Adventures in the First Work Week.

Hello! Here is another update of my adventures in Germany!

So I have officially completed my first week of work at my research internship in Germany. Some parts of the week were great, and I enjoyed them very much. Others were not as much as fun (will describe later). So let me give you a run down on the week!

Monday started at the beautiful time of 9:00am. Yes, I said 9:00am. That is when I had to report for work, which couldn't have been a better time in my opinion. I get to sleep in until 8, and by that time, I am already awake to an extent. Thanks to the sun rising at 4:30 in the morning. Monday was a pretty slow day. I first started out helping others load the van for a group of interns that were going out for a few days to get methane and CO2 measurements. After that, I started to learn how to protocolize data. This involves matching the observed data that the interns wrote with the data from the loggers. When this is done, it helps Michael and the others model the trace gases as a function of soil temperature. It's quite interesting, and I cannot wait to see the results from our data later in the summer. After I was taught the ropes of protocolizing data, I attempted it on my own. I barely got half of it done by the end of the day. The reason being is that it was hard to get a pattern down to typing in the soil temperature measurements into the Excel worksheet. Excel doesn't have many keyboard shortcuts to aid in our work. So lots of it is manual clicking and dragging, and typing data in. Lunch on Monday was good as usual. They always seem to have a lot of good stuff for cheap, lunch is only around 3 euros for me everyday. After lunch, we were called to sort roots in the ZALF greenhouse (I'll get some pictures up another time). Sorting roots in my opinion is the worst part about this internship, it's very mind numbing, and I have absolutely no clue what the purpose of the experiment is. It's actually not part of Michael's work, it's an other professor's work. The aggravating thing is that some of the interns have mentioned that there is a lot easier way of measuring the biomass of the corn plants. Sorting roots seems very inaccurate, considering how many small roots there are. It seems to me that if many of these small roots are missed when we collect them, they could add up to a statistically significant difference in the biomass value. This could just be me though, I still have to take a statistics course. Overall though, they probably don't matter much, and this is just me complaining about sorting roots haha.

Tuesday was about the same as Monday. I spent all of the morning attempting to finish my first protocol. By the time lunch rolled around, I was about 75% finished. A typical lunch plan for me involves meeting up with everyone outside House 19. Most of us just call it the warehouse because it pretty much looks like one (hopefully will take pictures of sometime in the future). When we all met up together outside the warehouse, we walked to the kantine as they call it here. While on the way there, Michael told me and Kofi that we would be heading to the field on Thursday to measure methane concentrations in the dark chambers. After lunch we met with Michael, Nathan, and Andrej. (Nathan and Andrej are two interns from Canada). Along with Michael, Nathan and Andrej showed Kofi, Nogul (intern from Kazakhstan), another person who I can't remember, and myself how to operate the clear chambers. The clear chambers measure CO2 concentrations. It's a fairly simple procedure that I'll describe more in depth when I come back from a field trip where we measure CO2, and not just methane. Later on Tuesday I finished up the protocol after Michael released us.

Wednesday, besides the root sorting, was a fun day. It started out with a delicious cup of coffee courtesy of the interns. Despite how boring protocolizing data might seem, it's actually not, and I enjoy it. I don't know if it's because I like entering the data, or if I like to use it as an excuse to listen to some new music! The morning was spent starting a new protocol of data from a site called Dedelow (I think I spelled that correctly). It was nothing special. Lunch was very good, as usual. After lunch we all went to go sort roots for 3 hours before work got out at 4. You're probably wondering what made today fun? Well here it is. Every Wednesday about 10-16 people get together from ZALF and we play soccer (football), at a local park about 2km from ZALF. I was looking forward to it the whole day and couldn't wait to play. I must admit, I'm pretty awful when it comes to offense, but on defense I thought I did pretty decent. Some of the players were very good with their feet, it's crazy what they can do with a ball. I should probably mention that I scored a goal. The game was very fun all throughout. It was a tie game, 6-6, all along until Michael said that next goal wins. Five minutes later, an opposing player kicks it to our goal and our own player accidentally kicks it in, scoring an "own-goal". They win 7-6. Kofi, who was on the opposing team, would not stop giving the guy who scored the own-goal crap the next two days, it was pretty funny!

