Hi friends!

I'm back again, and this time, I've got some exciting news. Katie in Kensington is becoming an even less appropriate name, because I just got accepted to go teach English in Spain for a year. I'll be somewhere in Andalucía from the end of August to the end of May. To make matters even more fantastic, my friend and roommate Katie is coming too--we've applied through the same program and will hopefully be placed in the same city. I'll be so thankful for a friendly face to live with, a friend to enjoy the beauty with, and someone to keep me sane.

I bet I can guess your first question: do I speak Spanish? I do, but certainly not well enough. I've taken Spanish in high school and in college, and it's time I'm forced to use it on a daily basis; there's only so far hearing a Spanish speaker on a tape can take you. I need to be one of the Spanish speakers! So I'm ready to embrace the challenges of living on my own--in the real world--in a foreign country. Everything will be more difficult: communication, finding a place to live, opening a bank account...the list goes on. But I think it will all be worth it, and I can't wait to see how much I learn.

And all of that's not to mention the opportunity to teach. I'm not sure what age--it could be anywhere from young elementary school-aged kids to adults. Tune in around early May to find my placement and school. For now, I'll try to keep updating and learning about Spain as I finish my last few months of college.

¡Viva España!

A Glorious Afternoon

So this afternoon, a cascade of beautiful happenings tumbled into my path. In fact, there were so many little snippets of goodness that I simply couldn’t resist blogging about them. Today could have been a rather disagreeable day. In fact, it started out that way. After being rudely interrupted from a dream {about learning to fly Cessnas (that looked startlingly like stuffed sea-doos) and writing a children’s book about baby moose that treks to New York City alone} by escuela’s prompt alarm, I realized a terrible thing. I had to take a shower. I hate showering. And I’ve generally managed to get it over with at night this summer. So this was disagreeable indeed. I survived, however, and I was the first to make it to room 176B at 8:12 sharp. (I always find it a bit odd when I, the lowly undergrad, beat the grad students, you know, the ones working on a real thesis and such, to the lab.) Thus began the not-so-enjoyable morning. I immediately dug into the proliferation of work that I’ve been eying upon the horizon for 8 weeks now—it’s officially crunch time.

Enter Dr. Twiss. With the Toughbook. With a name like that, can you really expect anything delightful? He nonchalantly plopped it onto my desk, relayed the fabulous truth that it now contained new tracks for me to export, format, and harass until they appear as colored dots in Ocean Data View, a program with which I have no training and has a “helpful” 187 page manual. I was thrilled, as you can tell, especially since I had only briefly before remembered that my abstract for the SURE symposium, coming up next Thursday, was due tomorrow. I also knew that I needed to put together a presentation for tomorrow—a presentation that I will be critiqued on extensively with a “presentation instructor.” Eek. And that’s not to mention all of the data that needed to be analyzed to make the presentation.

Then I realized something else: an experiment I set up on Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. needed to be completed today. At 5. No exceptions. And the last time I ran one of these experiments, it took me 4 hours. Yipee—4 unpaid hours of lab toil! I dug in my heels in anticipation of a long, torturous day.

Now, after painting such a bleak picture for you, let me explain why the story of today needed to be told. After lunch, my work was relatively painless and quite productive. Always a good combination. Furthermore, when it came time to face off with my plant experiment at 5, I had the lab to myself and a craving for some Phoenix tunes. What resulted was a lovely, upbeat, and refreshingly quick experiment. I was out by 6:30! When I left, my hilarious roomies were home and in rare form. Bianca had already sent a text message to ascertain that I was still alive and kicking, and Teresa was full of ideas for our upcoming end of program ice cream social. We even discussed cupcakes for a bit. You KNOW how I feel about that. :) Also, I forgot to mention that I purchased a mountain dew, my first since the beginning of summer, with my excess laundry money earlier in the day. So I was HYPER. And this is where the cascade began.

I decided to go running to dispel some of the energy that was causing me to jump up and down repeatedly. Meanwhile, I stumbled upon the donkey watch that my parents (they rock) brought me when they visited. I’m talking donkey—we’re makin’ waffles—from shrek. It’s plastic. The band has rivets in it to make it look like actual donkey fur. And you must pry open donkey’s mouth to see the watch face. YES. Bianca was sweet enough to take a picture of me sporting it before I left.

