Every princess needs a castle

Last week I went to Munich Zurich and Heidelberg and while I was there I decided to look at some real estate (in case I decide to live here permanently). And I am torn between a few places.


Zurich: The first one is a very nice looking castle but it is a little small for my taste. If I lived there, I don't know if there would be enough space for all my servants.


Munich: This one is my second choice because it is the most beautiful and has a wonderful view. It also overlooks a huge man-made waterfall. However, it needs some interior design work done and not all of the rooms are finished.



Heidelberg: This next place is pretty and has a nice location near a river but it is a little bit of a fixer-upper.


Munich: And this last one is my number one choice. It is the largest of the castles and has a beautiful backyard (I don't know if it could be considered a backyard because it is like 50 acres). But the thing that puts this in first place is the fact that the prince lives there. Considering I'm a princess, we are a perfect match.


And lastly what German experience would be complete without a dirndl? I got this one while I was in Munich and I love it. It is pink, I can't breathe when I wear it and I look fantastic in it...basically it is perfect.

Address

I will be here for another 2 months so if anyone wants to send me mail, here is my address:

Melissa Thompson
C/O Thaben
Crellestr. 26
Deutschland 10827 Berlin

The Beach!

I went to the Baltic Sea this weekend and it was incredible. It was pretty warm (mid-80’s) and I got a much needed tan. The town we went to was a rather small town about 3 hours away from Berlin. When we got off the bus, they told us that we would have a few hours to look at the sights of the town (aka. a church and a lighthouse) and then we could have a little time to go to the beach. Seeing the church and the lighthouse took about 30 minutes so we spent the next 7 hours on the beach. It was a perfect day. Below is a picture of me on the lighthouse. It was pretty cool because I had never actually been in a lighthouse. Surprisingly I was not afraid of how high this lighthouse was either.


And the beach was beautiful. The sand was white and the water was clear. Clearly I am overjoyed with being on the beach again.

Fun, Fun, Fun

There is so much to do here that I can’t mention everything but I will briefly mention a few other things I did.

Went on a hike



Went to the Deutsches Historiches Museum


Saw the largest dinosaur fossil in the world


Walked along the Berlin wall


Made banana jelly

Working in the Lab

In this post I talk about blood so for those of you who get grossed out by the sight of blood I have included the pictures at the end so you don't actually have to look at it.

In case anyone is confused about why I am in Berlin, let me explain. I am here on an internship with Humboldt University and I will be working with a PhD student on how different chromosomes affect fat content in the body. However, it is not currently ready so I have been working with another group of students on how pro-biotics (live microorganisms that may be beneficial) affect the immune system. They took pigs and gave each group a different type of pro-biotic and there was a control group. Then they collected tissue samples of things like the spleen, lymph nodes, etc. After the samples were collected is where my work came in. Some undergrad students in Berlin and I were working to isolate the lymphocytes, which will give us information on how the pro-biotics are affecting the immune system.

The first picture is me in the lab. The next two pictures are before and after the liquid was centrifuged to separate liquids of different densities. Once the densities were separated, we needed to remove the liquid in between the first and second layers of fluid (picture 4). After that we kept on centrifuging the liquid and re-suspending the liquid in a neutral solution until the lymphocytes were isolated.