Dritte Platz

Tuesday was a highlight of my time in Marburg. Each year, the department of chemistry hosts a day long soccer tournament. I was lucky enough to participate in the tournament two years ago (link) and I looked forward to attending another one. The group started planning for the tournament about 5 months ago. Since the group hosts a lot of short term visitors, repeat visitors actually arrange their trips to coincide with the tournament.

One of the first things we needed was a team name. It was very important that our name exude both love of our field (quantum chemistry) and intimidation. Competition was fierce, at one point we had 15 different names to choose from. Eventually the field was narrowed down to two names
1) Frenking's Smooth Operators - Named after our boss and the mathematical functions that act on other functions to produce a number (implying that we would act on the field to produce points)
2) St. Pauli Principle - Combining a soccer team from southern Germany with a well known chemistry principle, the Pauli principle. In basic chemistry, the Pauli principle states that if two electrons are placed in the same orbital, they must be of opposite spins. In its pure mathematical form, the Pauli Principle states that if two electrons are placed in the same space, they must be antisymmetric (ie. Psi ri rj = -Psi rj ri)

After two rounds of voting and dubious claims of voter fraud (just kidding), we finally chose the name St. Pauli Principle.

Once we had the name, we had to create a t-shirt. This was rather straight forward since the St. Pauli team already had a logo of a Pirate and crossbones.

All we had to do was replace the pirate head with our bosses head, add the Pauli Principle to the shirt, and print it, which we did.

Now that the t-shirt and name were set, we started practices. The group is rather large so finding a time that worked for all was very difficult. We started with a few 8am practices, which were nice since we finished practice, then headed to shower, then joined everyone at the Lahnberge for breakfast together. We also tried 5pm after lab and finally 5pm on Sunday. All in all we got in about 6 different practices, its better than none, but still not too great. However, work kept us from practicing more (even though our boss wanted the team to do well, we still had to do work).

The day before the tournament, one of the labmates proposed that we increase team spirit even more by painting our nails with the team symbols. (the Pauli principle). Many of us said, why not. The end product looked like this.

Finally, the day of the tournament arrived. We all arrived bright and early to the field, wearing our brown St. Pauli Principle shirts. Our team played very well and everyone who wanted to play earned a chance to play. I even played about 5 minutes of our third game. Three games and a couple of bratwursts later (its germany, we snack on wurst all the time), we had won or tied enough games to put us into contention for the top team in our group. We only had to win one more game in order to advance to the quarterfinals.

The cheer squad decided to renew our cheers. Cheers of "lets go Pauli, lets go" and "Pauli, Pauli" and our slogan "Psi is not symmetric, neither is this game, St. Pauli Principle, Win! Win! Win!" filled the field. We may not have been the best team, but we were the most enthusiastic.

Our cheers must have worked because we advanced to the next round.

From this point on, the rest of the day became a blur. I spent 25 minutes cheering loudly for the team, then taking a 20 minute break between games. The team advanced all the way to the semifinal and lost by just 1 point to 2nd place team. We eventually played a half-final to earn third place over all, the highest placement the group has ever earned!

Our boss was so proud of us that he volunteered to pay for dinner the following night, an offer that many of us took him up on

Overall, the day was a major highlight of my time in Germany. The research group here is very diverse and international. In the year that that I have worked here, we have had students or post-docs from North America, South America, East Asia, India, Africa, Iraq, and of course countries from all over Europe. In the past the team has had members from Spain, Russia, and Brazil show up to play. This year was no different as 4 continents and 8 different countries were represented. We all joined together to work as a team and advance the team goals. Even those who could not play joined in cheering on the team. I am very grateful that I was able to stay for this historic win and I know that I will treasure the memories for a lifetime.

Here is a link to the photo album containing photos from the day.