I also decided to run into town today rather than to the Bayside cemetery (which is actually by the river and is quite lovely). Wise decision. Upon reaching the riverside park, Carmen, a postgrad that also works with Dr. Twiss, was sitting on a bench overlooking the most gorgeous view I’ve yet seen in Potsdam. The sunset, a weeping willow tree, the clock tower of the neighboring church, and the serene Raquette river made me establish a pact with myself to come and sit on this very bench in the near future. But wait. There’s more. Carmen was reading. What a fabulous thing. And she was reading The Hobbit. Which, if you know my view of the series, was enough for a colorful discussion between the two of us. After chatting with her for a bit, I ran on, and was delighted to see her boyfriend walk up to her bench with a freshly picked bouquet of Queen Anne’s Lace from the riverside. It was just a lovely moment. Queen Anne’s lace is a delightful weed, if you ask me. I suppose I'll always disagree with the gardening world on that one.

Let the wonder continue. There was a rainbow by the river. As I ran. Beautiful. By this point, I was overwhelmed with the distinct combination of beautiful things I had encountered. It was one of those moments that you just can't help reflecting on how loving and good our Lord is. He has just blessed me beyond belief.

I then got to enjoy looking at Potsdam from the inside by exploring a neighborhood of very interesting houses. On the way back I stopped in the gazebo on campus. Just because. It seemed like an appropriate cherry on top of a lovely evening.

Oh yeah. New York City last weekend was fun too. You can see my priorities. Hehe.

Here's a close up of the fantabulous donkey watch. :D

Here's me about to embark upon my run, in public, mind you, with the fantabulous donkey watch. Shorty, I took this picture for you. ;)
And just for fun--here's a picture from our NYC Trip. From L to R: me, Samantha, Bianca, and Yami. Just hangin' on wall street.
Well, I've put off working on the aforementioned presentation for long enough, so I'll get back to it. However, thanks for reading through all of that, and have a lovely evening. I hope you encounter just as much and more joy than I did.

Jazz, culinary experiments, and Shrek. Yes, please!

Hello there!

Sorry it has been so long since my last post. And unfortunately for you, this is another one of those posts that's going to be driven by the fact that I'm a bit bored in lab. Not for a lack of things to do, mind you, just a lack of, om, tasks in which one can stay awake. Here's what I'm dealing with: "The diglucuronides of luteolin or apigenin and chrysoeriol did not inhibit the growth of Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 and A. variabilis P9 in the agar diffusion assay when applied as either single fractions or combined in amounts equal to 2 mg DWof Elodea, whereas positive controls (crude extract) caused clearing zones of 7–17.5 (P9) and 14–28 mm (PCC 7120) in diameter" (a paper that I'm reading about plants exuding harmful chemicals). So this is my break to say awake, if you will. After about page 5 of decoding sentences like the one above (I love the internet. I would be lost without all of the definitions it supplies. :)) it all tends to blur together, as any of my fellow students know is true. It happens to the best of us.

One more tidbit of a lab update--I've been getting the exact opposite results in every experiment that I run. This is somewhat troubling, but definitely interesting. I'm going to be re-running some experiments to see if my results remain the same, but if not, I'll definitely be rocking the boat with my research before I leave. That would be rather epic--my undergrad research reversing the hypothesis compiled by years of previous work. In the end though, it can only help us understand the over-arching problem more. So that's good. I'll try to keep you posted.

Apart from lab, I have been having a wonderful time. My parents and brother Jeffrey are up here in practically Canada right now, so that has been a lot of fun. Last weekend, we went to Montreal, where we got to enjoy a couple of days of the "Festival International de Jazz de Montreal"--the largest jazz festival in the world! It was the perfect time to be in Montreal. They know how to run a festival: at least 5 different outdoor, free stages packed with music every hour from 12 noon to midnight. And the people came. It was positively swamped some of the days. It was so neat to see so many different types of people all together, enjoying the same thing at the same time. We heard some fabulous music--there was one trio that we enjoyed so much that we went to their concert twice. They played different selections, mostly, but with all of the options available, it's saying a lot that we would go back to hear them again!