Thursday started very early, and this was because I was headed towards the field. I got up and arrived to the warehouse at 7:30. We loaded the large ZALF van and we're started our 1.5 hour drive to the field location, which was about 65km NW of Berlin. On the way there we picked up two other interns who took the train from Berlin to a location only 4km away from the site. Once we arrived at the site, we unloaded all the chambers and set them up. We put them on their respective stands on all the sites (we usually split up and did two sites at a time),  and started measuring methane concentrations by opening/closing a valve on these bottles every 20 minutes for one hour. This is about all we did and then we came back to ZALF around 4pm with all the samples. These samples will be analyzed at a later date and their contents will be recorded to develop a model on the respiration of methane from soil. It was a very cool area and there were lots of cows, hopefully I'll be smarter next time and bring my camera. ( I won't forget that tomorrow, I promise!).

I'm going to skip Friday because all I did was sort roots with some interns. We all also had a very nice dinner outside the guesthouse under the beautiful German weather. Enjoyed some beers, some more than others. I just had two, a very strong pilsner, and the other was a beer-cola mix which I have taken a liking to.

On Saturday we were supposed to go to Poland, but a good number of the interns (all but me and one other), had a little too much to drink the previous night, and they decided to sleep in a little. I woke up around 9 to start my day of relaxing! I met Nathan around 10:30 and we started the process of putting Windows 7 on my laptop, which I am fully enjoying now. After getting all that settled, and hanging out with everyone, I retired to my room early to get back in touch with Miranda, whom I miss so much!!

Today was a good day I would say. I went bowling this morning to keep the muscle memory going strong through the summer. I did fairly well, averaging 194 (Would have been higher if I didn't leave 4 pocket 7-10 splits!). After the bowling alley, I made my way towards Alexanderplatz to take some of the beautiful scenery that is the Berlin City-Center. There was a very cool Lego exhibit on one of the displays in Alexanderplatz, there was some crazy creations. I also found a Dunkin Donuts which I will be visiting fairly often now! Click the slideshow on the top left of my blog's home page to view photo's from my trip, and all other photos. After enjoying the donuts, I headed back towards Müncheberg to hang out with the other interns before settling down for the night.

Tomorrow, I'm headed back out towards the field again. I'm excited on one end to be going to the field, but not excited on the weather end of the spectrum. It's supposed to be a little rainy and cloudy, but it won't be all bad. As long as I can stay dry and warm, it will be all good. I'll remember to bring my camera, I promise! I'll try to update at least twice a week from now on out!

Sorry if there is some grammar/punctuation, mistakes. I wrote this fairly quick and I need to be up early tomorrow (It's 12:00am here now). 

Thanks for reading, shoot me an email if you have any questions! wrightdobbs@gmail.com

-Wright

Internship Starts Tomorrow!

Hallo!! Guten Tag! It's been a few days since I have updated my blog, I have been running around the big city of Berlin a lot this weekend. Here's what's been going on the past 3 days since I last updated my blog.

On Friday, I woke up around 7:30 and walked down to one of the buildings here at ZALF where all the chambers are stored, and I helped unload the chambers from the truck with Kofi. Late Thursday, the interns came back from the fields where the research is conducted. They saved most of the unloading for me and Kofi ;-) (just kidding). Here is a random fact about my morning's: it is very easy to get up and get going. The sun rises just after 4:30 here, and by 5:15-5:30, the sun is already shinning through my window, and onto my face. This makes sleeping in a difficult task (it still is possible here though!). After me and Kofi finished unloading all the chambers, we met Mathias. Mathias showed us what we'll be doing when we get back from the field. This involved very heavy (20-30 pound) machines called "loggers." These loggers measure the CO2 concentrations in the chambers every 20 seconds or so I believe. Mathias showed us how to upload the data from the loggers onto a laptop, and then from the laptop to ZALF's servers. I then met Andrej and Nathan. Two environmental science students who just finished their junior year of school at the University of Calgary. The plan for us was to go to Berlin and buy my rail ticket (the quickest and cheapest way to go back and forth to Berlin from Muncheberg), and set up my bank account so I could receive my stipend from ZALF, and DAAD. My rail ticket wasn't cheap at all, but it's worth it. My train ticket to get to Berlin cost me 7.80 euros, that is if you include the bus that took us from ZALF to the train station. This fare is only a one way pass, and when compared to my 90.00 euro monthly pass, you can easily see which is the better deal. So we went to Berlin and bought my rail ticket, and set up my bank account. We also did some sight seeing in Berlin. I just want to say that Berlin from far away doesn't look like a big city. It doesn't have a lot of tall buildings so it's very deceiving. Once you get to the city center and see how large Alexanderplatz is, your perceptions instantly change. I cannot wait to explore more of Berlin later this summer during my weekends off! After setting everything up, we got lunch at a hamburger place south of the city center, and I had a delicious hamburger! After lunch we made our way back towards Muncheberg, as it was late afternoon and we were all tired from walking around the city all day.

