Beginning the Long Adventure

Well, so much for my blogging streak.  I had a feeling it wouldn't last long...

And so begins a new chapter in my adventure-book.  As you already know, I had delayed my arrival from the expected date of Friday, June 1, for a combination of logistical and personal reasons.  I have many close friends in the Princeton class of 2012, as well as those who have already graduated and would be returning for Reunions weekend.  It was therefore very important to me to stay for the Commencement ceremony, even if it meant I was arriving in Germany nearly a week behind schedule.  Reunions was a whirlwind of activity, as expected, between fulfilling my working obligations to the Department of Public Safety (which provided me housing through the weekend) and saying hello/goodbye to many good friends.  I also managed to squeeze in all three Star Wars movies (the original trilogy, of course) since I had *gasp* not seen them in their entirety and was putting my serious fan boyfriend to shame.  All too soon it was Monday night and we went to the Senior Prom together, an affair which was altogether too loud and chaotic for my tastes.  By a great deal of finagling I had obtained my high school prom gown from home for the occasion, and by some miracle it still fit ;)  Afterwards we were invited to an "after-party" which was really a cover for an engagement celebration as one of our mutual friends proposed to his girlfriend immediately following the prom.  I spent my last night in the United States reflecting on all of the friendships made and the people I would miss the most.  There wasn't too much time for contemplation, though, between packing or storing every last thing, rushing off to the graduation ceremony (where I sat in the back with a graduated friend and strained to catch a glimpse of seniors I knew) and taking final pictures and saying last goodbyes afterwards.  Both sides of my boyfriend's family came to town for his graduation and I had a wonderful lunch with them before his mother, aunt and uncle were supposed to drive me to the airport.  As we were on the way his uncle claimed to need a nap and strongly suggested that Joe drive me alone to the airport - neither of us believed that this was more than an excuse, but rolled our eyes and acquiesced.

Looking back, I laugh because instead of being filled with sweet goodbyes, our conversation revolved around the most practical ways to keep in touch and which books we wanted to read together over the coming months - nothing his relatives would have been embarrassed to hear, but I was still grateful for the opportunity to spend a few more precious minutes with the person who has meant so much to me over the past year.  At the airport he dropped me off at the gate and we shared a final, quick hug before I loaded myself up with my various bags (no simple feat, considering that I had to pack for 7 months spanning three seasons, which translated into a backpack, carry-on suitcase, internal frame pack (bought especially for this trip with a mind to explore the UK on foot) and my monster black suitcase, veteran of many miles.  I waddled my way to the check-in counter and forked over the extra $70 for the additional checked bag (considering the gear I needed/extra space vs. the cost and time - not to mention address uncertainty - of shipping the pack internationally, it seemed worth it, and I'm planning to jettison enough of my stuff to not have to bring 2 checked bags back), then continued considerably more quickly to the security check.  I breezed through without a problem and was soon sitting by my gate with plenty of time until boarding.  I slightly regretted not spending more time with friends before rushing off to the airport, but had any part of the process not gone so smoothly I would have been in a quite different situation, so better safe than sorry, I suppose.  I boarded the plane around 7:45pm, Eastern Standard Time, planning to sleep for the majority of the flight's 6.5=hour duration.  As soon as I saw my seat and the hyperactive four-year-old in the one beside it, I knew those dreams were unrealistic.  Fortunately, I like children.  A lot.

The child was actually quite amazing.  His grandmother, as I presume the wrinkled woman sitting on the other side of him was, spoke only Portuguese as far as I could tell, and didn't seem to understand much English.  The boy, on the other hand, was perfectly bilingual (on a four-year-old level) and I think he entertained me as much as I did him over the long journey.  His favorite games turned out to be "off" (alternately switching on and off the seat-back monitors in front of us), "trapped" (using the flight safety card to 'trap' me in my seat), and insisting that the land before takeoff and after touchdown was "water".  He especially enjoyed a "Cars" coloring book and puzzle, which I also did until he started dropping the pieces of the puzzle off the sides of his tray table and they proved singularly difficult to retrieve.  (I was shocked, however, at how easily he reassembled the remaining pieces of the puzzle - or perhaps it has been too long since I have been around children...)  Eventually he settled down to watch "Toy Story" and I selected "War Horse" from the available entertainment options, a movie I had been looking forward to watching for quite some time.  Though the cinematography was impressive and the storyline (what there was of it) revolved around a horse, which always gets points in my book, the plot was fragmented and made little sense, and overall I found it a quite silly movie.  The little boy eventually fell asleep, of course, but soon became quite agitated at his inability to lie prone in the airplane seat and began thrashing violently, trying to find a comfortable position.  I emphasized with the little guy as I found it difficult to sleep myself, only managing to nap for about 30 minutes around sunrise (still around midnight EST).  Both supper and breakfast were provided, so at least I wasn't too hungry... I saved the plasticware for later, knowing that such things always come in handy.

We landed in Lisbon, Portugal at around 8am local time, which translates to 3am back home.  I blearily wandered around the airport for a few minutes to get the lay of the land before I curled up on a comfy-looking bench and caught up on a few hours of that elusive sleep.  Finally about 90 minutes before my plane was scheduled to leave I awoke and found out the gate, but when I got there the announcement read that the plane was running about 30 minutes late.  I grumpily made my way to a currency exchange office to change the remainder of my change into Euros at an extortionate rate (however, better than I would get in America from all I've read) and proceeded to a souvenir shop to commemorate my brief stay in a new country with a useless bit of kitsch (not completely - I bought a multicolored pen of not-terribly-sturdy construction emblazoned with the Portuguese flag, which will hopefully last longer than I anticipate it to).  I passed the remainder of the excruciatingly-long layover picking at the trail mix I had packed and people-watching, which wasn't so bad.

When I finally boarded this last leg of my flight and was greeted by the obligatory safety briefing first in German, it was like a breath of fresh air.  A smile broke upon my face unbidden - after all of the Portuguese which I couldn't even pretend to understand, to hear something that I could make sense of made me the happiest I had been since I got out of the van at the Newark Airport.  It went beyond that, however.  Call it intellectual stimulation, the exercise of understanding a language which is not my mother tongue, or familiarity, or what have you, but both when I first heard German and when I first stepped out of the plane, it felt strangely like coming home.

