That time I almost chloroformed myself....

Lab story of the week. I was doing an extraction last week with chloroform and almost knocked myself out with the fumes. Now we do work in a hood so that we don't inhale but I had it pretty open because it's hard to do extractions when it's down since you need to shake the separatory funnel.  When I opened the bottle to pour some in, I got a big whiff of it and definitely felt a little light-headed. I pulled the hood down though and that solved the problem. Lesson learned. I also broke my first round bottom flask.

This past week I continued to work in the lab like usual.  On Friday, all docentes met with Professor Lehr to talk about the research they've been working on.  Since I've been doing a lot of the experimentation for the past two weeks, I got to give our little spiel. Didn't go too horribly. I'm still getting used to all the chemistry terms in German. The pronunciation throws me sometimes.

Picture time! I spent my first weekend with our family friends that live right outside of Muenster.  They have been wonderful in helping me get adjusted to the day to day life and taking me to see different things around town.  Friday afternoon, I took a walk around the Botanical Gardens behind the Schloss, which is an old castle but houses a lot of the University offices now. Saturday we went to the Aasee (the big lake), stopped by the three places my parents have lived, and Muehlenhof (an outdoor museum).

In the background you can see two of the many cathedrals of Muenster.

My parents' first apartment together

Last Thursday, I went to the zoo! We have a "brother dorm" on the next street over and sometimes they host events/plan trips together.  This time it was a night tour of the zoo. Unfortunately since it was so late, a lot of the animals were asleep but we're planning on going back during the day sometime.  It poured right before we were supposed to leave so it was rather wet and a little cold compared to the beautiful weather earlier that week but we still had a lot of fun and I met some more people. The amount of times I've had to explain my life story is ridiculous.

This past weekend, I took the train to Marl where my aunt and uncle live.  My cousin was home for the weekend so we went to Duesseldorf and did some shopping. I had my first doener, which is a delicious Turkish fast food sandwich with either chicken or lamb, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and a cream dressing.  Delicious. It reminded me a lot of churascoes from Guatemala.  After taking the train back on Sunday, I took a nice long bike ride to Kinderhaus, a little town a few kilometers north of Muenster.  It is on the list my parents made me because that's where they got married! Quick history fact: Kinderhaus (translation: children's house) originated as a hospital for lepers to stay at.  Since they had to be kept away from the healthy public, they went there to get treatment. There was a little museum to look through that had all sorts of information about it.

That's the church!

I love the Fachwerk-style architecture- the white with brown posts and a red roof. It's typical German Ruhrgebiet-farmland

And here a bunch of random pictures that I've taken over the past few weeks. I enjoy getting lost wandering around town on my bike or walking and then I find these random places.

There was a beach volleyball tournament set up in front of the Schloss this weekend. Casual.

The little kitchen on my hall

Prinzipalmarkt-an area with a lot of shops and it's just beautiful.

The flat part on the left is for you to wheel your bike up/down. It's rather handy.

And one last one- this is my new second-favorite dessert, ice cream still being the first. Strawberries from the market and vanilla vla.  Vla is a sort of pudding from Holland and it's so so so good. 

The First Few Days

 I have arrived and survived the first few days! I haven't taken very many pictures yet so this one's a little word heavy but pictures will come soon! Future posts will be less words and more pictures.

  

Obligatory sunrise from the plane picture

I landed on Saturday afternoon and went straight to my Oma's house. We went to church-the same one I was baptized at when I was a baby.  They’ve redone the inside since the last time I was there but this year is the 100-year anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone.  I always find it fascinating that the churches are so old over here compared to the churches in the US that are completely rebuilt every 30 years. The chapel is over 1,000 years old.

