organics

Well, after a two year hiatus, I'm back and blogging! Ok, back to my college ways.

I guess I'll just rationalise it by saying that I wasn't actually IN school for a year and a half and blogging just doesn't work as well when you're not procrastinating on something you should be doing.

A rather fast recap of what's going on with my life:

I'm living in Germany now. I successfully uprooted and replanted in September 2014, worked as an Au Pair for a hellish year in which my mother died, my dad got married, I went to Greece, and I was randomly accepted to medical school in Bonn (on a whim). It was a big year. And a hard year.

So now I'm back in full student mode, in a new country, studying something more intense than I've never studied before. I'm older now, 25, and it's not as easy as the first time around. Or maybe it's a language thing. Whatever it is, learning stuff about medicine is hard.

The university system in Germany is quite different from ours back in the States. All grades are based on one exam at the end of the semester (sometimes also at the beginning of the next). You can take a test for a class you never attended. You basically are your own....is what I'm figuring out. They use this "sink or swim" tactic, and if you don't teach yourself the material on your own time, you fail. Unique to medicine though, (thankfully) is that we don't get grades. Everything is purely pass/fail, which is helpful. I thought, yeah, 60%, easy smeazy. Nooooo. It's not. Try remembering every sulcus and tuberculum and ligament and what they do and how they can get hurt. A whole semester worth of only BONES and I can barely manage to get 60%. Next up on the challenge list is organic chemistry (which I stupidly never took in the US). That exam is on Friday and I'm pretty behind because it's just SO MUCH. And it's super tailored toward medicine so it's like an overview of the important things and then they dropped right into biochemistry with amino acids and DNA. It's just a lot. On the bright side, I learned so much by myself and it really gives me something to be proud of, where as in the US it's more like I feel like I had been "taught" so much and the sense of accomplishment wasn't as high I think.

So that's what's going on. What's coming up?

After the embryology and chemistry exams this week, I'm flying to Madrid to meet up with my dad on Saturday. I'm really looking forward to seeing him...and maybe working on my Spanish? I would love to learn Spanish! Marco and I started on Narcos last night on Netflix and it just made me want to be able to speak Spanish SO BAD.

Anyway, after that, at the beginning of March, I'm embarking on my next adventure to Vietnam. I'm heading over there with Marco, Maja and Nick. I'm pretty excited but a bit nervous about the budget. As a non-working full-time medical student living abroad the finance situation is a bit tight. I booked those tickets nervously and thought, yeah, until then I can find a job...but unfortunately learning all this stuff takes a bit more time up than I would've expected which doesn't leave a lot of time for employment. Ah, c'est la vie. You're only young once.

And then it all starts up again in April: this time with developmental neurobiology, physics lab, biochemistry, and histology. (And maybe more? Stay tuned to find out!)

Alright, I think it's time to get back to peptide bonding and kinetics. But this was therapeutic. Maybe I'll try to get back into the groove...

2013 in Photos

2013 wasn't a year for blog posts, but I did take a lot of pictures...so there's that. 

noitanitsar corp

I'm joining that. As in: I should really be watching lectures but I'm feeling unmotivated. Maybe I should get out of the house.

This semester really flew by...just like the rest of life. And again I'm having all these thoughts that I so desperately want to catch and bottle and summon each time I want to write a blog post, but due to some weird law of physics (the one where when you examine a particle, it necessarily changes? what is that? quantum theory?) the thoughts morph and I can no longer conjure a coherent thought for the life of me as soon as I type "blogger.com".

Today was Mother's Day--my mom, my grandma, and my uncle who is in from Seattle all went to brunch. It was nice quality time for us all, but the Avenue Bar was extremely slow and after sipping on a bloody mary and some coffee and watching the minutes tick by into an hour, it got to be a bit much. My uncle ended up complaining; the food came, [side note: it was awesome! crab cake benedict, no one ever did have a better idea I daresay] and then we got our brunch completely free. I feel bad. I have to say, I am not one to do that. I was a waitress for a long time and I understand that the whole situation is difficult. People yelling at you, tugging at you one way or another, this person wants this, this person needs coffee, this other person needs more napkins because they are the messiest eater on earth. And people are rude--they can wear you down. I remember so distinctly working at Denny's as the customers would make me feel inadequate, as if my doing this menial job just wasn't cutting it. I am good in so many ways. And I was a good, cute waitress too. I hate that feeling that I am scolding someone; insinuating that they aren't good enough--you never know what their life circumstances are. In my eyes, it behooves you to take it easy on people and try to understand where they're coming from.  I don't think I could ever fire someone for the same reasons...just like I don't think I'll ever break up with someone. I have to be really, really, really dissatisfied and angry to complain about things. It made me sad...my uncle also mentioned not giving a tip to the poor girl and I immediately laid my plans to come back later in the afternoon and correct the situation. Luckily, he did tip her, but something just feels wrong about getting all that food for free. Pity, really.