The next three days I did not do very much, and used them to explore things I could do in my free time here. Saturday I checked out a bowling alley on the southern side of the city. It was called East-side Bowling, and it looked like a promising spot for me to get in some practice for the off-season. After looking at their prices, (the cheapest was 13 Euro, an hour) I decided to look elsewhere. I must admit though, it was a very cool bowling alley, it was a 20 lane center that was on the 6th floor of an 8-story building. When I was through with that, I rode the Underground to a beer store to buy some alcoholic cider (believe it or not, that's how the original cider was made). I bought two bottles for 8 euros, but when I drank them on Saturday and Sunday, they were definitely worth the price. On Sunday, I woke up around 9 am to go to try my luck at an old brunswick bowling alley in north-east Berlin. On their website they offered a special on Sunday's for 1 euro a game. To my luck, they did offer games at 1 euro per game and I bowled 5 games. Averaging 205.8! :). See picture on left for the bowling alley.

As for today, we had a holiday and I took this day to sleep in until 10am! I didn't do all that much today, just checked some e-mails and chatted with friends. I watched a lot of South Park which thankfully is available in Germany! Tomorrow I will be starting work at my internship, I don't know what's in store, but I'm guessing I'll still be learning the ropes a little more tomorrow so it won't be too difficult! I'll try to get an update in tomorrow.

Auf Wiedersen (I think I spelled that correctly)!!
-Wright

Well, I'm here in Germany!

Well, it's crazy but I'm here in Germany! After a pretty long day of flying, I arrived in Berlin yesterday at 8:15am local time. Although the flight was very long and exhausting (only got about 3 hours worth of sleep, and that is an overestimate), I felt great! We got off the flight by a truck that had stairs built onto it, and from the stairs, we then proceeded to a bus which drove us to the terminal. After I arrived to the terminal, I had to go through customs. Customs was extremely nerve racking because before I left Miami, the Airberlin employee warned me that Germany might not let me into their country because I hadn't booked my return flight yet. All along on the trip over I was stressing that I would be denied entrance into the country. To my relief though, the customs official did not ask to see my return ticket and he picked up his stamp and stamped my passport. Here I come Germany!

After entering the country, I got my luggage and walked out of the terminal to meet Michael (my supervisor for my internship). We then walked to his car and then proceeded towards Müncheberg. Riding along while on the Autobahn was an interesting experience. As you may already know, there is usually no speed limit on the Autobahn. Some people were flying down the highway at speeds most likely well in excess of 110mph. Most of the time, we were going around 90-95mph. It was pretty cool when Michael picked up some speed on a section of the road and we were going almost 110mph! Definitely want to do that on my own sometime. When we got to Müncheberg, Michael showed me around ZALF which stands for: Leibniz-Zentrums für Agrarlandschaftsforschung. I haven't taken any pictures of ZALF, but it's a pretty cool place. There are many buildings that research is conducted in,  and in each of these buildings there is a lot of analyzation equipment. Later on in the internship, I will be using the gas sample analyzer. I'll explain what it does in a later blog. After I was shown the property at ZALF, I got lunch at the cafeteria with Michael, Zachary (a student with a PhD working at ZALF), and Kofi (graduate student from Ghana). I had a weird kind of scrambled eggs and potatoes. The eggs weren't really what we think of as scrambled, they were more like hard-boiled eggs that were chopped up and put into a sauce.

After lunch, I was given a quick safety briefing of the area by someone at ZALF. Then I completed some paperwork with Michael and Kofi, and after that, we were released for the day. When released I went to go check-in to where I am staying: The ZALF Guesthouse. It's a very nice single room apartment with a separate bathroom. Not a bad deal considering that when all said and done, the rent with everything included will be a little under 200 Euros. When I was all settled in, I walked to the grocery store to get a little food. This was an interesting experience as all my selections were made by looks because I couldn't decipher a single word of German! I'll remember my dictionary next time. The side effects of just going on looks led to me buying much more coffee than I needed. When I thought I was buying coffee creamer, I bought instant coffee instead. Next time I will remember my dictionary for sure. After I came back from the market, I unloaded all my food and got ready for bed as I had to be up at 5:30am this morning.

