To my amigos/as

My roommate sent me this short poem for the week of friends, and thought I would share.

Si los BESOS
fueran agua,
te daría un mar.

Si los ABRAZOS
fueran hojas,
te daría un árbol.

Si la VIDA
fuera un planeta,
te daría una galaxia.

Si la AMISTAD
fuera la vida,
te daría la mía.

Peer Pressure

Thanks to Ashley and randoms on my RSS Feed, along with an intense desire to not study, I made my own superhero. Not going to lie – I like the name. My cover must be working as a sous-chef for Anthony Bourdain. :-)

Is this sign missing something?

‘Twas not a happy trip to the zoo for the children. :-P

Bucket List

While I do not plan on kicking-the-bucket anytime soon, it is pretty likely that neither my roommate or I will be no longer be living in Tucson. As such, we decided to make a list of things we have to do, places we have to go before we take off. Here is what I have so far:

Tucson Bucket List

Places

• Drive in movie theater
• Zoo
• Tucson art museum
• Mount Lemmon
• Sabino Canyon
• Tunnels UA
• Top of A Mountain
• La Encantada    √
• Fox theater
• Ride the Trolley√
• Rocky Horror Picture Show

It’s Saturday Night

After a day filled with movies, errand and less studying than I would have liked, I decided to be productive and study for my exam on Monday. Achieved that, but I also got to take a detour through fun-land before coming home.

So, last night included:

1. Hitting the AHSL and studying Physio from 8-11 pm.
2. Being convinced by study partners to visit a bar straight from there. A demand was that we had to go directly – and Elise & I were pretty much wearing ‘nice’ sweat pants. Classy.
3. Going to North on Fourth and drinking in said attire. Not caring about it. Dancing!

While my head may hurt a bit this morning, it was great to get out of the house and live. And it just so happened that I was able to be productive in the process. :-)

By the way, North on Fourth is super sketch. And super dark. Which I think is to shadow the sketchiness. But, the drinks are cheap and the DJ is good.

Resolving

While I used to not be a fan of new year’s resolutions – all talk, no act – last year’s worked out pretty well. So, here I go:

1. Get back into the shape I was in last May, before I left for Germany and was surrounded by wurst and kartoffel.
2. Start making my own lunch to take to campus. Must save $.
3. Take off to somewhere this summer.
4. Take better care of my cuticles and nails. Fo. Ev. A.
5. Keep in touch with the people I met in Germany, my friends who have graduated and those that will.
6. Run a 5k.

Amsterdam

So, I know what you’re thinking, and here’s the answer.

Did I do it? yes.

Really? yup.

Glad? Hell yes, you really only get to be in Amsterdam once.

The great thing about being in Germany is the amazing flexibility you have to travel. The downside – it may take six hours. Six hours to turn get to a new country, with a new language, and live it up. This weekend, it was Amsterdam, in the Netherlands with a late Friday night arrival, a full day of walking/running from place to place in the rain, and an afternoon departure on Sunday.

I’ll take care of the not so great part first, and then move on to the great. So, the one downside, sadly, was the guy I Couch Surfed with. It started out well: he picked me up at the station, insisted on carrying my bags, pointed out attractions as we rode the tram, and then we hung out with his friends in a pub in de Pijp (pronounced de pipe, LOL). We all had a great time, some good conversation, and I discovered that Heineken is only slightly better at the source. But, I’ll be honest, I have a big bias for German beers now. Anyways, as we walked home, it started raining. And he put his arm around me, which I shrugged off. This type of crap continued through my stay, along with attempting to do the romantic peer-into-the-eyes in a creepy way. So, both nights, I pretty much slept on guard the entire night (there were no hostels left in the city)- and with all my shit packed just in case. He was also clingy and wanted to spend the entire stay with me, and called a few times while I was with Kyle & Melissa on my own for a while.

While I will definitely couch surf on my own again, and will with Kelly when we visit Berlin this weekend, but next time, I will trust my gut. I ignored that feeling because the monitoring on the site is set up so that people wouldn’t risk doing something because they would be caught, and the system checks in on how things went, and negative ratings cannot be deleted, I was still uncomfortable. When the last e-mails I got before I left were highly flirty – I should have gone to the hostel the first night. I’m pretty good at the feeling-people thing, but I shrugged it off as me being well, me, and just freaking. And I shouldn’t have, because you don’t just risk something like that.

But back to the fun.

Our first search was for the Red Light District. We went up and down our map, and couldn’t find it (“It should be right here! Like, all of this!”). So we doubled back down a street, following a family of four on bikes, keeping our eyes open. And then, well, we realized that we actually had been in the District the entire time. Seems like they were chilling a little more inside, but when we passed this time, there were more people out, so they were in the doorways. And then we started looking around more, and, Ta-Da! There were the windows, with women of all kinds (most not that skinny, interestingly enough). A lot of the windows were empty, but we definitely had our experience.

As for the rest of it, it was a really good time. It rained the entire time, but that was fun.

Because the first time it really started to pour, we had been inside for all of 5 minutes at this one coffee shop, decided it was a little sketch, came out and the sky was falling. So we spent the rest of the day, hopping from covering to covering and eventually spent some time in a coffee shop. Which was not only fun in the obvious way, but it was so nice to get out of the rain and have some time to dry off. After that, we wandered, checked out the flower market (I wish we could import flora). And then, it was back to Giorgio – although luckily for most of the afternoon/evening, his friend Eddie (who was from London and awesome) hung out with us.

The brightside about couchsurfing though, is that I really got to see little nooks about the city, the oldest pub and house in town, a massive chess match,

had the best rated fries in the Netherlands, went to the Van Gogh Museum, saw some sun on Sunday (ha!) and tried some raw herring (tasty!). But I wouldn’t stay with Giorgio again.

