The weather has been rather bad for the past few weeks - cold and snowy.  It's snowed about every day, which, to be fair, is much better than raining everyday, but in my wisdom I assumed that it just would not get this cold.  Lies.  Since I work on the top of a hill (Germans call it a mountain, but this is a lie) I get to walk through snow and ice to work.  But it is not so bad, and is at least nice to look at. 

Marburg in the snow is also a pretty cool experience - I went walking through in a light drizzle (or the snowy equivalent) and the city was deserted, so I got to have the cramped alleys and old half-timbered houses all to myself.  There are lots of "hidden" city wall ruins and old churches, so taking the camera was a good idea.  Lots of fun (and overly dark and gloomy) wintry black and white images resulted.  Check the gallery. 

This weekend Erica and I went to Wetzlar to look at the Weihnachtsmarkt and see the town and such.  I can say with some measure of confidence that it is the only city in the world to offer a free night-vision telescope (not kidding!).  However, the cathedral is the town was somewhat lacking - they wanted to updgrade their romanesque basillica (some saint is buried there, but there are a lot of saints and it wasn't an important one) to a gothic cathedral to keep up with Marburg (yay!) and Limburg (another town in the area, orange/white cathedral in gallery).  However, the city went bankrupt, so they made it halfway through one tower and part of the shell before having to stop work, leaving it looking half destroyed.  It would appear that not all Germans are industrious.  This lack of industry carries into their Weihnachtsmark - most cities have individual mugs, but Wetzlar just stole some from Darmstadt and stickered over the Darmstadt part, hoping that no one would notice.  Once again, some pics are in the gallery. 

Work is going much better, there is a chance that I will get to go to a conference on methanotrophs "somewhere in the Netherlands" (my bosses exact wording).  All I know is that the town is apparently unpronouncable, and if you've heard Dutch you know that this is likely.  The conference would talk about the microbial of the methanotrophs, and thankfully I would not have to present.  When I do get (knock on wood) presentable results, there is a chance I can go to the FEMS conference in Uppsala, Sweden.  Good times. 

Sorry that this has taken so long to actually update - I have been without internet for around a month (except at work) and it is good to be in touch with the world again.  I had to move out of my host family's house and am now in student housing.  The less said about my housing situation, the better, but at least it's cheap.  Cooking for myself is also a new and strange situation, but I have managed so far - lots of pasta, eggs, bread, with some cheese and meat thrown in when I'm feeling adventurous.  The lab continues to go well - I'm having problems extracting DNA, which should be simple, but apparently methanotrophs are much more difficult than most bacteria, and my supervisor said that a two-month period with no results is normal.  But I'm able to contribute in other ways (sequence analysis, phylogenetic tree making, and proofing manuscripts) so it's all good.   The lab is also much nicer than I am used to (no offense to former lab peoples) as they just have soooo much money.  The safety rules are moderately annoying tho (I do not need armor plating to get liquid N2). 

The weather is not so good here - getting used to endless sun and warmth in CA was definitely a BAD IDEA - it has already snowed once, I wake up to frost, and it will snow again three of four times this weekend.  Also, the sun apparently does not shine in Germany for the months of October or November, but they say that it gets better in December.  The towns are already starting to ramp up for Christmas and the Christmas markets, and so far it's been very... Germanic.  Everything is already planned and organized, and workers are busy hanging lights and setting up booths.  There will be an epic light/fireworks show to open the market the day after Thanksgiving, so I'm looking forward to that. 

All goes well with Erica too, we get to see each other every weekend and are only an hour and a half by train apart - and she lives in a big(ger) city (Mainz) with a completely different history (Roman vs. Medieval), religion (Catholic vs. Lutheran), location (river flatland vs. toooo many hills) so I get to see a nice mix of Germany. 

The university system is different here too, but in more subtle ways.  Firstly, its free (and the students protested HARDCORE against 500 Euro fines... I was not amused) and secondly, they have to apply to a program - so they could be assigned to a university not of their choice that will take them into that program.  So no changing majors for them!  And they tend to stay in school forever, as their parents are legally required to support them until they are 27 (not even kidding!).  But I've found some classes - a really cool one on virology and parasitology and one about German dialects and they are going well.

Public Health School applications are finally finished!  I ended up applying to the University of Washington, the University of Michigan, Columbia, Emory, and the University of Alabama Birmingham.  I had to decide against John's Hopkins - it was a hard decision, but I would not be eligible for a Master's in Public Health - only a Master's of Science, and I felt that I should go for the MPH, as it will be useful for both an M.D. and a Ph.D., and as I'm still undecided I'd hate to commit myself so early. Decisions should come in anytime between next week (most likely no) and Feb, but more likely right before or after Christmas, so keep checking.    

That's about all of the interesting things that have happened recently, I'll try to post more next week/starting on a semi-regular (for me at least) schedule, so keep checking if you have interest in such things.