I'm 90% moved into my dad's basement. Mixed emotions...definitely not happy about having to live here for 9 months in the fall, but I'm thinking it'll be okay for these next four nights that I'm spending here. Four more nights in the USA before taking this journey of epic and scary proportions. I feel I owe everyone (all two of you reading) an explanation about that last blog post. I am scared of the loneliness and my inexplicable loss of German speaking skills, but I am so, so, so incredibly excited. My heart literally leaps and skips a beat when I think about going back. I'm not so scared of not being with my favorite Amis from last semester, simply because I've done quite a bit of traveling alone and with different people even in Germany...but I think, to me at least, what is more sinister is how you can feel like even more of an outsider when you've known a group of people that has evolved and grown and changed over almost a year, but you've evolved and grown and changed separately from them. Then you come back to a whole different situation...like how coming home here was. It was weird. Meeting new people is in many ways much easier than maintaining fractured friendships--you need building materials instead of maintenance calls. Consider: you don't even know you have a leaky faucet until you have water standing in the bathroom and leaking through the floorboards.

What ever happens, will happen. I don't have much control over the situation at this point...I'm leaving, this will happen, things will be new and different, the same and so incredibly strange. I'm excited and a little nervous for what these next few months have in store...

Berlin

After two long weeks of traveling, it's nice to be back in Bonn again. Sitting at Starbucks now, I've gotten really tired of my room because it's so small and lonely. And it kind of smells funky...

Berlin was a really interesting experience. In comparison to Madison-sized-German-city Bonn, being in the New York of Germany was a change of pace. I think what interested me the most about Berlin was the new-ness of the city mixed with the remnants of the old East Germany and destruction still visible from WWII. Basically, after the wall came down in 1989 all hell broke loose and the city was completely rebuilt. It's really an architectural wonder in that the city still has a "wall" going through it, meaning that wherever there once stood the Berlin wall now lies a double line of flat bricks. It was so interesting to see it because you realize that it really cut life in half. People living across the street from each other literally couldn't visit each other for over 10 years in the 50's and 60's, which is insane. My parents were alive at that time! It's not that long ago! It also blows my mind that my family lived in Germany during the weird time of East/West Germany. I wonder how different it was...

While we were in Germany, we did all the classic sight seeing stuff and also did the whole go to a techno club thing. (Berlin is famous for it's top of the line clubs, but I didn't particularly enjoy that experience as I had to pay TWELVE EURO eintritt).
The whole trip was sponsored by the international office here, so all of the Americans were there and a few of the other exchange students. We spent the first day exploring the area around our hostel, which was conveniently located really close to the Brandenburger Tor. We walked around that area, which includes this really amazing Holocaust memorial. It's a rectangle filled with 2711 large grey stones in a grid of all different heights that are meant to resemble tombstones. You can walk through it, and around the edges of the area (probably about one square city block) the stones only come up to your hips, but as you venture deeper into the memorial they stretch to about 3-4 times human height. They're all completely unlabeled and personally I think what makes it so interesting is the absolute abstractness of the memorial...how the architect (who also coincidentally also designed the 9/11 memorial in NYC) envisioned such a vague memorial that was so powerful and could strangely evoke so much emotion without a person even knowing what they were walking into. I didn't actually know what it was when I first walked in, but it was overwhelming in a really strange way that's hard to put into words. Totally interesting though.

We also of course enjoyed the local cuisine (supplimented by stolen sandwiches from the breakfast buffet at the hostel) which was currywurst and Berliners (but in Berlin the tasty jelly donuts are actually called Pfannkuchen). The donut you see me about to devour here was filled with the typical delicious plum filling. And I did enjoy half a liter of Berlin's finest brew...not as tasty as Rheinisch beer but hey, I drank it. :)

Anyway, other sights that we saw: Checkpoint Charlie, East Side Gallery (really amazing artwork painted on the wall in the old Soviet section of the city), we went to an old Stasi prison, which was really amazing because our tour guide was actually held there in the 70's for trying to 'escape' East Germany. He was a really fascinating guy.

