)
~Kiersten

Friday :)

Today in research, I learned how to fraction cells and load the cells into the gel, which is a little more fun than it sounds (: After research, we went and explored Pforzheim and found out that there's not really a lot to do in that city besides eating and we had just had a snack, so that wasn't really an option.  My bag broke, though, on the train, so we ended up spending most of the time looking for a new bag for me and I found one for 3 Euros, which is pretty cheap...we had a fun time looking at some of the small shops in the city/town.  It was a pretty normal day, but very rewarding to spend some time exploring Germany by ourselves and getting to know each other better (: Tomorrow, I might be going with the Braun's to one of their friends' birthday party (I'm not exactly sure why I'm going because it's going to be all German people)...the friend is turning 90, so that's pretty impressive (: I will be sure to let you know how that goes :D
Adios,
~Kiersten

Research

Today, we spent the day in the lab so there's not much to talk about.  I learned how to make a sucrose gradient and how to lyse cells, which was interesting, but repetitive and long.  I had pistachio ice cream at the train station, which was delicious and for dinner I had spaghetti with this amazing sauce.  It wasn't tomato based and it didn't have any meat in it like our American style ones, but it was so good! I'm exhausted so I think I'm going to head off to bed early (:
Night!,
~Kiersten

Switzerland!

We traveled to Switzerland today :) We took a two hour train ride and we got to sit in the first class.  The train ride was uneventful as we prepared to make our presentations.  We spent most of the day touring the Roche facilities and learning about it's history.  I unfortunately, brought the wrong type of shoes to wear (they were my only formal shoes) and so my feet were killing me the whole day and I ended up with four blisters and a bleeding toe, but now I'm soaking my feet in the tub while I'm writing this :) We got to take a tour of the pharmaceutical facility and we had to put on huge orange sterile suits, hair nets, things to go over shoes (I'm sure we looked lovely :) ).  We also ate lunch at Roche and I had roast beef and noodles, which were pretty good and then we made our presentation.  We were all nervous, but it wasn't too bad and they asked a lot of questions, but they were easy enough to answer.  After that, we walked around Basel, Switzerland for about an hour getting a sight seeing tour of the Rhine River, the cathedrals in the city, an old paper mill, a part of the fortification that surrounded Switzerland at one time, courtyards, the town house, and an art museum.  Switzerland is gorgeous and from one of the places on the tour you could see three different countries at once.  The mountains and Swiss airport in France (that's not a mistake...), the Black Forest in Germany, and the immediate view of the city in Switzerland.  Unfortunately, my camera is no longer working so I don't have any pictures to put on Facebook, but Amy did take pictures so hopefully I can find a way to post them on my wall when she puts them up :) The views are spectacular and it was amazing to see the city.  I wish we could have spent some time shopping, but most of the shops had closed by the time we were done and we had to catch our tram to eat dinner.  (We were too late to get Swiss chocolate :( ) On the train ride back we had a great time trying to get the German girls to teach us how to pronounce words in German and we also got Amy to teach us how to say yes and no in Chinese (It's EXTREMELY hard!) :) We just got back off of the train and it's past 11 and we left the house this morning before 6am. It's been a long day and I have to wake up to go to research tomorrow...I get to fraction cells!
Woo hoo! :)
~Kiersten

W2 Day 4

Today wasn't very exciting, but hopefully tomorrow will be. We had to travel on our own to research and we made it, which is pretty impressive (: My mentors left to go to Heidelberg today, so I followed Amy and her mentor around and watched them perform experiments on RNA.  My mentors didn't come back into the lab until it was almost time for us to leave so I just had to pour gels.  Tomorrow we have to leave the house by 6am to travel to Basel, Switzerland! There we spend most of the time touring the Roche plant and the Basel area, but we do have to make a 45 minute presentation about why biotechnology companies are important and what got us interested in science.  I'm really nervous about this presentation and having to talk in front of people, but hopefully it will go well.  My camera broke so there won't be pictures up on Facebook by me, but hopefully one of the other girls will be taking photos (: Well, I have to go eat dinner!

Tschüss (bye),

~Kiersten 

W:2 Day: 2 and 3

Sunday was a lot of fun because we got to go back to the zoo and we went on the climbing park.  There were platforms and different obstacles like wire that you had to walk across or nets you had to climb to get to the other platforms and finally reach the ziplines.  It was a lot of fun, but I wasn't so fond of the heights and the feeling that I might fall (we were attached to cords by safety harnesses so it was completely safe, but I didn't particularly enjoy the thought of having that sensation of falling before the harness catches you)...I didn't go very far on the course, but it looked like Krista, Amy, and Melanie had a good time :) I took more pictures of them and there are some of me on it as well on Facebook.  After that we went to Alex's house to practice our presentations and then I spent the night with Alex.  She lives in an apartment so it was much smaller than Dr. Braun's house, but I think it felt a lot more cozier.
     Today, I slept in and all of the girls met at Alex's house again at 3 to practice the presentations again.  After we were done with that, we went to a carnival or fair (called "mess" in German) that was held in Pforzheim.  It was a lot of fun and we went on one ride that was fun that spun you in circles, while the whole thing was spinning.  We also went on the bumper cars and I go to try a white chocolate covered banana, which was amazing!  The booth at the fair sold chocolate covered pineapples, strawberries, or any other fruit.    When I got back to Dr. Braun's house we watched a movie called the Fantastic Movie that is a parody for a lot of the popular English movies and TV shows like Narnia, DaVinci Code, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Punk'd, Glee, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Click, James Bond, and lots more.
  Sorry that my post isn't very long, but I'm exhausted and I have to get up early to catch the train for research.
Talk to you soon :)
~Kiersten

Week 2: Day 1

Instead of having to keep up with days, I think I'm just going to keep track of them by weeks in case you wondering :).  Today started out nice seeing as I didn't wake up until 11:30 in the morning :) Our whole group gathered at Dr. Braun's house (where I'm staying) to work on our presentation for Wednesday.  Afterwards, we went to Pforzheim and to the "Stand Up" festival.  We had lunch at a Turkish restaurant, which was actually really good.  We went to the concert in town and one of the singers was the winner of the German Superstar 2010, which is the equivalent of our American Idol.  He kind of reminded me of Eminem :) and he was really good.  We also got some ice cream, which I have come to love here! Overall, it was quite a successful day and now I am off to bed.  Tomorrow I'm spending the night with Alex (my exchange ambassador?), so that should be fun :) I probably won't post again until Monday night.
Ciao :)
~Kiersten

Day 7

Everything that could have gone wrong with the transportation did today.  We caught the first bus, but it was delayed six minutes and when we reached the platform for the next train, we had one minute to go from platform 10 to 3 and we missed it by a couple of seconds.  We had to wait for the next train which arrived an hour later.  We arrived at research an hour late and went straight to working.  I poured gels for electrophoresis and incubated cells that will be used next week. It was fun in lab and I learned a lot about the other people in the lab.  For lunch, I had schnitzel, potatoes, peas, and a salad, which was all delicious.  Coming back from research, our high speed train was on the wrong platform because of all the delays and so we finally found it and got to Karlsruhe to sit on the train for twenty minutes.  When we reached our station, I had to run to catch my bus, I couldn't find the station and I finally found, just in time.  It was a hectic day, but we did get to see some really cool people like these two backpackers who were probably backpacking across Europe and I sat next to an American from Vermont.  Tomorrow we are working on a presentation that we have to make in front of the Roche company (they're funding this program) on Wednesday in Switzerland :) We are also going to a concert later tomorrow, so that should be fun.
That's all for now :)
Au revoir,
~Kiersten