The church (Picture from here)

My grandmother's backyard

Sunday evening I moved into my room at the Studentinnenburse, which is a dorm-like building run by nuns.  There is no “on-campus” housing in Europe in general.  The university itself is kind of spread out across the city making dorms kind of difficult.  Instead you have student housing like this one- sometimes organized by the city, sometimes private.  There are also WGs (Wohngemeinschaften).  They are normal apartments that groups of students rent together, very similar to what we have in the US.  You can also rent a single room apartment with a kitchen and bathroom but those can be on the more expensive side.  Where I’m living I have a small room – and I mean small- to myself and share a bathroom and kitchen with the hall of girls.  I believe there are 15 of us on the hall? Everyone has a cupboard and a shelf in the fridge for all their stuff. 

Monday morning began my first day in the lab.  We had coffee with a few of the other professors, doctoral students, and lab assistants.  And for now, when I saw “we,” that will generally mean Helmut (my supervisor) and I.  The Pharma Institute is a brand-new building- only a year old- so they have a lot of fancy new instruments.  Lunch was at the Mensa which is cafeteria style. You can go upstairs or downstairs depending on what you like of what’s on the menu.  It’s buffet style: you grab a tray, a plate of the main dish that you wanted and then three side dishes. It was better than JMU and JMU has pretty good food.  During the afternoon, Helmut teaches the lab of the 3^rd Semester of the Pharmacy students so I watched/helped/took part in that.  They’re in Instrumental right now so I tagged along with two groups learned a bunch about GC (gas chromatography) and IC (ion chromatography).  Tuesday we did essentially the same thing, but they rotated instruments so I learned about HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography) and IR (infra-red spectroscopy).  For each instrument, they had a different assignment, usually involved developing a calibration curve with 5 differently concentrated solutions and then some unknowns that they have to qualify and quantify based on that.  They record their answers in a little book and then get a certain amount of points based on how correct they were.  Within 3% error is 4 points, within 7 is 3, etc.  By the end of the semester they need to have a certain amount of points to pass.  So much of the German university system is so different so I’ll do an entire post dedicated to that as I gather more information. 

The Pharma Institute building

I started my first synthesis on Wednesday! So I am interning for Helmut, who is a doctoral student writing his thesis.  His research is around this molecule which has the potential to act as an FAAH inhibitor.  It has been determined that the molecule is effective so now it's a matter of improving it/varying small bits of it to maximize its efficiency. [skip this if you're not interested in science-y details] We heated the reagents in an oil bath, TLCed the heck out of it to figure out if it actually reacted, roto-vap, extraction, dry on silica, roto-vap and then the best part. We had a demo on an instrument that runs a column for you! You can buy pre-packed columns or pack your own but then you hook up your solvents, press some buttons, and separates your sample. It has a UV detector that detects different peaks and will fill a new test tube.  Very expensive of course but we have it for a few days to try out so we ran some of our sample through and it separated it pretty well.  Tomorrow we'll run a few columns by hand and see how they compare.  

The lab

A little bit of lifestyle: 

- I ride a bike to University every day.  Sometimes I take unplanned detours on the way back but that's ok. I get to see some of the city that way.  The amount of bikes is ridiculous. There's bike lanes and bike stoplights.  I usually take the Promenade, which is basically this big path that makes a ring around the inner part of the city.  There's trees on either side and people go running there too.  Horrible explanation but there's a picture below.

The Promenade- taking a picture while biking is difficult

- There is a little grocery store on my way back from the university where I get my groceries.  No plastic bags-everyone brings their own so I just put everything in my backpack.  It kind of limits me to that amount but it's better that way. It's on my way so just buying what I need for dinner for a few nights has been working just fine.  

One side of the grocery store

- It is cold and rainy. Not the summer weather I'm used to at all.  It's supposed to be around 70 next week and everyone is going nuts. There is a saying in Muenster that says, roughly translated, "In Muenster, either the church bells are ringing or it's raining, and when both at the same time, it's Sunday." Fortunately I have not been caught in a downpour while riding my bike but it's bound to happen. I'm getting good use of my raincoat and I have rain pants just in case.

- There's churches galore, hence the other part of that saying. There's at least 15 in die Aldstadt (~Old City, the innermost part) alone.

That's all for now! Sorry it's kind of long...a lot of general information to get out at once.  Please let me know of any specific questions or things you'd want me to include in posts.