I caught another couple of hours of sleep on the plane to Dusseldorf and was pleasantly surprised by yet another meal on the mere 3-hour flight.  I deplaned without any problems and collected my baggage, once again looking quite a sight hauling two suitcases and wearing a backpack on both my back and front.  When I emerged from customs I was pleasantly surprised with a large colorful sign which read "WELCOME ERIN MILLS TO GERMANY" held by two smiling, gorgeous young blonde women.  I strode confidently up to the pair and introduced myself in German, at which they exchanged a startled glance and exclaimed, "We didn't know you spoke German!"  I was just glad they were there to meet me, since they had emailed a couple of weeks before my departure and in all of the hectic busyness I had not found time to reply with my flight information.  We then proceeded to the parking garage where we played Tetris with my bags until we fit the entire mass into the trunk and backseat of a tiny two-door Ford model which I've never seen in the US (something that small would never sell over here).  I clambered in the back with my luggage and for the next hour I exchanged pleasantries and got to know Sara and Daniela, my "Doubles".  These were students at TU Dortmund taking a class on International Industry and Business, with a focus on the United States.  For the second half of their semester, the 22 of them were split up among the 10 Ruhr Fellows and assigned to be their guides to all things German.  My newfound friends also provided me with a gift to welcome me to their country - a heavy bag which contained a cute pillow, gummies (Germans are OBSESSED with gummies, a trend I have yet to pick up), assorted Germany fan paraphernalia (I assured them I supported Germany in the Eurocup, the international soccer championship that has all of the continent up in arms - or at least flags and other extravagant displays of national pride) including a lei, scarf, wristband, and two pins sporting the German black, red and gold.  Finally, rounding out the lot was a bottle of beer - of course.  This is a German fetish which I am much more eager to explore now that I am legal in my own country and have had some opportunities to test my reaction to alcohol in much safer and more controlled situations than a bar in a foreign country. But don't worry - I'm much too paranoid about the potential consequences/value awareness of my surroundings too much to really go crazy here :P

Eventually we arrived in Dortmund and located the Carl-Duisberg Centrum (CDC) which is to be my home for the month of June.  The wonderful girls helped me get settled in my room, even lugging my obscenely heavy bags to the fourth floor (American fifth - Europeans count the ground floor differently) since the elevator was out of order.  They next whisked me off to a supermarket, since the following day was a holiday and nothing would be open for me to obtain food for myself.  Fortunately there are two large grocery stores about three blocks from my dorm - including an Aldi, which I am familiar with from last summer in Clausthal.  Upon discovering that I already had an international cell phone (still the same hideous pink replacement I got after my purse was stolen in Russia in August 2010, if you recall), one of my doubles handed me her old SIM card and we headed to the gas station across the street from the CDC to load it up (Europe is much bigger on pay-as-you=go than America, for which I am grateful).  They then said goodbye after arranging to meet the next morning and show me around the town and the university a bit.  My next priority after my Doubles finally left was to get online and signal my safe arrival to friends and loved ones.  Internet here in the CDC is only available in common rooms, one on each floor, by Ethernet cable (provided, though my gracious boyfriend has lent me one for the year).  This means that my iPod must go back to being a musical entertainment device instead of a mini-computer, which makes things like daily Bible reading a bit more complicated (i.e. I actually have to keep track of what I've read and what to read next myself, just like they did in the old days :P) The network is extremely limited and slows down noticeably with every computer which hooks up - the working limit seems to be three or four laptops, depending on the demand being made by each one.  Sometimes the server goes down altogether suddenly and without explanation.  I was quite disappointed and unsure whether Skype would be ruled out for June, if not the summer, which I dearly hoped wouldn't be the case (speaking to people face-to-face, as it were, does wonders for the homesickness!).

It being already nearly 10pm, I was exhausted so after setting a quick Facebook status (the lazy way to let everyone know at once) I headed back to my room to finally sleep in a bed - and was confronted with a locked door!!  The key we each have at the CDC opens three doors: the outside door, the door to your suite (generally a single and double room with a shared bathroom), and the door to your bedroom.  When I went to the computer room it was only for a few minutes and I left my key on my desk in the room, thinking that my roommates had already left for the night.  One of them must not have left until after I was already in the computer room, and locked the door behind her.  I had no idea when they would get back, but from what I had heard it wouldn't be until quite late.  What was I to do?  I was too exhausted to think straight - after trying the door mindlessly for a minute or two, hoping I had just missed something, I asked a passing student for help.  When she found out that I hadn't met my roommates yet, but thought they had left for the night, she told me that my only recourse was to call the Hausmeister.  I was terrified at this prospect and completely embarrassed that I had been in the house for not two hours before messing something up, but I had no other option.  I timidly crept down to the first floor and rang the bell to the private suite - soon he came to the door and gruffly asked what was the matter.  When I sheepishly explained that I had left my key in the room and now the door was locked, he headed upstairs without another word and unlocked my room with his master key.  He responded to my grateful apologies and exclamations with only a gruff "IMMER Schlussel mitnehmen!" ("ALWAYS bring your key with you!") before heading back downstairs.  My embarrassment soon gave way to relief as I made a beeline for my bed and made a happy end to my first day back in Germany.

Lessons Learned

As promised, before beginning the chronicle of my new adventure, an overview of the wisdom I gained from my last excursion, which will hopefully enlighten this and future journeys.  So, without further ado,

What I Have Learned About Germany (Working List):

• When Germans walk into a room, they greet everybody, whether they know them or not (usually reserved for closer-knit situations such as a church or special interest group, or the workplace)
• Nobody asks "How are you?" - it's a serious question here, not a simple pleasantry (now I could get used to that!)
• Filler phrases differ greatly by region: for example, OK in North Germany is "Alles klar" (all clear) whereas in Bavaria (South Germany) you're more likely to hear "Ach so" (~all right)
• I still haven't gotten the clothing thing down - six dresses is still about four too many for my main uses...
• Germans don't walk past each other without eye contact - you see someone, you say hi (actually, this seems to be true of Europeans, but being a paranoid young American woman/reserved Mainiac/after traveling to Russia where eye contact brings unwanted attention, this is taking a LOT of getting used to...)
• Americans aren't supposed to be able to speak German, at least not well (and not without a good excuse - "Do you have German family?" "Have you lived here?")
• Most everyone understands a little English, even if they're shy to use it - can be very useful in crisis situations
• The whole Du vs. Sie (informal vs. formal "you") dichotomy isn't as big a deal as they made it out to be in my German class.  In informal situations and with people of your own age, it's automatically "du"; "Sie" is generally reserved for official situations (though when meeting new people they occasionally ask before using "du" right away)
• I am a quick learner and a fast worker... but I think these are things I already knew about myself.  Patience isn't exactly one of my strong suits, and I've always been a good mimicker.  This came out most strongly to me last year with square dance and my internship work, respectively...
• You never have as much free time as you think you do, particularly for things like keeping in contact or reading...
• German hospitality tends to be ridiculous and over-the-top by American standards... or maybe it's just the amazing Christian people God keeps placing in my path...
• Germans are racist - or at least, more biased than we in PC America are trained to be, and not nearly as afraid to show it.
• A beer is no big deal in Germany - no Puritanical stigma (and at this point I have even been offered significant amounts of alcohol by fine, upstanding members of the church, something that I don't think would ever happen in America...)

Yes, all very interesting things that almost without fail have stories behind them... but you probably read all about them already in my blog last year.  Now on to fresh adventures... :)

A Detour in the Opposite Direction

So, my summer and fall plans were set.  But there's one other adventure I haven't told you about yet.  One of the biggest reasons I joined the shark tracking project was the promise of a trip to Santa Catalina Island, California, during the week after spring exams to test all of our work.  I was particularly excited about this as it would be my first opportunity to visit the West Coast (before this, I'd only just been west of the Mississippi River when I went to St. Louis, MO over fall break for a medieval ball, and that was because the airport we flew out of just happened to be on the west bank ;]).  A good friend of mine, with whom I planned to room next year until I made the decision to study abroad, lives very close to Long Beach and I explored visiting her either before or after the trip, but her final exam the weekend before and piano recital and marathon the weekend after precluded that opportunity.  I still hope to visit her sometime, but it has been indefinitely delayed.

