First week over

I've been here for about a week now and I don't miss Germany at all, only the people I left there. I still feel the same about Taiwan as I did as a child: I love it here.

I startet my work on Monday and already got my cells. The first time I have my "own" cells, it's really cool. They are growing slowly but steadily.
I went out with some of my labmates to a pub. Sometimes it's a little hard for me because they always speak Chinese, but I think they are getting used to English a bit, they are not so shy anymore. I actually have a lot of fun talking to everybody at the lab!
So, here you see a few of my labmates: And guess who drank the big bottle of beer. ;) By the way, it tastes similar to some American brands...


Tonight I went to the Night Market in ChiaYi with 2 of my housemates. We had so much fun, I already know I will miss Night Markets when I'm back home...
First we went to eat Sushi (ah so delicious and much cheaper than at home) and then we took a stroll through the market tasting some different kinds of food. I even came across a very small kind of snail, about 1cm long. I stopped to look at them and the guy who sold them offered one to me. So I tried it and it tasted quite good. But I have to say I only found out that it was a snail later on. I also tried a piece of chicken kidney. The sauce was really good, but it was a bit hard to chew.

So here you can see my housemates, on the left Tery and on the right Viola. Thanks again for taking me out tonight, I loved it so much. (When can we go again???) :D
In the back you can see Mongolian Barbeque, similar to the one we have in Germany, but with more choices. Next time I come to the Night Market, I have to try this!




Oh, and not to forget the bad things: We had two earthquakes today. I "missed" one of it, that means I probably was on the bike that moment and didn't notice it, but the second was during our sushi dinner. It was not very strong, but still it's strange and you never know if it's getting stronger or if it stops.

Taiwan

As some of you know I came to Taiwan to write my Bachelor's Thesis at the National Chung Cheng University.
I've been here for 3 days now and I already enjoy my time here. The weather is great, 30°C, sunshine and not too humid anymore.
I'm living in a two story house very close to college with three Chinese girls. They are all so nice to me, I hope we have a good time together. Maybe I can learn some Chinese. It's a hard language to learn because all the sounds are totally unfamiliar and sometimes I'm not sure if I understood the words the right way in the first place.

People in Taiwan are generally very friendly and hospitably, so it makes the start here much easier. I already agreed to make some Christmas decoration with some school kids here, that should be fun because I like to do such stuff myself. *smile* And maybe even some Christmas cookies. I like that even more. ;)

What's really different here from Germany is that people often eat outside. The food is really cheap, you get a very decent portion of delicious food for about 2€, so I think it's even cheaper to eat out than to cook yourself. Also, the food here is absolutely great, but different from the Chinese food we know in Germany. I'm lucky because just 2 streets away are lots of small restaurants which sell all kinds of foods. The only problem is the menu is only in Chinese signs, so I startet to take menus home and try to translate them or maybe get to know the important food signs, like what kind of meat, soup, rice, noodle and so on. Next time I buy something, I take a picture.

Talking of pictures, I took some of my room:



I went to the 20th anniversary of CCU today, it was mainly some kind of sports event, but I got to see the president of Taiwan:




So on Monday I start my work at CCU, I'm really excited. I've already been to the lab once, but I didn't do anything yet because it was my first day here and I was very tired. I wonder if people here work differently than we do. I already saw that they have a special room for cell culture and you have to get out of your shoes and put on some other slippers before getting in. I was so surprised when I realized it. (of course I walked into the room with my normal shoes on, totally oblivious to my surroundings *smile*) And I think they don't wear lab coats, but if you think about it, it might even be cleaner, because you wear the same lab coat for ages but you put on fresh normal clothes every day.

Updates

I've been back in Germany for a while now, in fact I already completed my last theoretical semester. That means after 6 weeks of extensive studies the last exams are finally over.

So now it's holiday time. And guess where I'm going... right, USA again. ;) Just can't get enough. This time we start in San Francisco and make our way through various National Parks to Las Vegas for some last minute gambling before we fly back. It is definitely going to be great!

Flight leaves tomorrow and I will be back in 3 weeks. (That means pictures are coming up again!)

Visiting Lena in London

At the end of November we flew over to London for a long weekend. I've never been there before, but I have to say: really nice city, I'm quite a bit jealous of Lena, because Limerick seems like a sleepy village compared to London.
But anyway, we had a great time there, thanks again Lena!

Westminster Abbey: We didn't go inside, too expensive...


Big Ben. When I first saw the building I was somehow disappointed because it was not that big. But of course, the title refers to the bell and not the tower height...


We visited Buckingham Palace, but couldn't get close to the funny dressed guards there, so we walked through the nearby park. There lived lots of different birds and it was fun watching them:


After that we visited the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. The Tower was pretty cool, we even could try on some helmets, which were actually pretty heavy. I just don't want to know how the weight of the plate armour felt... Probably it would have just crushed me.




Tower Bridge:


Way along the Thames:


Very cool picture:


Last evening, in the train:

Killarney National Park

At the beginning of November my parents came over for a visit. The two weeks before they came over and the week after they went back were really nice, but of course, the weekend they were here was miserable, it rained nearly the whole time.
Anyway, we decided to go to Killarney National Park, and there we went despite the bad conditions.

We got some pretty nasty showers, but we also managed to be at the right place at the right time to enjoy some spectacular views.

We first went to Mucrose House and walked a while through the beautiful gardens there. Even though it rained the green was nearly glowing.



Then we went to see the Torc Waterfall which was quite strong because of the heavy rain.

Afterwards we just drove through the National Park and enjoyed the beautiful landscape.

USA 15: New York

As the last part of my journey through USA I spent a few days in New York together with my parents before flying back to good old Germany.
We took it easy and just walked through city, we've all been there before, so we didn't need to hurry through all attractions there.

The following picture was taken at the UNO headquaters:


The next picture shows my Dad Andy in front of Brooklyn Bridge Waterfall. That waterfall is supposed to be art, and there are more all around Manhattan, but we thought they were pretty lame. Not enough water to be impressiv but to much steel so it seemed like a construction site.


Of course we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge:



That's my Mum Doris while we were taking a rest at Central Park:


One day we booked a boat tour around Manhattan. There we got closer to the Statue of Liberty than with the Staten Island Ferry:


You also had a really nice view of Manhattan Downtown from the water:


We also went to the Broadway Musical Mamma Mia one night. Because we didn't want to spent an awful lot of money we bought cheap standing tickets for about 20$ each. It was really fun, and if you don't mind standing for about 2 hours it's a cheap solution.

Well, that was the last post about my journey through USA. I hope you enjoyed reading it and got a nice impression of the beauty and variety of USA. It was absolutely the most fabulous journey I've ever been on. We just booked our flights and did not plan much more, we just hit the road and decided what to do next. There are definitely more journeys like that to come!

USA 14: Florida: Familiy Party

After visiting the Everglades National Park we drove up to Jacksonville to visit some relatives there. I haven't met them before, we only had email and phone contact, so I was kind of excited to get there.


We had a late Birthday Party for my Cousin Debbie: (By the way, the cake was delicious)

There you can see the reunited brother and sisters. They really look alike, although they only have the same father. So from left to right: Uncle John, Mum Doris, Aunt Nancy:

Same picture together with my Dad and Dominik:

Did I mention that we had a fabulous room during our stay in Jacksonville? It was huge (to our standards) and came with the possibility of several acrobatic stunts. Here is only one of them: