And on the third try, I made quinoa.

If you've seen my Facebook status, then you know that I tried, and failed, to cook quinoa on an electric stove. Twice.

But I finally got the hang of it, and have now successfully made it more than once!

I'm taking pride in the everyday successes

I live about a five minute walk from the Elbe River, and this was a view I had one night on my run. So peaceful.

Also, here are some pictures to show you typical German weather. It rains a lot here, but it also changes really quickly. These next three pictures were taken from my office window over the course of an hour: 

I also had my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and seriously, it was such an excellent day. Thank you to everyone who called, texted, ate cake, posted videos to my wall, and drank a beer with me. I feel so lucky to have people all over the world who would take the time to make sure my day is special. Here are a few snapshots...

My grandma's birthday is two days before mine, and we usually celebrate together, so I couldn't let her day pass without wishing her a happy birthday. She just turned 80, and yes, she has an iPad and loves to use FaceTime. My grandma is cooler than yours.

My BFFF (best fattie friend forever) called me from Davis. It was midnight her time and 9 AM my time. Still best friends across nine time zones. =)

I made chocolate-covered pretzels as Valentine's Day goodies for all of my co-workers. They were very confused about why I brought treats and even more skeptical about the idea of chocolate and pretzels together. But they all agreed that they were darn tasty.

And my co-workers brought me a little cake! We took a break during the afternoon to share it and drink some coffee.

My roommate bought me a little gift, which now sits happily on my windowsill. 

Cake round 2: Juli and her friends Boris and Jessica met me in the city and treated me to some more cake and coffee. =)

Immediately afterward I joined Conny and her mom, Sabine, for dinner. The original plan was Italian, but we all forgot about those lovey-dovey couples who actually go out for dates on Valentine's Day. I seriously forget every year that restaurants are crowded on that day.

So we ate tapas instead. Excellent alternative.

By my third cake of the day, I was ready to pop.

[Not pictured: cake and coffee Round 3 with Merle and Julia on Saturday, and dinner and drinks with my co-workers thereafter. So much noms!]

And I actually got this the Monday after my birthday, because of a long hassle where German customs thought my mom was trying to illegally ship me merchandise from the U.S. If you do want to send me a care package, make sure your name is on the return address, so I don't have to take the two-hour public transit trek to the nearest customs office.

But regardless, I love my blanket. 

My weekly routines are pretty normal at this point: work Monday through Friday, runs Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Saturday, laundry at some point, grocery shopping twice a week.

So I'll skip ahead to the next weekend, when Norma visited!

Norma is currently studying in Finland as an exchange student from CSUCI. She landed at the airport at a time when it wasn't really convenient for Merle to pick her up, so I met her instead! It was strange being at the airport. Even though it was only a month and a half ago, it already feels like a lifetime since I landed at the airport, took a deep breath, and told myself, "Ok. Let's do this."

Having a visitor was a perfect excuse to take my first weekend excursion, so Norma and I hopped on the train for a half-hour ride to Lüneburg, a nearby town from the Middle Ages (first mentioned in historic records in 956 A.D.). It's one of those towns that's just perfect for wandering because it's so adorable. One of Merle's friends teased us for having so many pictures of buildings, but seriously: how could you NOT take pictures of buildings that look like cakes and bowling pins and a piece of art?

The town lies on the River Ilmenau, about 30km from where it joins the Elbe.

I loved the painted wood.

One of several churches. Again, steeples, to me, are one of the defining features of a German skyline. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is the town I can see from the back entrance to the Helmholtz Center on clear days.

This house is actually leaning with age, a sight that is not uncommon. I learned from my Wikipedia research that the town was founded on a salt mine, and extensive mining led to extreme subsidence. A whole neighborhood was actually demolished in the mid 1800s, and the salt mine was closed in 1980. But the subsidence is probably a factor to all of these leaning buildings.

More painted wood. And doors that lead to nowhere?

We weren't sure what this building is, but it was on all the postcards, so we figured it must be important. Plus, the black bricks with white mortar looks so cool!

Am Sande, one of the main markets of the old town.

St Nikolai Kirche (I think)

You know I appreciate cathedrals so much more now that I've read Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth? I highly recommend it. It's a good book.

This organ was built in 1551-53. This massive instrument is more than two hundred years older than my entire home country.

We also climbed the old water tower. 283 stairs (we think. we may have miscounted once or twice) to climb 56 meters and get this gorgeous view:

And the weather was GORGEOUS. Seriously, spring is coming and it's so exciting! I love the change of seasons, because I feel like you appreciate each one more when it isn't monotonous.

My weather app said it was only 46 degrees, but we don't believe it. We ate lunch outside without our coats!

The view from where we sat.

And restaurants have brought the patio furniture back out! Albeit with blankets, but still!

City Hall, often asserted to be one of the most beautiful in Germany. We didn't go inside, but the outside sure is impressive.