Fussball Tournament

the lunch lady smiled at me

Only 15 days left in Germany. Its unbelievable that I am really leaving in just over 2 weeks. I know that my family wants me home. Part of me wants to go home, but as I return to thoughts that I had in January, what really defines my home. In college, I defined home as "where my pillow is". This year, that definition failed to explain my circumstances as my bed is in Illinois with a friend, the special gel pillow I bought last year is at my parents house, my fiance bought a pillow that I liked when he bought his bed hoping that someday I would actually be there to use it, and my favorite pillowcase that I used since college is on my bed in Marburg. The usual definitions don't work anymore.

One thing this year has taught me is to redefine what it means to be home. Now, home is simply defined as a place that I can relax and be myself. Now that means that I am home when I do a crazy dance in the group coffee room as my labmates and I discuss a confusing chemical phenomenon.(really, this happens often). It also means that home is the place where I sit on the balcony and read papers while listening to people on the balcony below sing songs in both German and English. Home is also the train rides from Frankfurt to Marburg where I feel relaxed enough to fall asleep (especially when the train ends at Marburg). Home is also my parent's renovated farmhouse, in a room that I never actually lived in for more than 4 weeks. Home is also with my fiance as we drive from town to town visiting people.

Home is what brings me peace. This year reminded me once again how much it takes to create a home. It took many months before I could finally relax with my housemates, not worrying how I acted or how poorly I spoke their language. It took several conferences and many late nights in the office to allow me to relax with my labmates. Home is what led me to actually carry on a conversation with the lunch lady at the mensa today, which gave me the first lunch lady smile I have seen all year.

The title of this post, "the lunch lady smiled at me" refers to all the little happy moments that have made Marburg seem like home. The guy in the stockroom that greets me with a smile every morning, the knowledge that I can run into my labmates when I go to grab a quick cup of coffee in the room next door (and I am happy about it), the smiles and jokes from Reuti as I walk by his office, the teasing housemates who put up with my silly simple German stories. All of these things combine to make Marburg just a bit more homey.

99 bottles of beer on the wall....

No, there are not 99 bottles of beer on my wall, I don't have enough shelf space for that many. I use the reference because I only have 99 days left before I board a plane to return to the US. Only 99 days until my Fulbright fellowship officially ends and I return to normal US civilian life. My time in Germany has been reduced from 340 days to double digits that are slowly approaching zero.

I approach this date much as I expected I would, with trepidation and excitement. My family anxiously awaits my return and I anxiously await to see my family, but at the same time I don't want the adventure to end. As difficult as this time abroad has been, I have learned something new everyday. Part of me feels at home here but I long to be reunited with my those with whom I will make me home. Germany is not my true home and probably never will be, but I still long to stay. An awkward conundrum I now face: to look forward towards my last days in Germany while also looking forward to my home country. I am nervous about how my home country will accept me and how I will accept it.

I feel very comfortable in my American culture but then I think about my life here and think "this fits too". How to deal with this conundrum? I just keep living each day to the fullest. Nuture the friendships I have made thus far and encourage new ones.

Remember that even after I leave, a friend is just an instant message away.

The travels begin

So today my travels begin. I travel to the airport this afternoon to pick up a car so I can drive to my sister's graduation in KY. While in KY, I will visit 6 cities in 36 hours for family photos, graduations, and open houses. I have to return the car to Champaign by 5pm on Sunday night. Then I'm off to a graduation party for a dear friend and say adieu to my wonderful grad iteam (which may be dead but lives on in my heart... I'll never let go grads...I'll never let go). Anyways.

It never fails that no matter how much you prepare, the days before you leave are frantic with packing, unpacking to see if you packed the stuff you needed, repacking and forgetting to pack the stuff you needed to pack, and then collapsing onto the neatly packed piles of clothes from pure frustration. Well, I guess I'm being dramatic but these last couple of days are always rather frantic. In between packing things you need to take, you also try to find time to spend with people you have to leave behind. Last night I said goodbye to my home fellowship, which was harder than I thought considering I've only known these people for 4 months. I'm going to miss frisbee in the park and dinners at Ty's house quite a bit. Today I say goodbye to a dear friend and prepare to say goodbye to my family.

A lot of goodbyes but they all lead to some big adventures. Details about my adventures to come in subsequent blogs. Now I need to get to work on research and last minute errands.