This morning I woke up at 5:30 and had some instant coffee to get going. At 6:25 I meet up with Kofi outside the guesthouse to walk to the bus stop. From the bus stop, the bus would take us to the train so we could meet Michael. We got on the train just before 7 and arrived in Lichtenburg to meet Michael who would take us to the field site we we're going to today. The train ride was fast, and the high amount of people who took public transportation from such a small city was great to see. It makes me wish that public transportation was promoted more in the States. From Lichtenberg, we drove about 90 kilometeres south to a state run forest. On the way there we stopped at a market called LIDL to get some lunch and drinks. They just happened to have a bakery there and they made donuts. With myself having the nickname Donut Dobbs, I had to grab some donuts. I got three donuts at the bakery and then went next door to buy some water. Some of the containers they sell water in are a lot different compared to the States. They sell water in a very tall and slender 1.5 liter bottle. When we finished taking care of everything in the grocery store, we headed to the forest to help some soil scientists with their research from the University of Berlin. We didn't really do much today out in the field, but Michael did walk us around the 4 sites established at this location. He showed us the places where the chambers to measure the trace gas emissions were placed. He also showed us a very cool 50m structure in the middle of the forest. The structure, which costs a little more than 500,000 Euros is used to analyze CO2 concentrations 10 times a sec above the forest canopy (that's a lot of data!). The structure also measures temperature at the surface and the top of the tower, albedo, incoming solar radiation, and the solar radiation under the canopy. Michael said this structure will be used in combination with all the results found here to observe patterns in CO2 emissions form the forest. One cool fact about this experiment going on here is that not only are CO2 emissions being analyzed, many other research projects are going on here in close coordination with Michael's. This project has only been in existence for 4-6 years, but the data they are collecting will hopefully reveal many new discoveries! I am glad to be a part of this! If you want to learn more about what we're doing check out this Powerpoint.

Tomorrow I'm headed back to Berlin with Nathan (one of the interns), to get my bank account set up and buy my rail pass (so much cheaper than buying individual tickets). I get a three day weekend this week! It's a national holiday on Monday!

There are so many details that are left out in this blog, and I will try to include as many as I can, and as many as time will let me type! Sorry for any spelling/grammatical errors in this blog. I had to write this pretty quick! ENJOY!!!

-Wright

Four Days and Counting!

Hello again! Well it is getting very close to that day that I've been looking forward to ever since early March! I have yet to do any packing, as I've been spending most of my time enjoying my last few days in the States. Tomorrow I'm going to start getting ready for real. I'm going to head to Target and other stores tomorrow and Saturday to get important things like: a power converter (they don't use 120V outlets and Europe, and my electronics will all get fried over there), a few more clothes, and all the necessary preparations for the trip. I also need to finish up some last minute paperwork and copy important documents that I'll need just in case I lose them.

One of my favorite, but sometimes not my favorite, parts about preparing for this trip has been navigating the Berlin public transportation system. The trains that run daily in Berlin have been in existence since 1924, and continue to run flawlessly today. Lucky for me, I will have the luxury of navigating this complex system of rails. For most of the day, I have been trying to determine how I'm going to get to.....ah wait! I just found a ride guide that's very nicely laid out! Well it's good news that I shouldn't be getting lost here, I hope. Here's the ride guide. When I leave on Tuesday, I will land in Tegal Airport Wednesday morning and will take a bus to the main subway lines, and then I will take a train to a station called Litchenburg where I will board a train that goes to my final destination in Müncheberg. This shouldn't be too difficult, but because I lack any experience in German, it adds an interesting dynamic.

In case you're wondering, this is where I will be staying the first two weeks or so before I can hopefully move into Berlin. 

In other news, I'm going to the Florida Aquarium in Tampa on Monday with Miranda (my girlfriend), just before I leave the U.S. It's a very awesome place indeed, you should check it out one day!

I'll try to have an update on Tuesday when I'm sitting in the Orlando airport waiting for my flight. Otherwise, my next update will be from Germany Wednesday morning!!!!

Stay safe!

-Wright