There was one more flurry of activity before we left as I realized, rather suddenly, that the free study abroad storage provided to me by the university (which conveniently also extended over the summer) was only available to me before I left.  It was a frantic three days of collecting my entire room into four piles: bring to Germany, store at Princeton, store with friends (anything I needed until the day I left or wouldn't fit in a box) and send home to have at Christmastime (which opportunity was only graciously provided by the wonderful Danielle, who happened to be visiting relatives in Boston the same weekend my mother and sister were going there for college visits).  Somehow it all got done, and my amazing, wonderful, servant-hearted boyfriend helped me trek no less than five small boxes, 2 under-bed totes, 2 plastic chests-of-drawers, and three large boxes across campus in the blazing heat to the basement where they will rest (hopefully) undisturbed until my return in February... I only dread lugging them back out in the dead of winter without his help, let's hope it's another snowless one!

We planned to be in California for nearly a week; flying out Sunday morning and returning Saturday morning.  Packing was quite the ordeal; to save on shipping costs, my advisor wanted us to bring many of the materials and robots with us as checked baggage instead of FedExing them across the country.  I didn't want to have to check a bag in both directions but didn't own something that I could either leave in California or fold up into my carry-on, so instead I volunteered to bring the PVC piping for the sensor frame and extra material for the steering fins.  When I finally began packing two days before departure (which is actually pretty good, usually I pack the night before :P) I discovered that the two-foot lengths of PVC were too long for any of my carry-on bags which were a maximum 22'' long.  After emailing the group several times about this problem and getting no response or suggestions to buy a mailing tube to check the pipe (which I thought very silly and unnecessary), one of the other students on Saturday night FINALLY said that he could probably fit the pipe in his checked bag.  They slid in without any problem, of course, and took up hardly any space, and we were off.  We did each end up having to check a bag, for which our advisor promised to reimburse us later, but I was skeptical as I would be in the country only a few days after our return before being abroad for seven months, and I doubted he could get an official reimbursement in that time (I was correct - he ended up handing me a $20 bill in the airport and saying "I owe you $5", but I doubt I'll ever get it... oh well, everything else was paid for so it's nothing in the long run :P).  We all got to Los Angeles without incident, where we met the other professor we would be working with, a marine biologist who works at CalState Long Beach.  We drove to our (more than a little) sketchy hotel for the night after transferring the important equipment to the biologist's 26-foot boat for transport the next morning.

We got an early start in the morning, catching the 8:30 Catalina Express over to the island.  Catalina Island boasts itself as "California's Only Island Resort" and it's been kept amazingly wild, for California.  Apparently a lot of Westerns were shot on the island and it now has an imported population of buffalo (unfortunately we didn't see any of these during our trip).  There are really only two towns on the island, Avalon and Two Harbors, and the rest is mostly undisturbed desert-grassland with only a couple of dirt roads to get from place to place.  We stayed in a house in Two Harbors, a beautiful three-bedroom, two-bath arrangement where the other female student and I took over the master bath and bedroom upstairs and left the first floor bedroom and couches to the two boys and the professor.  The facility where we worked was one harbor over from Two Harbors; about a mile by boat and three by road.  Each morning the biologist, who slept on the boat all except the last night, would drive over to the pier at Two Harbors around 7am to pick us up, and we would start the day with hot breakfast in the  research facility's cafeteria at 7:30 before getting to work.  The cooks were amazing and made really good food.  We always had bacon for breakfast, which made me happy :)  The weather was amazing while we were there, sunny and 70 every day.  Unfortunately there was more than a little breeze from the north-west which made it a bit chilly most days, and I had only brought one light jacket (after all, we're in California!) so I was often a tad uncomfortable.  But the weather was the least of my complaints.

As I've already explained, I stayed away from the coding aspects of the project during the year.  The goal of our Catalina trip was to test the new, multi-robot system.  Since what I had done first semester dealt with the particle filter, which at this point we were doing post-processing and not real-time (not to mention, that my methods had made it worse, not better), and my second semester work was determining the best frame configuration, I didn't really have anything in progress that I could work on during the week.  The other students worked hard at implementing the modem, debugging their controller code, and creating a user interface so we could control the robots.  In the meantime, when I wasn't helping take the robots apart or put them back together, I sat in a corner twiddling my thumbs and (almost) wishing I had done something more complicated or not finished it by the time we got to Catalina.  I don't like feeling unproductive or like I can't contribute, so it was really hard for me to accept that the menial tasks I was doing were as helpful to the project as the other students' contributions.  Sleep was also an issue, as the professors and other students seemed happy to work far into the night, often not returning to Two Harbors until after midnight.  I resented not having the opportunity to sleep a full eight hours in a night - I've never been a good "low-sleep" person and knew that I would need all the energy in my reserves to make it through my incredibly busy last weekend in the US.  I got so fed up that one night at about 11pm I asked my advisor if I could do anything else to help, and when he (a little peevishly as he prefers self-starters, which as I noted before, I am not) replied that there wasn't, I announced that I would walk back to the house.  I was only about 70% serious (and will admit that I was being a little bit of a drama queen) but when neither my advisor nor the biologist seemed flustered by my declaration, merely saying "go ahead, then.  It's pretty safe", the tables were turned upon me.  It was actually one of the best experiences of the week, hiking back silently in the dark (I had a flashlight but didn't use it) on the winding dirt road by the light of the full moon.  At one point I startled a large doe standing not ten feet off the road, who couldn't decide whether I was a real threat and so stood there, majestic in the moonlight, as I strode past.  I covered the three-plus miles in about forty minutes, but had been back at the house for less than a quarter of an hour before I heard the others tromp in.  Still, that hour was better-spent in my opinion than it would have been had I chosen to stay and mope in the lab until we all packed up for the night.

One of the biggest redeeming factors of my time in California was the daily snorkel we enjoyed just before dinner on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  The water still only being about 60˚F, we used wetsuits.  Initially I protested about this (I've swum in water FAR colder than 60˚) but after seeing what was IN the water I was quite glad for the extra protection.  I don't think I've yet fully explained why we chose Catalina Island as our research station.  The goal of our project being to track sharks, we needed to go somewhere we could find them.   It just so happens that the bay that the CalState Long Beach research facility is on is a very popular place for female leopard sharks to congregate, right in the shallows next to the shore.  The researchers postulate that these are pregnant females, and the warmer water in the shallows helps speed up the gestation process.  In any case, the sharks gather there in swarms during spring afternoons, milling around to soak up the warm water.  Leopard sharks stay rather small, growing to only about 6 feet in length.  They have long, thin bodies, with the largest ones only being about as big around as an adult man's thigh.  They are a quite harmless and docile species, and they have very small teeth with which they feed on worms and other small bottom-dwelling creatures.  Nonetheless, it was an awe-inspiring and slightly unnerving experience to be floating there in three feet of water and be surrounded by no less than two dozen sharks.  They quickly skittered away if I paddled forward, but if I lay still for long enough they would cease to be wary of me and even swim right underneath, their petite dorsal fins nearly grazing my belly on their way by.  On the first day I almost didn't dare move as they came close, but after being reassured by the biologist that he had never seen anyone bitten by a leopard shark, on the second and third days I slowly drifted my hands down into the sharks' path and would let my fingers skim across their backs as they swam by.  They didn't seem bothered by this, and their skin was surprisingly soft for everything I'd heard about sharkskin being used by ancient peoples as sandpaper.  The important part is, I TOUCHED A SHARK!!!  Not only a shark (for there was both a 1-foot horn shark and a 2-foot swell shark in the touch tank at the lab, which I regularly petted on my way by) but one nearly as large as myself!!  Seeing the beauty of the kelp forest and experiencing the thrill of swimming in the middle of the shark swarm more than made up for all of my feelings of inadequacy and uselessness.  (P.S. I discovered through this experience that though I'm petrified of spiders, which in 99.9% of cases can do nothing to me, I'm not scared of sharks which are much more likely to do me damage... go figure!)

