Hello!

I must say, it's been a very quiet week since I last updated my blog. I am hoping everyone had a safe and fun July 4th holiday! I celebrated like the Germans do on July 4th, they called it:  "Work-Day."
This week is starting off slow too. I'll describe some of the events of the last week and a half.

Monday (July 4th) was spent in the warehouse working on protocols. On a typical week, if I'm not in the field, I am sorting roots, sorting grass, matching data written by hand to the data loggers, or helping with various other research projects around ZALF. Tuesday morning was spend doing the same thing. In the morning I helped load the trailer for a group of interns who were going to a field site to measure methane. After they left, I spent the rest of the day doing protocols. I was going to go on this field trip, but I decided to hold off for a little as my back was still a little tight and I didn't want to risk injuring it further and destroying my upcoming bowling season which I am looking forward to very much. 

I did go on a field trip this past week though. I was scheduled to go to Landgraben on Wednesday and Thursday. Landgraben, which is in far northern Germany, is a farming region  that is a lot more wet than the other locations we measure at. Some places in Landgraben are easily 2 feet underwater and if you don't wear boots you're getting wet. If you want to, you could go barefoot through the waters, but that's probably not the best idea. One, it's safe to assume that there are probably numerous types of bacteria living in the soil that aren't too friendly to humans, and second, I've been told that there are blood-sucking leeches in the water. Luckily for me, I had a very dry location. I only had to watch my footing when going back to the main site, and I did not need boots.  It took us almost 3 hours to get there (which is  long time compared to most of the locations we travel to). When we got there we unloaded all the materials and got straight to work. Day 1 wasn't too bad, but Landgraben is one of the harder places to measure for sure. One of the sites has three extensions, plus the chamber on top. The height of the chambers and extensions together was 10-11 feet tall.  Most of Day was spent on my dry-site and trying to stay out of the sun, and maybe work on a little tan to make up for the Florida sun while making measurements of CO2. The day was pretty normal, and very hot (for Germany), and filled with a little surprise at the end. While attempting to turn the van around, one of the interns accidentally got the van stuck in the mud of the field, and we spent an hour tracking down a farmer to pull us out after an hour of fruitlessly trying to push the van out ourselves. After work, we settled down in the hostel and everyone took showers and we then had some delicious pizza under a beautiful sunset, a nice beer, and enjoyed the company of a mother cat and her kitten wrestling in the grass around us. I, of course, had to play with the kitten for a little! Sorry Miranda, I couldn't keep him.  Day 2 started early we arrived at the field at 5am to start measurements under a tremendously foggy morning. I believe the visibility was  a small 500 feet. We weren't able to get many measurements for most of the day beacuse an intern was feeling a little ill and she had to visit the hospital, all the while the clouds were preventing us from getting measurements in the middle range of the PAR-spectrum. Later in the day the clouds, but by that time the PAR was already up to values we retrieved the previous day. The rest of the day was spend running around making dark chambered measurements (dark chamber measurements don't depend on PAR), cutting grass for samples, and taking soil samples. The hard part of Day 2 wasn't taking measurements and running around, it was running around in the mud, and probably taking measurements with the 3 extension site. Mud is not the easiest thing to walk in, it is very viscous. In addition to taking some dark chamber measurements, we also took methane measurements at all the sites. After all this, we left to head back to Muncheberg.

Friday was a relaxed day, spent most of it protocolising data, and towards the end of the day, I helped sort some of the grass that we collected at the field sites.

Some of the interns went to Berlin Friday night but I decided to hang back. I loved going out on an all night adventure in Berlin with them the last time, but I really wanted to get some rest and spend a relaxing evening with a movie, good dinner, and a refreshing beer to unwind from the week. Saturday I walked around Berlin to explore the city a little bit. The highlight of my day had to come from a dance group called: "Street Life Gang." They put on a great performance, that was very entertaining (see video below).

Sunday I spent the earlier part of the day with Javier. Me and Javier went bowling at the bowling alley I found when I first came here. It was my first time bowling in over three weeks because of my back. I didn't bowl very well, but it was good to get back on the lanes. My back gave me ZERO trouble; a blessing. Afterwards, I came back to attempt to help with a event ZALF was putting on. The event, called Turen Auf, was based on a popular children's show here that has been on the air for almost 40 years. The event was all about promoting science to the Germany's youngest minds. For our part of the event, kids would go under an automatic transparent chamber and we would close them in it. While they were in the chamber, a screen was set up in front of them so they could see the CO2 levels rise in chamber because of their breathing. After 2 or 3 minutes, we would raise the chamber and then give the kids a CO2 certificate that had the amount of CO2 they admitted written on the sheet. It was a pretty cool experience. I only wish that I had been there for a longer part of the event. Apparently there were many thousands of people here. After the event, all us interns got together and we walked 2km to a lake to go for a little swim. The lake was a little chilly, but it did make for a refreshing swim on an otherwise warm afternoon. I will bring my picture the next time I go to the lake. When we got back from the lake, I retired to my room to take a shower and watch the U.S. Woman's soccer team win a crazy game against Brazil. Just watch the replays of Wambach's header to tie the game in the 122nd minute.

The past two days, there hasn't been much going on, just a lot of computer work with Excel. I was scheduled to go to the field on Thursday and Friday, but I was told today that it might not happen because of a low pressure system that's expected to move in starting late tomorrow. It will bring clouds and some rain that will make measuring CO2 almost a worthless process (clear sky and sunshine is the optimal condition for measuring CO2).

Next week I'm going to Heidelberg, I'll have more details about that later this week.