Dresden and London

So, it has been a while. But no worries, I'll update you.

Last week we go to go to the field twice for work. Tuesday we went and helped this other PhD student, Ute, fill in 5 of her soil pits. She finished all of her research so we filled in the pits in order to try and leave nature the way we found it. It was hot and that was a lot of work. The pits are 2 meters deep and probably 1 meter across both ways. Oh, and Annika and I took about 6 soil samples - woot. Thursday we went out again to a different mining site than what I've been to previously. It was cool. New pictures from the site are in the Cottbus album. The site is completely artificial but it's cool because they can monitor just about everything because they know all the initial conditions. We also drove to a look out point so I could see the brown coal mine. It was huuuge. They explained how they mine for the brown coal and it was pretty interesting. I had planned on workin' on my hot tan during this trip, but it was cold overcast and windy and I decided to wear shorts. Poor decision, but next time I"ll know better...

Lately I've been running 4 miles each time I run. I'm very impressed with myself. My goal for this summer is to be able to run 5 miles without any problems. First I thought it wasn't going to happen, but now I think I'll get there in the next 2 weeks. Schweet.

Oh, I fell the other day while running. Damn piece of crap eastern European sidewalks. Infrastructure infrastructure INFRASTRUCTURE! Oh, well, I'll give them a break because they are still recovering from that war. What was it called? Oh yes, WWII.

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Okay, so I just got back from London at 3am this morning. I know it has been a while since my last post, but I've been "busy" and it takes so much time to type all this stuff up. Really, I just have too many stories that go untold so in the end it's my fault. Oh well.

Dresden was awesome. I was there 2 weekends ago. It was my first Couchsurfing experience and I'm happy to report that everything went very well. I found a host, Susanne, on the Couchsurfing website and she was awesome. She picked me up at the train station, introduced me to friends, and most importantly let me sleep on her couch for two nights. Luckily for me there was an annual music festival going on in Dresden that weekend so we went to that every day. It was pretty awesome. She also took me around the touristy part of Dresden and I was very impressed with all the stuff she knew. My own personal tour guide. Overall I had a great time. You can check out the pictures by clicking on the link to the right. I think they basically sum up my weekend.

I only worked 3 days last week, which was really nice. I've been having to measure out hundreds of 10.0000g samples of soil with an error of only .0002g. It sucks. I can do about 30 samples in an hour, but doing that for 3 consecutive hours is not fun in the slightest. I really want to listen to my iPod while doing it, but I still haven't decided if that's appropriate or not.

I flew out of Berlin Schönefeld airport Wednesday night and landed in London around 10.40pm. The flight was only an hour and 40 minutes. I flew Ryan Air, which was interesting. They are the low fare airline - and it shows. The whole inside of the plane is covered in advertisements and every now and then a radio ad comes on over the speakers. Lovely. No free drinks or anything - it all costs a ton of money. Whatever, it was a cheap flight. I got to walk on the tarmac when boarding the airplane, which was cool - I've never done that before. They lead from the front and back of the plane and there are no assigned seats - it's a free for all. Pretty crazy, but I guess it doesn't work too bad. Certainly no Delta.

When I got to London I was thoroughly questioned by customs and was finally allowed to enter the UK. Woohoo! Traveling was a lot easier because I could speak their language fluently, hah. I was so excited to be able to express myself freely in English without having to slow down or choose smaller words. I felt smart and capable - a weird feeling to have when speaking your own language. On the train to the Tube station I sat in a cab with Austrian people who were part of a private english class. They were taking a field trip to London to practice their english. The average age for the group was about 45 or so - it was interesting. They were taking pictures and I asked, in German, if they wanted me to take their picture then they got excited that I could speak German so we talked the whole ride. They were very nice and oh so excited to speak English with me. It made me happy. I ended up running through the Tube station with the rest of the people to catch the last train to the stop I needed. Lucky for me since cabs there are so expensive. That night I met up with KATIE and me, her, and Mario went out to the Mango Lounge and enjoyed some really really expensive cocktails. Curse the continuously lowering power of the US dollar! Everything in London looks reasonably priced, but then you remember that you need to multiply it by two in order to figure out how much it is in US dollars. Then your jaw drops and you kick a rock.

Thursday night we saw Alanis Morrisette in concert! Ahhh! She is absolutely amazing. She played all of her famous songs and it felt like they just kept coming and coming - you forget she has so many hits until the next song starts and it's your "favorite Alanis song". Then she plays another and the same feeling comes over you that it's your "favorite". A lot of fun. We are all pretty sure she was on some sort of drugs the whole concert. She would spin around the stage and jump everywhere - exactly like in Little Miss Sunshine at the beauty pageant. It was funny, but also freaky. Oh well, if she needs some jagged little pills to write such great songs then so be it.