No zoom - I was actually this close.  Don't worry, these are the little ones.

What's more, on Wednesday the biologist lent me his waterproof camera case, and I took pictures as I snorkeled of the fish, sharks and rays that populated the cove.   That was the other exciting animal I saw - whether bat rays or skates (for I heard them called both), the large creatures with flat, pointed "wings" flew through the water with grace and speed before settling on the bottom in a cloud of sand, stirred up to hide them from unwelcome predators.  There were always a few gathered on the bottom in the deeper part of the cove, and it was quite fun to dive down towards them and see them shoot away through the water (never too close, mind, I saw their stingers...)  On Thursday many of them were flying up through the water column (some a little close to the surface for my comfort...) and when we asked the biologist about this strange behavior, he said "Oh, they only do that when there's a big predator around.  It's safer because then the sharks can't dive-bomb them."  So apparently we were also swimming around with something even bigger than ourselves, since on the previous days the rays hadn't seemed to view us as a big enough threat to put themselves in a state of alarm.  I'm not sure if I would have wanted to see a tiger or white shark swimming by or not - I wasn't scared of the leopard sharks because they really didn't look like they could hurt me, but I had seen too many deep-water horror movies and read too many gruesome accounts of shark attacks to be so assured about the big guys...

And so I had my first experience of California.  My advisor didn't seem to mind that I wasn't pulling my weight (or so I felt), so overall it was a positive one.  Fortunately our flight was changed at the last minute from a red-eye leaving at 10pm to an afternoon flight arriving then, so I didn't lose another night of sleep (though I still napped for the majority of the plane ride even though I tried to stay awake and see the country from the air...).  My advisor, who was also returning to his house in Princeton, called us a shuttle from the airport and I enjoyed a rather pleasant hour's ride back to my dorm during which we discussed his views on education and parenting, and I got to hear plenty of stories about his children.  As I said before, he is a wonderfully laid-back person and would make a great friend, but his approach to independent research and mine differed too much for him to make a good advisor for me.  Yet I still learned from my experience and enjoyed California, so I would say that this year, all told, was a success.  It certainly went out with a bang, as I will describe in my next post!!

Led to a New Place

While the independent work project basically took over my year, it wasn't all I did.  While I had to drop Kindred Spirit (the Christian a cappella group I am a part of) during the fall, I rejoined in the spring and my life was greatly enriched by the fellowship of the seven wonderful new members.  Because of the independent work project, I had to move one departmental class from this year to next, but overall I've completed nearly all of the requirements for my degree (yippee!!).  Though the schoolwork was tough, breaks were fun.  Fall Break I went to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to meet my boyfriend's family (same boyfriend as last year, in case you didn't know ;]), and for Thanksgiving he came home to meet mine.  Christmas was home as usual, though I spent nearly the whole time working on my independent work project and other term papers and such.  Even so, my fall semester exam period was quite grueling, and I ended up having to stay up three days straight to get everything done.  In the spring I purposely lessened my course load, taking only three classes besides my independent work project and rejoining KS.  Troubles in the dining hall stemming from mismanagement and abuse of power have led me to stop my employment there, so when I return next year I'll either have a lot more free time or get way more involved down at Public Safety.  I applied to be an RCA next year in December, but was rejected in the first round, which really hurt since everyone had always told me what a perfect candidate I was.  When I went to the dean about it, he told me I wasn't confident or strong enough for the position, which really made me stop and re-evaluate where I was personally.  Hopefully I've been able to use the criticisms productively and can continue to grow with the feedback I receive.

In fact, this January I went through a season of rejection.  Several elected or appointed positions which I thought I was highly qualified for I didn't receive: KS Fellowship Chair, PEF Officer/Service Team Leader, RCA, and Dining Hall Student Coordinator.  Again and again I was passed over, until I began to wonder what God had in store for me.  I figured He wouldn't just close all of these doors without opening some amazing opportunity that was truly His plan for me.  (To be fair, I was led to this conclusion by the wonderful wisdom of Danielle, the PEF staff for the junior girls; on my own I would likely have been more tempted to despair about the situation).  So I prayed about what He truly wanted me to do with my senior year; it seemed that, one by one, my ties to Princeton were being severed.  Just before Spring Break it occurred to me that taking a semester to study abroad, something which I had always wanted to do but thought that my opportunity had passed when I chose to do a year-long independent research project, was once again a possibility.  I considered my options and talked it over with my parents, who were more than enthusiastic for me to go.  (My Spring Break was spent in Florida with my family, a very nice week considering I otherwise wouldn't have seen them for an entire year!)  Coincidentally, just about the time I started thinking about this again there was an information session for the Institute for Study Abroad (IFSA), an organization which connects with foreign schools and sets up integrated semester and year study programs for American students.  The benefit of going through a third-party program like this is that many of the administration details are taken care of, and an American transcript is provided at the end of the program.  Originally, I was considering Australia or New Zealand as my destination.  (At this point my options were either Germany or an English-speaking country; although Mom was confident that my French would return quickly enough should I choose to go there, I was less sure.)  The only problem with a southern-hemisphere university was the schedule: their second semester begins in mid-to-late July, and the German internship I had applied for didn't end until July 31st.  So, after much back=and-forth with both my internship coordinator and the Institute for Study Abroad, narrowing it down to the United Kingdom and then researching the course options at each of the universities, I decided on the University of Edinburgh in Scotland as my program of choice.  I quickly found the class equivalents I would need to fulfill my remaining degree requirements and got them approved by the Mechanical Engineering undergraduate coordinator and department chair.  I spent a day running around to all the other departments acquiring signatures of approval for other courses for distribution requirement credit and handed in all of my forms, just in time for the deadline as usual.  There was a brief scare when none of my paperwork seemed to have gone through by a week after the program deadline - it turned out that there was an unexpected death of someone on the IFSA staff which threw a wrench in the works.  Everything was soon sorted out and my application sent off to Scotland while I finished up my spring semester, fortunately with much less stress and more sleep than the fall had produced.  Spring Exam period was relatively relaxed, but as three and then four weeks went by without any word from Edinburgh I began to get anxious.  However, as God is wont to do, as soon as I (finally) prayed about it I received an email the next morning expressing the congratulations of the IFSA staff on my acceptance into the fall 2012 program.  I'm still not sure if it's really sunk in that I won't be at Princeton for the fall, but I am truly looking forward to the break in many ways.  While a good friend of mine earnestly encouraged me to take a year off to travel instead of replacing one of my semesters at Princeton, I think I will be glad of my choice.  While I love my school, it has really worn me out (or perhaps, the way I have chosen to do it has worn me out) and, more than any other year, I am very close to the class of 2012 and Princeton won't feel the same without their presence.  Studying abroad for a semester is a form of escape for me, for good or bad, but I intend to take full advantage of the opportunities afforded me by the experience.

