German Letter 3

Gruß dich! (Greetings to you)

So…I guess a good bit of you are preparing to go back to school soon, I know that the techies go back tomorrow. o.O Wow, I guess the summer really has passed by quickly (sehr schnell!). I mean, for me it’s just another weekend but I guess that’s what happens when you start working. Or at least kind of, for me. It doesn’t really seem like working, just, going into lab for another long day. Which is typical of school…except with everyone speaking pretty good English. Heh, anyway.

Hi again! Yep, still here in Germany. I was looking over the dates with my boss on Friday (how long I had been here, and how long I still have left) and I have been here for 3.5 months, with another 4 months to go. Halfway there. Oh boy.

I’ve never done a short internship before, or at least, without the intention of going back, so I really don’t know how people just do 2 or 3 month internships. I mean, I’m finally making real progress, and able to stack experiments back to back. And it took, I’d say, 2-3 months. (Hm…albeit if it was in the US learning the equipment it might have shortened the time considerably.)

I understand why people were always looking for co-ops now. Well I mean I always understood before, but now I understand, more fully? Haha. Well my boss (and his boss) seem excited, that’s to say the least, that I will still be here for a while. I guess it’s because I’m not working on the same projects as them, so while they all have deadlines to fulfill, I just get to do basic research, and experiment with whatever variables whereas they have to, …hm, do their job? :P

So work is good. I really like what I’m doing. (So because some of you have asked.) Quick briefing/overview without giving away too many secrets :P. Still working in downstream processing (purifying your product). I’ve been lipidizing ( adding lipids) protein (apolipoproteinA-1, aka apoA-1) in the hopes of creating HDL (high desity lipoprotein, good cholesterol, takes fatty deposits and excretes it). The hope is to be able to inject this into people with a high risk for cardiovascular diseases and decrease the fatty deposits in their blood vessels.
So my work has to do with creating HDL and then purifying it. (usually the starting material I get is pretty dirty, or unpure, nothing you want to put into a human body.) The main method being chromatography (separating different liquids). It’s pretty cool because I had never worked with chromatography before, and only briefly knew the concept. Anyway, I’ve been playing around with variables like: lipid:protein ratio, incubation time, diff. columns, etc. Each “experiment” takes about 3 or so days, and then depending on how much I want to purify it, could take a total of around a week.
But like I said, I’ve learned to stack my experiments, deeming me quite useful.  Plus I get to listen to music which always makes the time go by fast when I need to read articles. I found out on Thursday and Friday though that they blocked gmail which makes time go by … considerably slower. I’m hoping it’s just the computer I was on though, and that maybe on Monday the restriction will be lifted, … I hope.

So for the rest of the day, what have I been doing in the tiny town of Penzberg. Hm, not sure. Time has been going by fast though. I feel like I rarely ever have time to do things, but that may be because I recently hm… how to phrase this … found my American outlet? Haha. So my friend showed me his tv/movie collection, and I have been busy catching up on: Season 1 of OC, Season 4 and 5 of House. Plus I have been borrowing some books from people, and have caught up on Twilight Book 4, and Harry Potter Book 6 and 7. It’s been great. Plus movies to watch.

But besides that, I’ve been out and about. (Although, sadly, I only have 5 more vacation days left, and have 3 days of train travel left on my German Rail Pass. I’ve been looking at tickets for England and they are around 100+ for sometime in November so that I think is about 70% certain. Not sure where else.)

- 4 days in Valencia, Spain
- 5 days in Nice & Cannes, France (1 day in Monaco)

Since I live so close to Munich, then I get to go to nearby places like Salzburg (Austria) and Fueseen (where Schloss Neuschwanstein, the orig. Disney-like castle) quite easily. I’ve been to Berlin twice, Aachen (west Germany) to visit Leslie. Perhaps someday to Dresden (east Germany) to visit Leon. And of course soon Jorge will be in Zurich so have to go visit him as well. 

For pictures of trips please visit: picassa.com/lilkarenn

Ohhh, and while I was in Nice, I was rooming in a hostel with an Australian and New Zealander and I got my first taste of vegemite. O.O is what I have to say, hard to describe, like salty, solidified soy paste. I always wanted to try it ever since I heard it in the Land Down Under song, hehe. I’m glad I get to experience so many different cultures while I’m here, I’ve been very ignorant of the European cultures untilj/still now.