I also got to try "poutine" over the weekend. This is a regional treat: fries with a sort of gravy and cheese curds smothered over it. We debated all weekend about how to pronounce it--we wanted to say "poo-teen," but it's apparently pronounced "put-sin." Interesting. I definitely killed that one when I stepped up to the counter. Ha. I enjoyed it--I mean, you can't really go wrong with such a combination, but the fries were surprisingly sweet. That would have been lovely for eating with BBQ sauce, but the gravy made it a bit odd. Anyhow. You totally didn't have to know that much about the poutine. But people have been talking about it since I got here!

My week started out splendidly with a day off for July 4th. But wait--there's more. The theater in town (Roxy theater Potsdam! hooray!) was showing Shrek 4 for free. So my day consisted of sleeping in, watching Shrek 4, a trip to the library, and (finally!) baking orange rolls. It was fun to introduce some of my fellow REU students to the concept of an orange roll. They like them. (How could you NOT?)

So. There we have it--a lengthy update. Next step--pictures. I'll add them as my next wake up break. :)

Life cracks me up sometimes. I’m putting formulas into excel, just puttering along at a good pace, when one cell, G37, to be exact, decides it wants to be different. So I type the formula and press enter. What does the cell say? Instead of the 44.9somethingsomething I expected, I see “FALSE.” Teehee! It really did make me chuckle. It’s stated so strongly. Not “error” or anything of the like. No. “FALSE.” In all caps. I love it. It’s as if excel was jumping onto the bandwagon of saying, “This is false!” instead of only “this is true.” Thank you, excel!

Also, yesterday I had to go to the cold room again (!). But guess what? I didn’t find a light switch, but I did find a door stop. Cool. The sheep brain bucket is history! It’s the little things, I tell you, that can be so beautiful in life. You’ve just gotta learn to recognize them. I hope your day is full of reminders of God’s goodness today. Have a good one!

-katie

Oooh! HE'S the one to watch out for!

It's sad that it took me this long to catch you all up on this, but I did indeed attend a lawn mower race the same weekend of the Burlington trip. Actually, I should just describe the whole day. To begin with, Bianca, Yami, Rachel and I walked to the Methodist Church in town. We were a couple of minutes late, unfortunately, but little did we know--that made NO difference at all. The announcement segment of their service lasted quite literally 35 minutes. I wish I could say I was exaggerating. But I'm not. Not at all. Wow. The choir of 8, also, was entertaining in the wrong way. I had to force the reverence at some points. Which is never a great place to be. But if you had only seen, and heard what I experienced that morning. Wow. I don't think I'll ever forget. But enough of that! On to the lawn mower races!

We circled around the town of Lisbon, New York a few times before stumbling upon it: a large field. Only one thing was different--there was quite a crowd of trucks, Oldsmobiles, and other vehicles pulled into the grass. So we followed the dirt and gravel road to the entrance. And then realized we needed cash to get in. Eeek! I had no idea we would have to pay for this event. So funny. It was, in a way, worth it, however.

We found a spot on one of the two bleacher segments that had been pulled alongside a track driven on the grass that was roped off with classic yellow caution tape. Our attention was immediately drawn to the wood sawing competition going on. These fierce competitors would fire up their chainsaws, set it on the ground, still on, and then kneel, hand on wood and head on hand. The count off was given and they would spring up with amazing vigor. GZZZZZZRRRR GZZZRRRRR GZZZZRRRR...three large chunks of wood go plummeting to the ground. And only one man can be victorious. And that wasn't even the main event. Get excited.

The lawn mower races were hilarious. Each racer had a team there with them, and their commentaries were priceless. It was like watching NASCAR, I would suppose, except for, wait. These are lawn mowers. The title is just one example of some of the things we heard from behind us. Some of the slogans on team shirts shouldn't be repeated. I was definitely plunged into "North Country" culture, yet again. In all, though, it was worth the five dollars just to have such an experience. I only wish that I could describe it more robustly.

