So I have arrived in Deutschland in one piece--no appendage or luggage missing in the process. The process being flying of course! Can I just say that I think it's amazing when planes have two levels? Lufthansa was a pretty spiffy airplane with bathrooms (excuse me, i mean washrooms) on the lower level! how splendid. what made the flight over here even more awesome is that no one was sitting next to me! So I definitely first-classed it in economy with my legs up and everything.
First sighting of this fabled country full of German peopleOk, so maybe the plane ride over wasn't actually that out of the ordinary...so maybe I will wow you with where I'm going to live for the next 11 weeks!
What a cute house! that's my dorm? OH SNAP
my room! Take that Next House.So I'm staying in this international graduate dorm, which is actually a really cute cottage thing on Katharinestrasse (the street name!! the pronunciation of which will be the death of me. I cannot get lost here because I doubt I will be able to even ask for help!)
Yesterday, Dr. Shastri and his wife gave me a walking tour of the entire city which was gorgeous. They both know so much about the history of each building and the city that my mind was about to implode with all the interesting facts they were throwing at me! About the cobblestones, the black forest, the cathedral, and the different Catholic bishops (which is crazy they knew so much about since Dr. Shastri is Hindu and his wife is Lutheran)!
Where Belle sang "quiet town in a little village" you only THOUGHT Beauty and the Beast was set in France, didn't you?
Can places like this exist in real life?
The Cathedral. The builders really did a nice design job where the light is so beautiful at the ceiling and the front.
Just as Beautiful!I actually arrived on a holiday so the town was practically empty as we walked around! Dr. Shastri and his wife took me to a Chinese restaurant (haha) for lunch and then an Italian ice cream place (haha x2) afterwards. I love listening to both of them talk to each other and trying to tell me more about a certain thing/place than the other. It's a friendly banter/competition and both of them know so much about everything!
Even though I've only been here for a short while and have yet to become really familiar with Freiburg, I already am in love with the town. After lunch, Prasad and Ulrike brought me back to my dorm and after insisting "are you sure you will be alright" and "do you know your way around Frieburg" and me replying "yes yes, of course!" and "it's a pretty small town, I'm pretty sure I won't get lost," they left to go home and I promptly went back out to explore more and of course...get lost. After about two frantic hours circling around the center town (it really is quite small....) I made it back to my dorm and slept for 12 hours straight. In my defense, I lost half a day in the flight over. I can't wait till Monica gets here! I think we'd have a ton of fun running around this place (and also to Switzerland and France!) We'd also increase the Asian population in the city by a significant amount.
It's odd coming from Hawaii and MIT where the Asian population was always the majority. This is the first time I've ever walked down the street and actually only seen white people! No one really cares at all, but it's definitely a new experience for me! Also, everyone here is BEAUTIFUL...like no jokes beautiful. Hopefully at the end of 2.5 months I don't develop too bad of a complex being surrounded by Heidi Klums!
My Project
I'm pretty excited about starting my project in Prasad's lab. Because he wanted to wait till we met face to face to really tell me about what I will be doing, I was basically in the dark since we first set this summer up. Mystery Revealed!
So my project will basically be identifying new markers for early breast cancer detection. Prasad wants to eventually develop a new imaging technique for earlier breast cancer diagnosis that will be more accurate and less buggy than MRI and mammography. I'm really excited about this and was slightly bulldozed over today where Prasad was throwing out all this information about cancer development! Hopefully I can do some prelim lit research tonight and catch up on my cell bio and cancer stuff that I haven't touched for a year. (nuts! I should have brought that Lodish textbook with me in my suitcase) All in all, the stripped down goal this summer for me I think is to develop a way to induce DCIS cells in vitro specifically for our studies and then run protein expression analysis on these cells. I'm pretty excited to learn how to make 3D cell cultures since my previous cell work was only dish and 2D. I've also never had the chance to develop a project on my own so this certainly will be an interesting experience! Ok, my mind is still trying to process all this information and I have a ton of stuff to (re)learn on so for now, Guten Abend!