Hmm, I still can’t speak German. I don’t really count simple sentences when it takes me 30 seconds to think of one. I feel like I just don’t know enough verbs yet, and honestly, how often do you use … I don’t Know, eat or drink. Hm, okay a lot but still. Maybe it’s time to have more convos with myself and just try to translate that to German. But, I can read it OK, lots of lucky guesswork. I still hope I will be able to speak it by the time I get back. If anything, I’ll take classes when I get back so at least not all will be lost.

Yeah, I’m getting held back a lot by the vocabulary. And the desire to speak with perfect grammar which is easier said than done. First of all, all the nouns have a gender (masculine, feminie, neutral), which is one more than Spanish (masculine, feminine). Then after that, you have to remember their plural forms. In English we have only one (kind of two, I guess). Most nouns because plural with just a simple –(e)s. In Chinese I don’t even think we have one. (That’s ok, we get them with the tones haha.) But in German, there are 8! Acht! (ahhhh….hahahha.)

Plus I’m learning about the different kinds of err….sentences, idk. It’s easier to understand texts and dialogues now, because I don’t have to worry about the verb order. E.g. The imperative (command) form is the same as in the infinitive (not conjugated) for the Polite he/she/it, but the order of the pronoun changes, which is how you can tell whether it’s a command or sentence. Or maybe you just bark the order out. Heh.

That being said, I am kind of learning German from friends. I have two friends that I take turns have German/English and German/Chinese lessons with. Pretty neat huh? I feel so bilingual (even though I am well on my way to becoming quad-llingual)! Hee… There’s Holger who wants to improve his English (it’s pretty good I think, except for certain unused phrases that he just needs to get rid of, no accent really.), so whenever we meet we just talk about idioms and such, commonly used phrases. And then there’s Michael (pronounced Mik-ha-el) who wants to learn Chinese so that is starting completing from scratch although he tried studying from a book earlier before so he knows bits and pieces, but has trouble connecting relationships, which is what I’m here for!

It’s a funny thing about languages, and hearing what they think is appropriate English. A lot of times people will say to me, “let’s make an appointment at 18:00 at the café” or “make a picture.” Or hearing people translate Oktoberfest into “pi jiu party.” (Chinese for beer party). Hmmm. Ja. It’s kind of contagious though, I find that my English is slipping a lot of timesf, and I have trouble recalling words. >.<

I … hate when some things are lost in translation. I was watching the Simpsons in German, and they did not copy Homer’s D’OH over. I was pretty shocked, I mean, that has to be the trademark of the Simpsons but it was just..I don’t know what it was, because I didn’t hear it. Blegh.

Hmm, I am used to typing on the German keyboard now? Although, it has kind of affected my typing at home on my laptop (whoa did I just refer to Germany as home? In a way, it kind of is, my 3rd home, tech would be 2nd). Yeah… so now I make a few mistakes on my German keyboard, and a few mistakes on my English keyboard. Oh man, I was typing an email on my friend, Celine’s keyboard, and it was French. Oh that one is so messed up. The a is all the way on the 1st row (? The one above the home key row) where the Q usually is … and and … the M was on the main row. Simply awful. I’ve gotten used to the Y and Z mix-up on the German keyboard though.

OHHHH! Neat neat fact. Did you know that when er, some words that look like the same as their English counterpart but do/don’t mean the same, occurs in German as well. It happened all the time in Spanish and most other romantic languages I imagine (I forgot the word…I keep thinking conjugate but I don’t think it is. Maybe cognate….grr…) So this is seen most neatly with the cardinal numbers. Oh dude! And North American and Brit English have different meanings for the numbers!

Interesting German Cardinal Numbers - Numbers over 1 000 000

German N. America English Brit English
1 000 000 (1E6) eine Million One million One million
1 000 000 000 (1E9) eine Milliarde One billion A thousand million
1 000 000 000 000 (1E12) eine Billion One trilllion One billion

The million and billion is different! So cool. Well, if you know it’s cool, and since you read my emails, then you do know!

Oh dude I have to go back to the german keyboard again. So I am really proud that I know certain shortcuts in German, hehee! Yes they’ different. Okay well not the vital ones like ctrl+x,c,v,y,z, but the next important ones like bold and underline! Nein, not the same! To bold is ctrl + shift + F (yeah they put too many shortcuts on the keyboard so they have to go into overdrive with ctrl + shift), and italitcs is ctrl + shift + K. and…. Underline is still U. I forgot what the german word for bold (F---) and italitcs (K----) are, but I know the shortcut works. Hehe.

OK that’s enough for now. I miss you all, and think of you often. Let me know how you’re doing 

Mit freundlichen Grüßen (with friendly greetings).
Karen