Bianca and I at the races...

Ladies and Gentlemen, here they come!

Above is the best picture I got of the wood-chopping...you can see the saws and the wood blocks awaiting their demise!

Better Late Than Never...Burlington!

I'm finally going to write a bit about our trip to Burlington, Vermont. Vermont is gorgeous. I was thoroughly impressed. And I understand their state quarter more now, too. Bonus. If you see it, give it a second look--it's a person in the middle of the amazing maple tree tapping process used to make the delicious maple syrup that the area's known for. I respect that! Here is some of our group on the ferry to get from New York state to VT. It was cold, in case you couldn't tell. In the picture with me is Eileen, Samantha (who both go to Clarkson year round), and Yami. Fun people. They're making my summer fun. :)

Now, we keep our priorities straight here in the REU program. So the first thing we did was go to the Ben and Jerry's Factory outside of Burlington. I have never been quite so excited to see the women's sign for the bathroom--check it out. I want one for my bathroom at home. So cool. Though it might not be a good idea to bring that cone any further. ha!

The tour was actually rather lame--they were only cleaning, not making ice cream by the time we got to the manufacturing room. So we just watched some ridiculous video about how they make the ice cream. But I still don't feel like I know that much about it. Alas.
Bianca and I are being goons:

I am a much bigger fan of Ben and Jerry's ice cream now, though, so I think in all they succeeded in their goal. I'm definitely going to have to frequent our Birmingham Ben and Jerry's a bit more. :)

This road sign is priceless. I don't even think I need to explain why. Only in Vermont!

Next we toured a Wood Gasification Plant. And a composting facility. At the former, I was basically confused the whole time. The tour guide spoke in mostly abbreviations of an engineering nature. So I just donned the hard hat and enjoyed the views. So industrial! This sort of thing makes me glad I'm a biologist, not an engineer. Props to all of you out there than thrive on this stuff. That's wonderful. As for me, I'll stick to the woods and enzymes and such.

The rest of the weekend was free for us, so we hit downtown. Here's the shore of Lake Champlain. It's absolutely breathtaking with the mountains on the opposing shore. I was also pleased to hear that there's a Loch Ness monster type of story here in Vermont as well. There just may be a large creature affectionately named "Champ" swimming in these waters. Please try to maintain your composure. I know it's frightening.

The Burlington Jazz Festival was going on. You know what that means--free music, wonderful people watching, and one very happy Katie. This particular window displayed a wonderful combination of stellar things. Love it.

The city was beautiful, with many cute restaurants, coffee shops, and cafes. This is church street, where they had a block party on Friday night. The band was more of a Latin/ salsa band as opposed to jazz, but hey! That was really fun! We joined the many others in dancing on the street. Good times.

Apartment-mate love:

Shortly after this picture, we went down to the shore, watched the rest of the sunset, and danced on the rocks to the oldies tunes being played by a surprisingly untalented band in a tent further down the shore. The singing was rough. But that just made it more fun.

Friday night, we slept in tents in the backyard of one of Eileen's friends. So college! It rained, but we all stayed fairly dry. Saturday morning, Erin Fick, a friend from Samford, met me at a fabulous breakfast cafe, where we enjoyed chocolate croissants. It was wonderful to catch up with her. In all, the weekend was really, really fun. It certainly beat two more days of being in the lab!

A Potsdam Weekend

Hey.

This weekend, has been, to use one of my favorite phrases, an adventure. I ate at the "Bagelry" in town (pizza bagel and chocolate chip cookie of epic proportions--yum!), hiked a mountain, and read tons about making businesses sustainable. Today I walked 2 miles to a church, which, I will say, I really enjoyed. It was refreshing. Then I rode, along with 6 other people, yes, 6, in a Honda CR-V to the grocery store, Price Chopper, bought out the store of Mexican food, and then cooked all day and into the evening. The whole REU group then joined us for a true feast, and I'm still quite stuffed from it. I will try my very best to write more and add pictures of the weekend tomorrow, but I thought a short description would do for now. Till later, then-

Katie