So, now that you know what I'm doing for the fall I should probably also tell you what and why I'm abroad for the summer.  After last summer in Germany, which certainly had its ups and downs, as those of you who read my blog know, I was enamored with the country and the culture.  My one goal this summer was to get back to Germany somehow, and preferably without having to do research again.  By the time I started seriously looking for internships at Christmas break, most of the deadlines for Princeton programs (the German Summer Work program, the International Internship Program) had passed.  My heart was beginning to sink until I came across a program through the Keller Center for Engineering Entrepreneurship called the Ruhr Fellowship.  This program lasted for the months of June and July and consisted of one month of language and cultural exposure (tours of the local university, excursions to various companies) followed by a one-month internship in an engineering company.  This being exactly what I was looking for (an industry internship in Germany) I immediately applied, although I hedged my bets with another internship or two as well.  This made things interesting for a while.  I applied to an online math tutoring job, figuring that perhaps I could do that in my spare time even with another internship.  I hadn't noticed that this was a year-round position, and so was quite surprised when the company contacted me right away for an interview and subsequently with a contract.  I momentarily considered taking the job in place of one of my campus employment positions, but it didn't pay as well as any of them and would have ended up not being as flexible as I would have needed, so I politely declined their offer, saying I might contact them in the summer if I became more available.  I am considering reaching out to them now even just to say that because of my sporadic internet connection and the time difference, I won't be able to do anything this summer either, just to keep my word.  We'll see.  The other internship I applied to was LeadAmerica, a sort of selective summer conference for bright and promising high school students.  I was also accepted to this position, surprisingly enough (after my first ever phone interview went astonishingly well), the catch being that they wanted a final answer about a week before I heard about my acceptance to or rejection from the Ruhr Fellowship.  It was a season of learning business etiquette and how to be tactful.  I ended up calling the director of LeadAmerica and personally asking for an extension on the deadline (again, on the advice of Danielle and one of the career counselors); he was so impressed at my courtesy that he granted it with no problems.  A few days after that I heard for sure that I had been selected as a Ruhr Fellow and called the director back, a little apologetically, to tell him the REAL reason why I couldn't accept his offer.  He was very gracious about the whole thing and told me he didn't blame me a bit for choosing Germany, wished me the best of luck and asked me to remember LeadAmerica in the future should I ever need summer employment again.  I am sure blessed!!

All this was also because the Ruhr Fellowship program was originally scheduled for June 1-July 31, and I was looking into possibilities for August.  As plans continued to unfold, however, I learned that Princeton's Commencement (Graduation) ceremony was held June 5.  The paperwork I began to receive from the Ruhr Fellowship seemed to indicate that the start date was not yet set in stone; crossing my fingers, I wrote "June 5" as my available date to leave the US.  When I noticed another place to indicate interest in extending the internship portion of the program, I quickly filled in that as well, though I had not at this point ruled out studying abroad in New Zealand as a possibility.  Though I had discussed my need for a later start date with the people in the Keller Center and gotten a green light, the program director in Germany was less than enthused and for a while it seemed that she might revoke my acceptance, though when I agreed to extend my internship to August 24th it appeased her and she continued to welcome me.

So now the plan was to stay at Princeton through graduation, fly out as soon as possible (the evening of Commencement) to Germany, where I would stay until the end of August.  Orientation in Edinburgh begins September 5 - that gives me approximately 2 weeks to get from Germany to Scotland (I worked it so that I would have enough time to tour leisurely through Europe, though I wouldn't quite have enough time to make a return to the States worth my while).  Although this means I won't see my homeland for a whopping seven months straight, it opens up exciting new opportunities to travel to places I haven't yet seen.  As of now I haven't planned anything concrete, but I have vague notions of meandering through the Netherlands and Belgium before dropping down to France (Paris for 2-3 days, perhaps?) and zipping under the English Canal to the United Kingdom, where I will continue to take my leisure through the rolling English countryside, nonchalantly arriving in Edinburgh on the correct day.  Regardless of how it actually pans out, I'm sure it will be an adventure.

Speaking of adventures, now I'm off to have a few more so I can tell you about them later... we'll get to Germany eventually, I promise ;)

Junior Year

Well, here I am again.  Off on another international summer adventure.  I guess I have something against staying in the US when I'm not in school?  Anyway, this adventure is looking to be even bigger and grander than the last, and I'm quite excited.  Keeping the tradition of previous years, I'll give you a quick overview of my activities in the intervening year, as well as my lessons from last summer, before diving into my chronicle of the present adventures.

So, this year was another busy one for me, but then again, they all are. :P  Looking back I'm not quite sure what possessed me, but for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to do my thesis/independent work requirement this year instead of next.  Granted, I got to work on a really cool project, and the professor is really nice as a friend, but it was a difficult experience and I struggled a lot during the year.  The professor was visiting for the year from California Polytechnic Institute at San Luis Obispo (CalPoly for short) and teaching a class in the fall about autonomous robots.  Since that's my main area of interest within mechanical engineering, of course I wanted to take the class.  Unfortunately, it directly conflicted with my Mechanical Design course, which I was not allowed to delay until next year.  So, I asked Dr. Clark if he had any research projects going which he wanted undergraduate help with, since I didn't want to pass up this opportunity to learn from an expert in the field.  He replied that he wanted students for two projects: cistern mapping in Malta and shark tracking in California.  Of the two, sharks sounded more interesting, so I volunteered to work on that project and have this professor as my advisor.  After much finagling, I got ahold of my departmental advisor and he told me how to get the project counted for credit, and I was delighted when the undergraduate coordinator for mechanical engineering informed me that this project would fulfill my independent work requirement for the department (read: I don't have to do a thesis next year).

The project was using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV, it looks like a torpedo) equipped with acoustic telemetry to track organisms underwater.  Apart from all the technical jargon, it works by catching a shark (or fish) and clipping an acoustic tag to it.  This tag sends out a signal (beep) at a certain frequency every few seconds.  The AUV is equipped with hydrophones (acoustic receivers) which pick up on this signal.  Since there are two of them, it determines the direction the signal came from using the difference between when each of the hydrophones received the signal.  It can only do this in a single plane (not 3-D) and cannot distinguish between the two sides of the robot, so we adjust our driving pattern to figure out whether the tag is on the left or the right.  The professor has been working on this project for a couple of years, so they had already implemented this system for a single AUV and were now looking to extend it to multiple AUVs.  This, of course, introduces difficulties such as sharing information between the robots (we installed a modem on each robot so they could communicate), controlling them so that they work together to provide the maximum amount of information, and designing a motion planner so that they don't run into each other.

