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
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