Day 6: Beginning of Research

Today was a day of firsts: first train ride from Pforzheim, first high speed train ride to Mannheim, first time taking a tram, first day of research, first time performing a western blot, first time hearing German and Chinese adults singing along to Adele's song Rolling in the Deep in English :), first time developing an x-ray, first time seeing two Americans in Germany, and the first time of trying caramel gelato.  This has been a busy day and I'm exhausted, but I've also learned a lot.  I had to get up this morning at 6 to make it to train station and catch the train at 7:30, from their we headed to Mannheim, which is a huge city in Germany.  When we got to the German Cancer Research Center we were paired with our mentors and headed off the the lab.  In my lab, we are working with a protein called ARVCF, which is important in cell to cell signalling and is also found in the cytoplasm and nucleus.  We are trying to discover the other functions of this protein because they have found it to be overexpressed in tumors.  Learning more about this protein could help us to understand cancer better.  My job for the next few weeks is to separate out proteins from a cell and perform fractionation on them to separate them out in different densities and gather the data on an SDS-page.  The page then is made to undergo electrophoresis to separate the proteins into different sizes.  After that, we perform an immunoblot on them, which detects the specific proteins not just the size.  Today, we finished this part of the experiment for my supervising scientist, Ulkine who is working on her PHD.  We added antibody to the membrane, which are substrate specific to certain proteins and then we added a second antibody that binds to the first antibody because this second one is linked to a Horseradish Peroxidase enzyme, which produces fluorescence in the ECL solution (used to activate the enzyme).  I know that may sound extremely long and possibly confusing, but it was actually a lot of fun today and the people at the center are really nice.  My favorite part of the day was when three German scientists, two Chinese scientists, and me started singing along to Rolling in the Deep in English, while working.  It's amazing how all of these different nationalities and languages can come together through music :) After research was over, we left the center and made our way back stopping to get some gelato from a store by the train station.  It only cost one Euro, which I found really cheap.  I feel like that is going to be our regular stop after research each day.  I think I'm going to go sleep now :)
Night :)
~Kiersten

Day 5 Part 2

We followed the students around for the rest of the day and we went to math (which was linear algebra and was completely in German so there was no way we could understand it) and then we went to sports where we jumped on a trampoline :) That was a lot of fun and the gym teacher had previously been a gymnast so he showed off and did flips and back hand springs.  After that we went to dinner and I had a cheese burger with fries :) Mom would be very proud of me because the burger came with lettuce, tomato, pickles, ONIONS, and some weird sauce stuff and I didn't remove any of it :) I ate the entire thing and cleaned my plate! The fries tasted different from back home and they have as much salt on them, but they were good and didn't make me feel bad after eating them.  We came back home and I was shown the bus stops and train station that I will have to take to get to research which starts tomorrow.  The first few days I will have help, but after that I have to go from bus, to train to tram over two hours to get to research at 9...
This weekend we are going to see a concert Saturday night, which should be a lot of fun (Dr. Bhuvana is coming with us :D) and then on Sunday, I am going to Alexandra's house to spend the night and hang out with her on Monday because it's a church holiday here so there's no research.
That's all for now :)
~Kiersten

Day 5 Part 1: School

We were given the opportunity to follow the exchange students to their classes at school for the day, which kind of defeats the idea of a summer break away from school :) It's really interesting so far and we are only in the second class.  The classes are all about an hour and a half long and we started out the day in Spanish.  It was really cool to sit in that class because I actually understood a little of what was going on :) I didn't understand the German at all but we went onto a cervantes website and played Spanish games to improve vocabulary.  Some of the people in the class talked to us in English and one of them had actually lived in Michigan so his English was really good and easy to understand.  We are now sitting in a bioinformatics class, but because exams were yesterday for the seniors or 13th graders (their school system is different with this grade), the teacher basically gave the students the class period to just talk and go on the internet.  I'm typing this in the class and am trying to use the German keyboard which is exactly like ours at home except that the z and y are switched which is annoying :) Also, the shift button on the left is different.  The bell just rang so it's off to another class :) I will post again later!
chao,
kiersten