I was shy about the coding aspects of the project, since I had never taken a computer science class past the introductory one, and so I volunteered to do what sounded easiest, which was to verify and refine the sensor model for the receivers, and build a new frame for the hydrophones.  I did the first part during the fall semester, and learned a lot about self-directed work in the process (namely, that I should have tried harder to work on it during the entire semester instead of leaving it all until Christmas break when my advisor wasn't available).  I had a really hard time with the report, as well, since I had never really written anything of this magnitude before (73 pages!) and was unclear on the format.  In retrospect, it was a terrible paper, particularly since I didn't really understand what I was doing and my advisor told me five days before the report was due to redo all of my results because my method didn't make any sense.  When I did it the way he wanted, the results got worse compared to the default method, which changed all of my conclusions and sent me scrambling to explain why I spent all semester doing something that hurt instead of helping.  I also had a poster session the first week back which I completely bombed, because I had no idea how to make a poster in the correct format, chose to hand-make it instead of printing and left it until the last minute.  I was 20 minutes late to the 1-hour poster session and my poster was smaller than the minimum requirement.  Despite all that (and it was rough, let me tell you) I got a B- for the semester, but I vowed to learn from my mistakes and do better in the spring.

This worked slightly, but since the system I needed to test didn't come in until after Spring Break and my advisor had a couple of poorly-timed conferences to attend near the end of the semester, I still found myself in serious crunch and had to reach out to my friends for help with the experiments I needed to run (since they required holding the tag and receivers 50, 100, and 150 meters away from each other, I obviously couldn't do them by myself, not to mention transporting all the materials the 1.5 miles from the E quad down to the lake).  But the members of the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship once again showed themselves to be amazing and I had no less than five separate people come help me gather all my data.  The second-semester report was much more professional and polished than the first, but there were still some serious flaws.  I attribute at least some of my poor experience to the lack of feedback I received; to illustrate, consider that though I sent my advisor a draft of my report three weeks before the deadline (even though I hadn't done any of my experiments yet O.o) and he promised to read it, he forgot and I didn't know that until 5 days before the due date when he asked why I hadn't sent him any thing yet.  Regardless, my poster was also much better (properly sized and completed on time), though in the 2.5-hour poster session I only talked to about 4 professors (25% of your semester grade for the project comes from the grades assigned by the professors at the poster session, less the highest and lowest grades). All told, I ended up getting a B for the second semester, which I thought a rather small grade increase for the additional amount of work I put into the project for the spring :P

All was not lost, however.  Through this experience I have discovered that I do not do very well with self-directed independent work; I much prefer to be given small, concrete tasks to complete and to be regularly supervised.  I suppose that's a good thing to know for next year when I'm looking for a job I'll enjoy.

Week 2

The second week started out a little hairily, with me using up the last of my milk but only having about 10 Euros in my wallet, not really enough to go shopping with.  I splurged on the "essentials" of milk and juice on Tuesday, and fortunately got (the sad remains of) my stipend on Wednesday, a total of 357.57 Euros, enough for groceries for a while, at least.

Monday was my first day of real work, which was very exciting.  I was officially introduced to the kneader and began making samples - and quickly discovered what a slow and tedious process it is.  The kneader is basically a very hot, very scientific mixing bowl where the different components of my samples (polymer, MAPP, and fiber) were melted down and mixed together to make a more-or-less homogeneous mixture.  The frustrating part was cleaning the machine between samples, as it was still very hot and the cooled plastic was often very sticky and difficult to remove.  Before any of this, however, I had to figure out how much of each component to add to the mixture, which rather complicated calculation I performed on a Google doc spreadsheet.  This summer I really came to appreciate the usefulness of Google docs, as it avoided having to keep my data on a flash drive whereby I could move it between computers.  I could get access to the Google doc from any computer with an internet connection, which meant that I could work just as well on my laptop as on the computers in the interns' lab.  (This turned out to be especially useful since I forgot my password for the lab computers and it was a couple of weeks before we got that all straightened out and I could log on there.)

Because of these several complications, I only finished two out of my 52 total samples on Monday, but I had use of the kneader for the entire week, so I could only hope that my rate would improve with practice.  Monday I got the treat of Wiener Schnitzel and potato salad for summer, a very German meal.  At the supermarket you could buy frozen wiener schnitzel cutlets just like you can buy chicken nuggets here in the States, so I often had these for supper since they were both my favorite German food (although they technically originate from Vienna, Austria) and quite easy to make in a frying pan.  Monday night was also my first time attending square dance, which I've already told you about. I was quite excited about this opportunity and only regretted that I had left my cowboy boots at home, which would have been the perfect addition to my square dancing outfit (and indeed, many people wore cowboy boots to practice every week, as well as western-themed button-down shirts and belts with large metal buckles).  Since dance practice didn't get over until 10, it was quite late (for me) when I finally got to bed, but staying up was well worth it.

Tuesday I was back at the kneader and trying very hard to make the process more efficient, but I still only got through 5 samples before lunch.  I then had to spend the afternoon cutting up flax fibers into workable lengths, and using the rubber-handled scissors in the hot, sweaty room wore patches of skin off of my fingers by the time I had finished cutting up the entire 900g of flax.  At 5:00 I attended the Praise and Move small group upon Renate's request, although I hadn't quite understood what the group was about when she invited me to it on Sunday.  This first week we didn't waste any time but were preparing an African chorus called "No one like Jesus" which we sang in English, German, and French - and Renate informed me that we would perform the song in church the following Sunday, which made me a little nervous, but excited at the same time, because I love to sing.  After the small group it was time for youth group, so I stayed for that and met some of the church members who are closer to my age.  I understood the pastor's message for the most part and really enjoyed myself there, and was only sad to discover that this would be the group's last regular meeting before summer vacation, so I wouldn't get the chance to attend in later weeks (in Germany, the academic year runs from October to July for college students).  This activity kept me up later than usual as well, although not as late as Monday night, and for awhile I almost thought that I would get back into a normal sleep schedule.

Wednesday was my first full, uninterrupted day at the kneader, and as I hoped, I was getting faster.  I got 14 samples in between 8:15 and 4:30, finishing one polymer system and moving on to the second which was (thankfully) much easier to chip off of the kneader.  After work, at which I received my stipend, I took a much-needed shopping trip and re-stocked my fridge with necessary foodstuffs like hamburgers, bread, and fruit, but also a couple of treats like ice cream.  One thing which I was very pleased to find this summer was that Germans have excellent ice cream, better than in the States, and I frequently took advantage of this specialty.  I also purchased cleaning supplies for my room and swept my floor, which had become amazingly dirty in only 10 days.  I tried harder after that to take my shoes off at the door of my room, but the unprecedented amounts of hair I was shedding, from stress or malnutrition or whatever other reason, meant that I always swept up a substantial dirt pile on my weekly cleaning sprees.