OH, and I had some really good cookies – Stroopwaffles. yum.

Mexican Night

It started a couple weeks ago… a quick discussion between Sara, Sandra & I as we all walked to MENSA. I mentioned how my mom had taught both my brother and I to cook, and how recently it had become a real passion of mine. Mixing flavors, trying things out, etc. And both of them thought it was so cool that my mom had taught us. In their homes, their moms had cooked amazing meals, but never really taught them, and they wished they had learned when they were younger.

Then a few weeks ago, Mexican food came up… and I said, ‘oh, yeah, I definitely know how to make good Mexican food’. Sara literally jumped for joy and begged to know if I knew how to make tortillas (she also made a comment about Taco Bell at some point, but I forgave her). And I told her that I was still learning, but I would be happy to teach the members of the lab to make tortillas.

Later that week, we decided to not only make tortillas, but to have a full on Mexican dinner for our research group.

So, the week before I left, after a little shopping the weekend before, and making beans the night before, it was time for Mexican night at my flat. But first a note on shopping for ingredients in another country for ingredients that have a section dedicated to them in most groceries in the states. It’s tough. No cheddar, no mozzarella, and as I had actually expected, no queso seco. But I was also shocked to find no hot chiles of any kind. And I also discovered that the variety of avocadoes they sell here (although they claimed to be the ones we use) are actually the type you use green (mind you, I didn’t discover this until we tried actually making the Guacamole = ew). Luckily, we found pinto beans. It was a challenge, but a fun one, improvising this ingredient for that to make a given flavour was really enjoyable.

After work, we met at the flat, and started cooking. Sara, Sandra, Anne, Christina, Mike & I started, and everyone was soo great about helping. Dicing tomatoes, potatoes, onion and garlic for the picadillo and the salsa; opening the avocadoes (once again, ew) for guacamole; warming up the frijoles; making a quick marinade for the meat; Mike preparing Spanish rice. And outside, Sandra and Christina took care of the grill. I just gave tips, shared how my mom had taught me to taste and adjust, the basic ingredients, etc. and then did the actual cooking of the picadillo (with part split off to have tofu added instead of meat for Sara – it was actually really good), and finished it up. Outside, they took care of the carne asada and then I cut it up and did a couple of things.

They brought the drinks and set up the tables outside, and we kept the food warm by rotating them on the grill, and off to the porch. We served, I showed them how to make burritos. We had chips, and beans, and chipotle looking burritos on purchased tortillas heated on the grill. Passing pans and bowls, getting up to serve themselves, it felt like a Mexican family in Germany, at a guest house.

But overall, I think the best part was the dessert tortilla making that we ended the night with. It started off with Sara and me mainly making the dough and then actual tortillas, with Christina, Anne and Birgit as spectators. Laughter, experimenting (wait, that’s not right, let’s add more oil because of this), and the use of spectators hands to add those things ensued. So more people came to watch from outside, where the firelog Stefan had brought was burning. And Andrea even joined in. So tortillas were made – by rolling pin, I admit – and hand flipped. Nutella, butter, sugar, honey, peanut butter, and/or bananas were piled on to make dessert tostadas. Perfect.

The tortillas ended up being an immensely enjoyable competition between the Italians (1/2 Italian for Sara). She was the only one making the tortillas with me at first, starting from the dough. But when Andrea came in, I kind of showed him, and everyone that watched gave the advice they had seen from Sara. And then it became the two man battle of the circles (shape of tortillas) and bubbles (from the puffiness of air pockets). When Andrea made the first tortilla to bubble, Sara’s response was, ‘Bubbles. Who needs bubbles? They’re just air!’ FYI – her opinion changed when she got her first.

It was really amazing, I felt so united with all these people, and they loved the food, which was great. I was able to share with them my culture the way they have with me. And they were so appreciative of my effort, of running around the kitchen (even though I couldn’t have done it without them), that is just made me want to cook more.

*My random memorable moment:

When we were talking about guns and that type of gang stuff in Tucson and Mike said in a really nonchalant manner, ‘Well, I’ve only been shot at once’. I was in the middle of drinking my beer. And to avoid spraying it all over the food, I turned away from the table. But quick enough. I pretty much sprayed a mouthful of beer over Birgit, my PI here. Classic. Embarrassing. Funny.

Finals here we come!

EuroCup 2008 Finals! A great night at Alt Tubingen included all you can eat pancakes (savory, sweet & too many) and bier. A bunch of people from the ZMBP came and we took up three tables. Three tables of excited and painted up (including Mike & Gretel) scientists ready for some fun (and hopefully a victory).

The place was packed, and while it may not have been the best played match, it was incredibly exciting. The best thing about experiencing Euro2008 is feeling the passion that everyone else has for each match, for the players, for the outcome is infectious. Du bist Deutschland (you are Germany) as the commercial says. I want to be German in these times – and I paint myself as though am – even though I’m an American away from home.

After Germany won the match, we headed down to the Neckar for the street party. In-sane. I wish I had been able to take more pictures and video, because it was soooo cool. Energy, craziness, but I never felt scared – which may have been in part to all the guys from the ZMBP (they’re great! and cute!). It’s too bad that I won’t be able to see the championship with everyone, but imagine it will be great in Heidelberg as well – and it’ll be cool for my mom and aunt to experience the futbol fever. Like guys running (and riding their bikes) down the streets in-and-out of traffic completely decked out. Like traffic backing up. Like 100s (which will hopefully be thousands if all goes well on Sunday) of thrilled people.

Lessons learned:

Say no to Kirschweissen. Although it’s very popular here (which is why I tried it) it tastes neither like Kirsch nor like weissen. Okay, and worth a try – not a .5L try though.