Day 4

My posts keep getting shorter and shorter and unfortunately this one will probably follow that same pattern.  We didn't do a lot today, so that's why it's short :) We went to Dr. Braun's school the Johanna-Wittum Schule and we performed an experiment using gel electrophoresis to create bands of DNA.  We spent the day at the school doing this experiment (it was just us exchange students- German and American alike) and we also worked on our powerpoint for a presentation we will have to make next week for the company that is sponsoring us- Roche.  We had pancakes filled with veggies for lunch along with vanilla pudding, which had the same consistency as flan.  There was also a teacher who was showing some Iraqi refugees how to use an iron that the school had to iron their clothes, while they learned to speak German.  We ended up leaving the school around 6pm and came back the house.  I read some of my book and we went and walked around the village.  That was most of the day today and hopefully tomorrow will be more exciting so that I will have stuff to write about.  I think we are going to sit in on some classes at the school tomorrow, which should be interesting :)
Noicht,
~Kiersten

Day 3

Today we started out early and left the house at 8am to go to Pforzheim.  We visited Johana-Witim Schule school where we had breakfast and the three US students: me, Amy, and Krista where there with the three exchange students: Erika, Alexandra, and Melanie.  We got a tour of the school, got our train tickets and student ID's and Erika programmed our phones that they are giving us while we are here :) I had a pretzel for breakfast, which I thought was a lot better than the American pretzels.  These are dough that have been dipped in an extremely diluted NaOH base solution, but they taste great!  I also had a cake that had layers of honey inside it and a creme on top, which was good too.  Also, their apple juice here is so much better than the American one because it doesn't have as much sugar :) We went to the zoo today too and it was a little one with mostly goats, deer, elk, and pigs.  There was also a rope course in the trees that we might go back to do later :) We also walked around Pforzheim, which is a pretty big city and there was a Cinema there that was playing movies like Pirates of the Caribbean 4, the Hangover 2, and other movies that had come out in America.  According to Dr. Braun, the cost of the movie tickets though is extremely high and for a new release it's about 14 Euros.  I am exhausted from all this walking around :) and I should probably get some sleep because we leave the house at 7:30 tomorrow :) Research starts on Thursday and to get the center, I'm going to have to take a bus, catch a train, switch to a high speed train, and then ride a tram to get the German Cancer Research Center so I get to learn all about that tomorrow :)

Tschüss (bye :D ),
~Kiersten

Day 2

We didn't do a whole lot today because it was pouring, but I did get a chance to see the Rhine River :) I woke up at 11:30 this morning and they had already eaten breakfast at 9, but I had a chance to eat some wheat bread with marmalade and drink carbonated apple juice.  After breakfast, we left the state where I am currently staying called Baden-Württemberg and headed to the state of Rhineland-Palantinate.  We stopped at the Rhine River and we crossed it using a ferry.  We got ice cream and I got a banana split and the others got ice cream in the shape of spaghetti, which was a little strange.  We went to a garden theater where a small group of people performed skits about gardening, but it was all in German so I wasn't able to understand most of it, but the one woman's facial expressions and singing made the show entertaining.  We came back to the house and just relaxed because it was pouring down rain.  In the villages around Germany it's not like our American neighborhoods because they have pizza places and restaurants between the houses so it's like its own little town in a small community.  We had pizza for dinner that we got from a mom and pop place.  The thing I noticed about the pizza was that the cheese tasted different from American cheese, but I thought it was better.  

It's hard to talk to some people here because of the language barrier, but Dr. Braun has been nice enough to translate.  I met one of the Braun's friends who is on his way to getting a PH.D. and his project is to create a solution of bacteria to put in the soil in order to make the plants stronger and healthier naturally without genetic artificiality.  We also talked a lot about how Europe is doing today and I got caught up on the current events here especially with what is going on with the debt here and how Germany is going to try to close down all of its nuclear power.  There are other sources of power in Germany like windmills and solar power (much more so here than in America), but they are worried that they won't have enough of that power to continue supplying electricity to all of Germany because nuclear power produces much more energy, much more efficiently.  It was interesting to here about this and I hope to learn more about the state of Europe later on.  Tomorrow we are going to a school in Pforzheim so I have to be up early :)