Before Germany's Sieg

Friday was an exciting day here in Europe because the first games of European Soccer Cup started. Germany played on Saturday evening, when we had all arrived back in Bonn. Most of my friends here met up at a big stadium to watch a public viewing of the game on a big screen TV. I think after watching a couple football games over the past few days, I finally understand the rules. (mostly). Apparently Germany is in a really hard group (against Denmark, Portugal and the Netherlands, I think?) so it was a big deal that we won this game. What I like most about it is how inspiring the whole thing is, so much more than American Football. People get into the Packers, sure, but for Germany this EM (Europa Meisterschaft=european cup) is really a source of pride and hope for their country. It was really amazing to witness the craziness that ensued when Germany won 1:0 against Portugal, there were huge traffic jams, yelling, screaming, music, chants, flags...it was insane. I loved seeing how crazy people got at the end of the first game of 3 that Germany is guaranteed to play, I can hardly wait to see how the rest of the cup plays out.

Bis später leute :)

Athens

So my camera's battery died 10 hours into my journey, so I apologize for the lack of pictures here...

Moving on with it, Athens was AMAZING. As much as I liked Rome, I'm pretty sure I liked Greece more. Let's start at the beginning:
Landed in Athens, after a stressful bus ride downtown/eventual taxi ride, we ended up in our hotel. In the Penthouse. Yep, my dad and I enjoyed the top floor of an Athens hotel with a wrap-around balcony. It was pretty awesome except that we were in the "alternative" section of town. By that I basically just mean that the people around were really Hot Topic-y and shooting heroin. My dad and I were given the opportunity to see not one, but TWO heroin addicts shooting up in two separate door stoops. It was freaky.

Anyway, that night we went to a traditional Greek restaurant and I ate the most tender lamb I've ever had in my life and some really nice Halva made from Semonila, different from what we usually have in the states (although later in the trip we did get to try some halva like what we usually have). The next morning we got up bright and early for a tour around Athens; we went to the Acropolis (the big hill where the Parthenon and temples are) and then a really fantastic museum with the sculptures that had been pillaged during the dark ages from those temples. It was fascinating!

After another traditional Greek lunch (kebabs and spinach pie!) we headed down the stunning grecian coast to the Temple of Poseidon. This is the part of Greece I absolutely fell in love with: coast. It was so beautiful, you can see the islands in the background of the clear cerulean Mediterranean Sea. And the sun shined the whole day and it was warm...so wonderful compared to the cold, dreary constant state of almost-rain here in Bonn. My dad and I hiked around the temple, it was built on a small peninsula with rocky cliffs overlooking the sea, which lent itself to easy/fun/beautiful small hikes.

When we got back to Athens proper, we ascended the tallest 'hill' of Athens. Yes, Athens too was built on 7 hills, but when they say hills it's not like it was in Rome, these hills were more huge piles of natural marble. The view was spectacular, you could see the Acropolis with the Sea and the islands in the background and the sun setting over the city. That and the view at sunrise overlooking Israel from the top of Masada were two of the most impressive vistas I have ever seen in my life.
The next day we took it pretty easy, I really wanted to go to an island...so we went to Aegina, the prettiest island closest to Athens. I loved it, we dipped our toes into the icy Mediterranean (that's another body of water for my dad!) and enjoyed Kalamari as the sun set over the water. (Well, I enjoyed Kalamari, my dad ate some fish that was too salty, but hey). We took the ferry back to Athens and then early the next morning flew home to Germany!

Then, as we were walking back to the Hauptbahnhof from lunch, my dad made the astute observation that Angela Merkel was in town that evening to support a candidate for the upcoming elections here in North Rhein Westphalia. So, we met up again shortly after I dropped all my travel stuff back home to see the Chancellor speak! It was cool and I understood most of it. I think really the best part of it was that it encouraged me to look up more political stuff about Germany and inform myself about which party I would belong to if I could vote and so forth. Turns out I'm a strong supporter of "Die Grünen" which is a left-centrist party here. What's really interesting also is that the most conservative party here (the CDU) is to the left of our most liberal party in the US. Things to think about...

So I need to be done with this procrastination, I have class soon and still have some homework to do. My dad left this morning (which was really sad! I'll miss him :( ) and then it's back to business here in Bonn.

Bis bald!