Thursday was much like Wednesday, with me finally finding my "groove" for the kneader and producing 15 samples between 8 and 4:30.  After work I took care of some administrative things, such as calling my parents for the second time from Clausthal (I also discovered a way where I could use my computer to call American land lines/cell phone numbers at no cost, which made contacting my parents easier as we could avoid dealing with their uncooperative Skype) and starting to make plans with a German friend of mine from Princeton whom I very much wanted to visit while in his country.  Exhausted from my several later nights, I fell into bed at 8 and immediately fell asleep.

Friday I hit a snag as the new polymer system I was working on proved to be much harder to clean than the others and required a higher processing temperature, making the entire room hot and sweaty to work in.  I also found that I hadn't quite prepared enough flax to make all of my samples, and these setbacks caused me to give up for the week, frustrated, when I came to a good stopping place a little after 2:30.  Leif always left around lunchtime on Fridays, and once he was gone I lost much of my motivation to keep working late into the afternoon, not to mention I was wont to come in earlier than most of the interns anyway.  On this particular Friday I had a good reason for stopping early, however, as Renate had invited me to a Women's Retreat with the church that weekend and was picking me up at 3:45.

When Renate picked me up, we drove about fifteen minutes outside the town to a small retreat center down a dirt road.  It took us a while to find everyone else, but eventually we spotted them on the porch of one of the cabins.  There were only about five other ladies there, and at first I thought that this was because we were early or something, but ti turned out that the church is so small that only about seven women came to the retreat at all.  We spent the first couple of hours chatting as we waited for the last partaker to arrive.  Other than introducing myself, which by this time was old hat to me, I chose to sit and listen to conversations rather than try to participate in them,  because these women already knew each other so I would have relatively little to contribute anyway.  Apparently they took my voluntary silence as an inability to communicate, because one or two of them would occasionally ask whether I could understand them, to which I truthfully replied that I was getting about 90%.  Overall, they, like the others I had encountered, were shocked that an American with no family ties to Germany could speak so well (I think I did my country proud this summer, and certainly tried my hardest to dispel the stereotype of the stupid, arrogant, monolingual American), and I would respond as politely and completely as I could when questions were directed at me.  Eventually we tired of waiting for this other lady and decided to go for a walk.  The countryside around the retreat center was gorgeous, as is the case around Clausthal in general.  We walked on rough roads and trails through the woods and along a couple of Teichs (a small lake with a dam and a water wheel at one end for generating power), and I took some pictures of the beauty.  The youngest woman there, who was still around ten years my senior (the rest were all my mother's age or older), started a conversation with me in which she inquired about my life, my studies, and my boyfriend.  I often found the limits of my German vocabulary in that particular conversation, especially when attempting to describe my boyfriend - I kept coming back to "He's really super nice" because I didn't know the words for "thoughtful", "wonderful", "kind", "amazing" and so forth.  After our little walk, the last participant finally arrived in time for us to enjoy a cookout of sorts.  It was "bring your own food", but Renate thankfully had brought some Wurst that I could share, so I didn't have to go hungry.  By the time we finished eating, the sun had begun to set, so their plans for having a teaching session and introductory activities were cut short.  Renate spoke briefly on relationships, then we broke for the night.  I realized during Renate's teaching that I was only understanding about 75% of what she was saying, and decided that I would really be better off staying home the next day instead of returning for the rest of the retreat.  I also didn't want to get in the way of the ladies' understanding and being blessed by the teaching and discussions in which I would be more of a burden than anything as I required extra explanations and repetition.  However, I enjoyed a good conversation with Renate on the way back from the retreat center (she would also spend the night at home and return in the morning) about the things she had mentioned and some relationship issues I had been dealing with in my own personal devotions and thought life.  I am very glad I went to the retreat, and I did learn a few things.


Saturday, now freed up by not returning to the retreat, ended up not getting much done.  After the busy weekends of Princeton in Munich, it was nice to have some days with no expectations when I could just relax, even if it made me feel guilty for being so unproductive.  I worked a bit on some of my summerlong projects (though probably not as much as I should have).  My one treasure of the weekend was discovering the "Amazon Kindle for Mac" app in the App Store and the wealth of free classic books available on Amazon - I must have downloaded 40 novels, quite ambitiously (in my defense, I read at least 7 of them during the course of my internship).  This, understandably, also ate up a big chunk of my Saturday, but at least it made the prospects of the rest of my summer much more appealing.


Sunday the weather was beautiful and we performed "No One like Jesus" in front of the entire congregation - it came off surprisingly well and we were quite proud of ourselves.  I was also officially "welcomed" into the congregation on this Sunday (since everything was so hectic with the baptism the week previous) with a bag of candy and a brochure introducing the church, which I saved to read later and never did :P  After the service I called Leif and got quite lost trying to find his house (I knew I was going the wrong way when I almost wandered into someone's backyard where they were having a cookout O.o), where he had a bicycle waiting for me, a hybrid street and mountain bike that had stood in his garage unused for three years.  When I had inquired about obtaining a bicycle for the summer, which I very much wanted to do as it increased my mobility at least tenfold, he graciously offered to lend me this one and I was ecstatic about not having to spend any money on a such a temporary convenience.  It was interesting, to say the least, riding the bike back in my Sunday sundress, but I made it without mishap.  The frame of the bike was really too big for me and the tires too thin to do the kind of riding I know I would tend to, and the rear gear shifter didn't work (I later discovered that it suffered from a loosened spring that I couldn't fix), bringing the bike from a 21-speed down to a 3-speed, but it was a bike and I was content.  All the problems with the bike didn't stop me from having adventures with it, as you will read hereafter.  The other big activity of Sunday was making a week's supply of shepherd's pie (or a normal amount for a five-person family, which is always what I had made), which is about the most complicated meal I made in the summer (and yet lived as frugally as possible and didn't tire of my variety - I might just make it this year, being independent!).  And so ended my second adventure-filled week in Clausthal.


Well, I can't promise that I'll ever finish this blog, especially since I head back down to Princeton the day after tomorrow.  But I'll keep trying, and you may eventually hear about all of my shenanigans - if you're lucky.

Week 1

**Note: Sorry about the wonky formatting on this post.  I originally wrote some of it in TextEditor at the airport and apparently that messed with the specs - I've tried several times to unify it but eventually just gave up (it looks all the same in my edit window but not on the published page).  I will try to remember only to write in Blogger from now on :P.**


So, now that I've given you a run-down of the different aspects of my life as it was here in Clausthal, I shall proceed with a short summary of each week, filling in any anecdotes or lessons that I learned from week to week, including my occasional weekend travel.  