Gute Nacht (Goodnight) :),

~Kiersten  

Day 1

It's hard to post new things because the internet connection here is not good at all.  Today in Germany started out with Dr. Bhuvana and I riding with Dr. Braun to his house and we got here (a little village near Pforheim) around 9ish (Europe time).  Dr. Braun’s wife had made us breakfast and I had a croissant, a bagel with some good jam (it was homemade marmalade), some coffee and some tea.  I miss the plain old tap water without carbonation (I can’t seem to find water without it here).  After breakfast, Dr. Braun and Dr. Bhuvana took me to the stables with Annalinna and I got to groom some of the horses and help out in the stables.  Eventually, I got to actually ride one of the horses named Dika and I rode around getting used to riding horseback.  

The driving here is insane! People go so fast and no one pays attention to stop signs.  Apparently, it’s alright to go 20 km over the speed limit and you won’t get fined a whole lot.  I got to watch Annalinna train a 3 year old horse how to obey commands and let a person sit on its back, which was cool.  Dr. Braun bought us some sweets (they looked like cinnamon rolls but they were filled with a crème and they were delicious).  We got back to the house and it started raining, but Dr. Braun’s wife had made us strawberry shortcake from some freshly picked strawberries that were grown locally by a farmer who owns about 12 huge fields that are just for strawberries.  After we ate that, we walked about 2 miles to accompany Dr. Bhuvana to her hotel in the neighboring village and we walked past some cherry trees and through a forest and past a lot of farming lands.  By the time we got back to the house it was 6ish and we had walked a total of 4 miles J I took a shower and after that we went out to eat in downtown Pforzheim at a restaurant called Kupferhammer and I asked Dr. Braun’s wife to order for me, so that I could have a German dish.  I have no idea what it was called that I ate, but it was actually really good.  It was like a rolled piece of beef and inside it were onions (I know- shock!) and cucumber (by the way the E. Coli incident occurred in the Northern Germany and it was due to a specific batch of vegetables).  I also had spatzle with it which was delicious and red kraut (cabbage) came with it and I at least tried it, but I wasn't a huge fan of the cabbage.  I ordered Pepsi to drink and they brought me out a wine glass and a small bottle.  Also, in the back of the store I thought it was funny that there was a whole fenced in area with barbed wire protecting cases and cases of beer in the back.  After we ate dinner, we walked through Pforzheim and beside a river that was created from the merging of three rivers, one of them coming from the Black Forest (which is gorgeous by the way).  We got back to the house around 11pm (it was still bright outside until 10 that night so we had no way to judge the time).  I slept like the dead until I woke up at 12 this morning.  I think I'm going to need an alarm clock :) Pictures should be coming soon!

Here!

So we made it to Germany without any problems :) We had an 8 hour flight and I only got about two hours of sleep so at the moment I'm running on adrenaline.  The flight was long, but I spent most of the time watching movies.  When we got ready to land, the first thing that caught my attention were the windmills.  There were about six or seven clumped together and those clumps appeared randomly throughout the farmlands that cover Germany.  We landed in Frankfurt and that airport is huge!  There was even a grocery store inside of it! We traveled about an hour and half to Dr. Braun's house where I will be staying and there was a lot of farmland and trees.  The Black Forest area is so beautiful and we are on a hilltop so we have a wonderful view.  The houses here are smaller than the ones back home, but they are cosy and they have a different kind of roofing, which is something random I noticed :) There are mountains that follow the highway to Pforheim and it reminds of Virginia with the houses on the mountains.  There's a lot of wheat being grown right now and down the road is a strawberry patch where people go to pick their own strawberries :) Also, the oldest girl, Annalinna rides horses and I get to go down to the stable later.  I think we are also going shopping later today too.  It's going to be hard staying awake, but if I can make it to tonight then I shouldn't be jet lagged after that.  It's so gorgeous here and the family has their own flower garden outside that reminds me of Nana's front lawn :) Also, the room I'm in is pretty big and it has turquoise carpeting, which is awesome and I even have a chair and table inside the bathroom :) In case you were wondering, people don't drive on the wrong side of the road here, which I found to be different from what I had expected and the driver seat is on the left side like back in the states :) The family here made Dr. Bhuvana and I breakfast this morning, which consisted of YOGURT (which is AMAZING here), strawberries, little cakes, coffee, tea, croissants, and bagels :) It was delicious! I'm excited to be here and I will probably post again later today :)
Chao :)
~Kiersten