The few German souls we asked to take pictures of us REALLY struggled with my phone for some reason. This particular person managed to take 16 nearly identical pictures, plus this random one that I'm including here for fun.

Also, Lüneburg has lots of pretty doors. I'm including them here for your viewing pleasure.

And a giant wheel of cheese.

Well, there you go! I'm hoping to make it out on some more day trips, because there are quite a few interesting places near Hamburg that I would like to see, Bremen and Schwerin to name a couple. And of course, I'm already planning weekend trips all around Europe, but I've gotta wait for my income to start rolling in for that. ;)

"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake." (Robert Louis Stevenson)

Flexible Working Hours

I have successfully made it through my first week of work, so I figure I'd write a post. (I skipped last weekend, because really nothing exciting happened the week before)

I started my job last Monday. I have my own office!

It's pretty plain right now, but I'm slowly adding plants and pictures to liven it up. And those windows are east-facing, so on sunny days I get gorgeous light in the morning.

I framed some maps from my travels last fall. Clockwise from top left: Hamburg, Edinburgh, London, and the Dingle Peninsula. One from each country that I visited, and I still have five more maps.

I'm really enjoying my job thus far. I've mostly just been reading literature to figure out where there are gaps in research we could possibly explore, but here's how I look at it: in college I was paying tuition to force myself to read uninteresting material on a deadline. Now I'm being paid to read what I like, with a far less-strict deadline.

Also, flexible working hours are awesome! On Thursday I had to go into the city for an apartment appointment, so I showed up for work at 11 and stayed until 6. I worked longer hours a couple of other days to make up for it. And the place was deserted on Friday. The few people who actually came in to work were gone by 3 PM.

I'm very excited for the chance to work on my own project and the potential to publish it at the end of my year here. For those of you who don't know, I'm studying the impact of wind farms in the North Sea on the surrounding ocean. Germany currently generates about 520 MW of energy from offshore wind farms and is looking to create 25,000 MW of power by 2030. (Data from Offshore-Windenergie.net) And that's just Germany's exclusive economic zone. Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the UK are all investing in wind power in the North Sea, which makes our research applicable to the not-so-distant future.

Potential impacts include:

1. bird collisions

2. changes in the electro-magnetic field from underwater wires that can affect fish

3. noise pollution due to pile driving that can negatively affect marine mammals

4. changes to circulation in the surface ocean

5. changes to local meteorology that can ultimately affect ocean temperature and precipitation/evaporation rates

And countless other possibilities. Some areas, such as direct effects on animals, have been extensively researched, while other areas, such as changes to ocean circulation, have hardly been touched. Another researcher is looking into changes to small-scale circulation, and we think my project might focus on how changes to circulation affect nutrient distribution and detritus settlement rates. 

Everyday I'm thankful for the Environmental Science senior practicum at UCLA. It taught me how to start with the end goal in mind, create a timeline, and break the project into milestones. I've gained experience in working and re-working when something doesn't turn out as expected. And I know how to alter my expectations to align with the resources available to me.

I'm basically approaching this job as an extended version of my senior project. But, it's a year instead of six months, and it's my only focus, as opposed to when I was working on my senior project while maintaining a full class load and student job. I'm optimistic about my ability to tackle it.

My work might be out in the boonies, but there are some benefits, aka beautiful countryside.

The view from the back entrance. If you look closely, you might be able to see the TV tower and steeples of a neighboring town in the distance. TV towers and steeples: two things I associate unequivocally with German skylines.

The countryside I ran through the other day. Thatched roofs are still very much a thing.

And at the end of the week, I decided to celebrate with a glass of German Riesling.

I still kind of can't believe that I've actually achieved this goal toward which I've been working toward for years. I've known for a year that I might want to work in oceanography, and for two years that I wanted to live abroad in Germany. But I've known for 6 years that I want to work in Environmental Science. And here I am, actually studying the effects of human decisions on our surrounding environment. I feel incredibly privileged to be here.

And to wrap it up, here are some pictures from around the city of Hamburg that may or may not have made it to my Instagram. Most of them are from a couple of weeks ago, when the weather was steadily in the 20s and below for a week or so. There isn't really any snow right now, and the canals aren't nearly as frozen.

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This day was one of the coldest: a high of 10 degrees. My fingers froze just in the process of taking this picture.  1/25/14

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The Alster last Sunday (2/2/14), on a beautiful sunny afternoon.

Panorama #1 of the Alster 2/2/14

Panorama #2 of the Alster 2/2/14

 Part of my marathon training is to "cross train" on Sunday, which can literally mean just getting a good walk in. So I went in to the city and walked around there, which is far more interesting than walking around Geesthacht.

Walking in the old Elbe Tunnel, one of the oldest still-operating tunnels in Europe. 2/9/14

The view from the other side. 2/9/14

The clouds were pretty awesome today. High in the 40s, Gluehwein in hand, and I'm a happy camper. 2/9/14

Same view from Summer 2012. Very different weather, but beautiful in both seasons.