We did so much, all the days seem to run together. I know I'll leave a lot of stuff out, but I'll try my best.

Katie's Mom and brother arrived in London the same time I did. Friday (I think?) we met up with them for lunch and then I hung out with Mrs. Craft while Katie was at rehearsal. Her and Mrs. Barnes are my favorite foster mothers ever. So easy to talk to and lots of fun. I can't quite remember what we ended up doing that night. Mostly it was hanging around the flat that they live in. All the people that are on the study abroad trip with Kate are really cool and I had a fun time with them all.

One night we went to a VIP party that the study abroad professor got everyone into. I pretended to be a kid named Jake Cooper - he was in Paris at the time so I took his spot. The club was okay, but it was more of just a bar with bands playing. We watched one rapper and that was that. We left to go to another club but Katie and I headed off to go gambling instead. Hehe. You only have to be 18 to play at the casinos in London - sweet. The people Katie ordered the Alanis tickets from accidently sent us 2 sets of 3 tickets. We scalped the 2nd set of tickets at the door for 55£. $110. Awesome. We decided because that was free money, we would gamble it all. Seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do. We went around and played slots at all the casinos. Went into a few cheap ones, went into a few really nice ones. I had to register a few of them so I got a membership card and my picture was taken. At one place we decided to use up 10£ each. The slots were 50p or 1£. I used up all my pounds so Katie gave me one of hers. I really wanted to play this shark/fish slot machine so I went over and put my coin in. Within 5 minutes I turned that 1£ into 77£! Ballah! I won 20 free spins, and with those spins I won 20 more free spins. I think that happened a few more times until I got 80 spins total. It was awesome. We had a crowd around us and all the old women were in shock, haha. After the big win we left because we figured our luck at that place had run out. We went to Katie's favorite casino, got a few cocktails, and used up the rest of the original 55£ there. It was funny to think that us drinking cocktails and playing at slot machines is illegal in America. We laughed at the fact that nobody died that night, we ended up doubling our money, and we both got home safe and sound. No harm done, right? Silly America.

Saturday I was adopted into the Craft family and Mama Craft took all of us on a bus tour of London. You hop on the bus, it makes stops around London and you can choose to either stay on and ride, or hop off and stay at the site for a while. Once you're done at one place you just go back to the bus stop and wait for the next bus to come, pick you up, and take you to the next place. It was really awesome. We saw Big Ben, the Parliment, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, the Tate Modern Art Museum, the Tower Bridge, the London Bridge, and probably one or two things I'm forgetting. It was really cool. I should have pictures up by the end of the week so check them out : )

On Sunday, my last day in London, Katie and I hit the shops to spend our gambling money. We spend it on a few things throughout the week, but we both got 35£ to play with as we wished. We checked out H&M, Top Shop (for Katie), and finally headed to Urban Outfitters. Don't know why we thought it would be less expensive that it is in America, but we figured we had money to blow so why not. I ended up getting a cool tweed messenger bag/murse/what have you. Katie didn't find anything desirable so we took the money and decided to save it for later. With only a few hours to go, we rushed to a pub so I could try Pims - a traditional British drink. It was pretty good. Then we stopped at this awesome frozen yogurt place I found, called Snogger. It was delicious. We then took the tube to King's Cross train station and visited the infamous platform 9 3/4. They already had a cart there that was halfway into the wall so we both took pictures pushing it. Hehe.

Overall, my time in London was amazing. I got to see my best friend in the entire world and have her take me around a city that she has been exploring for 6 weeks. I couldn't have asked for a better hostess. I love you, Katie!

My flight home was just fine. I got back later than I originally thought, but it wasn't too bad. At the airport waiting for a train to the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin, I met these two girls that are also doing the same research internship program that I'm doing. They are really cool and I hung out with them all the way until my train to Cottbus left. I ended up decided to skip the first one because I only had 5 minutes to get to it and I wanted to chat more with them and grab a bite for dinner. We hung out for a few hours and talked about our experiences in Germany. I had a lot of fun. They invited me on their trip to Amsterdam in a few weeks which I will probably go on. We will also see each other in Heidelburg in two weeks for our programs conference. I'm excited that I will already know people when I get there.

I ended up getting back to my apartment at 3am. Ugh. I slept for a few hours, went to work, and filled more bottles with 10.0000g of soil. I'm getting sick of soil, but hey, it's paying for me to be here so I guess I shouldn't complain.

I think that roughly covers everything at the moment. I'll work on getting London pictures up in the next few days. Until then check out the Dresden pictures.

I'm home in 34 days. It's going by faster, which is nice. Can't wait to see you all soon.

Until next time.