Itinerary for Germany

I was sent a copy of the itinerary for the major events that the company in Germany will be taking us to and here it is:
         Program for the American students
 June 4, 2011 Sat Arrival
 June 5, 2011 Sun staying in families
 June 6, 2011 Mo Welcome at JWS: 8.30 am
 June 7, 2011 Tue Experiment: Fingerprint: 8.30 am
 June 8, 2011 Wed School:participation in lessons ;7.50 am class 11.2 Biotech.(Ms Fiedler); 9.40 am class 12.3 Bioinformatic (Mr Pape); 11.15 am class 12.3 Math (Mr Pape); 13.45 pm Sports (Mr Kleiner) lunch: pizza at school
 June 9, 2011 Thur Start of practical training, beginning at 9.00 am in Mannheim accompanied by host students
 June 10, 2011 Fri practical training
 June 11, 2011 Sat "Stand-up festival" in Pforzheim
 June 12, 2011 Sun Bowling
 June 13, 2011 Mo offical holiday: Candy-museum in Kleinglattbach
 June 15,2011 Wed Welcome event at ROCHE in Basel  
June 18, 2011  Sat Swimming in Niefern  
June 19, 2011 Sun Games+ movie evening
 June 23, 2011 Thur offical holiday: Zoo Wilhelma
 June 25, 2011 Sat  visiting a french town: Strassbourg
 June 26, 2011 Sun Biking tour to monastry Maulbronn
 July 02, 2011 Sat Climbing park in Kandel
 July 03, 2011 Sun Neuschwanstein castle
 July 09, 2011 Sat visiting Heidelberg
 July 14, 2011 Thur Trip to Leipzig ( in east Germany )
 July 15, 2011 Fri Leipzig
 July 16, 2011 Sat Leipzig
 July 17, 2011 Sun Leipzig
 July 19,2011 Thur Final presentation of the results at 10 o'clock at DKFZ in Mannheim
 July 20, 2011 Wed Final event: presentation of the results at JWS
 July 22, 2011 Sat Departure

I have no idea what some of the events are, but I guess I'll find out soon enough :) Can't wait to go, but the reality of it is starting to set in and I can't believe that I'm going to be in another country for 7 weeks...I'm excited and yet nervous.  Take off is tomorrow, so I should probably get some sleep :)
Auf wiedersehen bis morgen (Goodbye until tomorrow),
~Kiersten

Packing

I'm starting this blog in order to keep track of the adventures I experience especially while I'm away in Germany to share them with you guys .  As you may or may not know, I am getting ready to head to Germany for 7 weeks this summer to do cancer research in Mannheim.  At GSSM it's a high school requirement to do research and I was lucky enough to be chosen to go to Germany for mine.  I'm going to be working in a lab with a Dr. Hofmann at the German Cancer Research Center and I'm going to be staying at a host family's house for the summer.  I'm going to be traveling with two other girls from GSSM along with our biology teacher, Dr. Bhuvana and our research coordinator, Mr. LaCross.  Three female German students will be coming back to the states with us when we return (they will be coming for their summer which is July-August).  I will be staying with Dr. Braun and his family who has three children all around my age.  We are going to meet the students and families this Saturday when we land in Frankfurt.  Our plane is scheduled to take off on Friday around 4 from Charlotte and I won't land back in the states until July 23.  I'm trying to get myself ready for the trip and so far I haven't started packing and it's Wednesday...I just got back from GSSM this past Saturday and my room is full of clothes and random stuff that had previously inhabited my dorm room.  I have no idea what to pack and instead of getting it done, I'm writing this :) I should probably start packing...
Until next time,
~Kiersten