You've already gotten a pretty good, though scattered, picture of my first 24 hours or so in Clausthal; Leif picked me up from the bus station, drove me to the Wohnheim (I was just glad not to have to carry my absurdly heavy bags anymore), then showed me quickly how to get to the Institute before leaving me on my own to settle in.  I unpacked and organized my room to my satisfaction, and cooked a supper of frozen veggie stew thickened with instant mashed potatoes before turning in for the night, early as was my wont.  Monday morning I slept in til 7, exhausted from my traveling of the day before (and not having slept very well on the worn-out goosefeather pillow).  Not having done any shopping yet, my breakfast was a PB&J sandwich and some tea (I actually ate an astounding number of peanut butter and jelly or nutella sandwiches for not being in America - it was my typical lunch) before I headed down to the institute at 8:15, armed with my questions.  After surprising me with his helpful answers to all of my inquiries, Leif made the rounds with me and introduced me to all of the coworkers with the same spiel, which I had memorized by the time we got through: "This is Erin, she is a RISE student from the USA, here for 8 weeks to work on a research project with natural fibers."  Then we sat down in Leif's office, he looked at me and said, "So, what do you want to do your project on?"  Now THIS was a question that I was definitely not prepared for.  I thought that Leif was going to put me on a project of his to help him out with grunt work, and he would do all the concluding and heavy thinking (what can I say? this is my first internship).  So I uncertainly answered, "Whatever you want me to do?" but that wasn't good enough for Leif.  He gave me a very quick, very basic introduction to natural fibers and FRC, and then told me that I would have to do background research to figure out what was already known and what needed to be explored so that I could come up with a decent project to occupy myself for the next eight weeks.  Having shaken me with this revelation, he deigned to let me go for the rest of the day to take care of various administrative duties, such as posting a Facebook status that I had arrived safely (which my boyfriend suggested I do.  This is a new concept to me, as my parents never insisted upon such confirmation when I was growing up, mostly because we never had any way of making such confirmation in the days before cell phones and Facebook), registering and receiving a student card at the international center, setting up an account for the university wi-fi (though this only exists in the academic buildings, so the vast majority of the time I relied on an Ethernet cable for my laptop, and setting up this account was also of first priority on that day), finding the Deutche Bank ATM in town to withdraw money (another 500 Euros, which smarted quite a bit), then proceeding to the Student Help Center to pay my 300-Euro down payment on my apartment, as well as my first installment of rent.  Although I did not arrive in Clausthal until the 26th, my room was rented to me from the 20th of June to the 31st of August, meaning that I had to pay almost three week's extra rent.  At 255 Euro/month, that's no small thing!  With my wallet significantly lightened, I proceeded to the grocery stores to do some serious research.  I walked up and down every aisle of Aldi and Marktkauf, examining the wares.  When I saw something that I might be likely to buy, I noted the price, so that when I was finished I could make a thorough price comparison and know for sure that I was always getting the best deal on my groceries (as far as choosing between the two most convenient grocery stores could guarantee me).  This was mostly motivated by my tight money situation, but knowing myself and the stellar example of my frugal coupon-clipping, bargain-hunting mother, I think I might have done it regardless.

After taking care of all of my administrative "chores", it was suppertime, so I returned to my room to continue using up the random collection of food that I had acquired in Munich.  This meant that my supper was very typically German as I prepared wurst (Germans love wurst.  I don't see what the big deal is - they're basically hot dogs) and potato salad.  The weather on this first day was hot and sunny, which I liked, but I was warned by my fellow Princetonian that this is anything but typical for Clausthal, and I was soon to find that she was correct :P  I also continued my "early to bed, early to rise" habit for most of the summer, easy since I never really involved myself in any social activities with the other interns.


Tuesday was a research day - I read no less than fifteen articles that I had found on the topic of natural-fiber-reinforced plastics, their possibilities and tried combinations.  This took all day, of course, and at the end of the day I checked in with Leif and asked for more clarification on one of the questions that I had had - horses.  As you've already read, it wasn't long after that that I was accompanying Mirjam to the stables and enjoying German hospitality.  Unfortunately that ended up being my only trip to visit the horses, due to the horrible weather for the entire month of August and the latter half of July, one week of me being sick, multiple weeks which were shortened by weekend travel, and scheduling conflicts at the end when Mirjam and I weren't available on the same day.  But it was fun that one time, and helped fend off the chronic loneliness and longing for contact with horses which inevitably besets me during summers when I can't get up to Living Waters camp where I served in the barn for six summers.

Wednesday morning I checked back in with Leif and we discussed what I had found in my research and what else I needed to search for in order to refine my topic.  Then he sent me off with another of the American RISE interns to be introduced to a process called Vacuum Assisted Resin Infusion, or VARI for short, which is one of the methods for making composite samples.  It wasn't a method that I used in my project, except for one week when I had nothing to do and Leif was trying to keep me occupied, but it was interesting to learn about.  This took the entire morning, and in the afternoon Leif shipped me off to sit in on a German-taught class on creep behavior.  I was surprised at how much I understood, until I realized that I already knew the material and was only connecting my previous knowledge to the sporadic words and phrases which I recognized.  This once again made me unsure about taking classes on new material taught in German.  The class also involved running an experiment and analyzing the data on computers using MATLAB, which made me glad that I was already familiar with the program as it counterbalanced the disadvantage of working in my second language.  This successfully took up the rest of my time at the institute for that day, however, and I was then free to return home for a supper of chicken and vegetables in gravy (kind of like chicken pot pie without the pot pie) before another early bedtime.

Thursday brought more research and a break in the up-to-then beautiful weather.  Leif was gone at a conference, so I didn't have to go in to the institute, which I didn't except for an introduction by Audrey, the other intern from Princeton, to the kneader, a machine that I would actually be using quite a bit in my project.  I was glad to finally get an introduction to something useful and paid careful attention, though it turned out afterwards that I still needed a run-down by one of the coworkers before I was officially allowed to use the machine.  I also went shopping for some more things I had discovered would be quite useful, including a dish towel and a throw pillow to supplement my sad goose-down monstrosity.  This summer taught me a lot about which household goods are really necessary and convenient and which are really redundant: a dish towel being one of the former, and paper towels belonging to the latter category.  Supper this night was about as German as it gets with fried Wiener Schnitzel and potato salad - have I mentioned how much I like German food?

Friday finally brought some tangible progress as Leif helped me form a definitive project with goals, process, and hypothesis.  I was ecstatic when I finally got to start doing some useful, productive work as well by washing the flax fibers I would be using in my composites.  I set them in the oven to dry over the weekend and returned to my room after my first complete week of work (which really didn't seem like I worked at all, but it was to get a little better in coming weeks).  I was also exposed to more of Leif's incredible helpfulness as he lent me an old microwave for the summer, one that he apparently just had hanging around in his basement.  Although the machine was obviously from the early 90s, it still worked well and made dinners immensely easier on many a night (leftovers + microwave = 2-minute prep time).  Supper this night was spaghetti, in which I added the last of the wurst (it was better this way than eaten straight, although less German).  I also found and watched "Inglourious Basterds," a movie that I had been wanting to see for a while.  It was an excellent movie, if a little bloody, and I only wish that I had had someone else to watch it with.

The weekend was incredibly uneventful, as the cold and rainy weather eliminated any possibility of going outside to explore the area.  I spent the two days in working on various computer projects and getting in contact with friends and family.  This was also the Sunday when I first attended the church which would become my spiritual home for the summer, which I've also written about previously.  While I came to the weekend with not much to show for it, it was also nice to have a couple of days to relax and adjust to my new routine in contrast to the activity-packed weekends of the Princeton in Munich program.

Okay, my biggest challenge with these "weekly summaries" is going to be avoiding tedium, I see.  I can only hope that I will realize that it is in both my and your best interest not to record the minutia of daily life, because it means less for me to write and for you to read.  Let's see how well I do with the next seven weeks!