October 2013 to Happy New Year!

Its 2014! And in an attempt to start anew, let's just have one huge catch up for the end of 2013 instead of keeping my horrible record of being months behind.

October:
October was full of A LOT of continued hard work at the research (to ease off of the week off for Oktoberfest), especially on a project for my co-supervisor's lab. And now, I am VERY excited to announce, I am published in my first scientific article for the work I've done. Want to read it? Click here: to access the article. I also became very immersed in teaching- besides the discussion sections that I hold, I also had 3 final year project students who I co-supervised. Finally, I became involved in the University's Athena Swan program- a women in science program that aims to increase gender diversity within the science, math, engineering, and technology fields. I am the PhD representative for the University of Sussex and have really enjoyed the work we have done so far.
Between hard work and Oktoberfest (which has already been covered, but I will still post my favorite pictures), I did try a few new things: a few new recipes (of course), a few new restaurants (of course), and read The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. I'm starting to think that my favorite classic authors are Russian... but more on that later.

Oh right, and I've also seen my first live NFL game. 49ers v. Jaguars in England! It was pretty epic, except I think I am slowly losing Ben to an NFL obsession..... haha

November:
More hard work filled November, but so did a lot of fun as well. We took a last minute trip to Prague to visit my friends Chelsea and Megan, who are teaching English there. I LOVED Prague, moreso than I thought I would, and now can't wait to see more of that part of the world. We also saw Kutna Hora, a little town outside of Prague with the infamous Bone Chapel.

 Absinthe in Bohemia!

We went to go see Kimberly Anne and Lewis Watson perform; two artists that we discovered at the Great Escape Festival back in May. We survived through all of Kimberly's set, however, once Lewis went on, I was feeling far too lightheaded and faint to continue in that tiny venue. So we unfortunately had to cut the concert short :/
Finally, the end of November brought Thanksgiving. I didn't have a typical get-together with a lot of people, but I did still make all of the delicious food. Except this time, I made it with a few new recipes. My first ever full turkey went wonderfully; it cooked perfectly and was delicious. I also made a caramelized onion sausage stuffing, American biscuits, green beans baked in bechamel, sweet potato latkes, and pumpkin pie with a maple meringue top. It was SO good.

December:
I was only in England for half of December, so was working up until the day before I flew off for the States. With the work, Ben and I did a "12 days of Christmas cookies" baking adventure. I didn't make it to all 12, but I came close. And ate way too many cookies in the process. The best cookie? Carrot cake whoopie pies with maple cream cheese frosting. Amazing. I'll be trying a banana whoopie pie recipe in the near future and am hopeful it will be even half as good as the carrot cake one.
We did make it up to London to see some of the Christmas decorations:

And then I was in California. I was in Novato/Petaluma and Santa Cruz for the first week and then in Sac with family for Christmastime.
I came back to England just in time for New Years, where Ben, Sarah, and I went to an 80s/Back to the Future themed party:

 and that's it! Now we are all caught up to January 2014!

Oh right, and the Russian author comment from before- I've decided this as I'm reading Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and am loving it just like The Master and Margarita. I don't know why we never read Russian authors in high school, but we should have. The writing style is wonderful and the stories are epic.
Until next time!

The September post

Well hello! It may be (late) November, but I've got to catch you up from way back in September. So let's start (although I DID fill you in about Oktoberfest, and that's one of the most epic things I've done since then...):

I was doing SO well with exercising and being healthy. Like REALLY well. But then, the gym closed for 3 weeks (throughout August and September). Around this time, it also started getting dark at a ridiculously early hour. So, needless to say, I've fallen out of my exercise routine. There is really no excuse for this, but its hard for me to get back into the motivation once I've fallen out of it. Which is ridiculous; because even though my actual weight didn't drop, I lost 1-2 inches on all my measurements over only a couple months. And that's pretty epic.
Early September brought in much stress planning for the poster presentation I had to give for the postgraduate Research Colloquium at the University. There was much rushed experimentation and last minute poster-making, but it all turned out fine in the end.
I also got asked to do an experiment for my co-supervisor to try and help out with a publication. It started as a quick experiment and turned into an extremely difficult and in-depth project. We are wrapping everything up now. Now, this is pretty common for research- you think you know how everything will go and then you have to pick apart each step to figure out what's going wrong. I actually really liked going through the whole process. It was a great learning process and really made me triple check my science (and learn new biochemistry that I hadn't known before). I'm pretty excited for the experiment and paper to be finished and to get my name in a publication!!
September also meant the new school year started back up- which means Journal Club is back on and so is teaching discussion sessions for the intro Neuroscience course. The big new change this year, though, is that I have 3 undergraduate students doing their final year projects with my helping them as one of the PhD mentors.
I also did a last minute conference attendance at the Royal Chemical Society. It was a little over my head (it was a chemistry conference....) but it was awesome to have an excuse to spend the day in London!
In non work-related terms, we went to Stanmer Apple Day to enjoy all of the local fall harvest. Best part of the day? Drinking pear juice from France. Actually, no, the best part of the day was watching Ben try apple cider vinegar (TWICE) and not realizing he was eating vinegar.

The most exciting things happening in my life are when we go travel. And those adventures always get their own special blog post. Sorry that the ones in between are a bit boring...

August: In a blog post

The beginning of August held Pride, a celebration event that the LGBT community of Brighton and Hove puts on. Its is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) in England and its a great event. Ben and I went to see the parade throughout the town:

The restaurant Pie Society had a cute sign outside of their shop for the event. Unfortunately, we were too far back in the crowd for my phone to get any good pictures of the floats.

We also continued our weekend walks in Wild Park. Originally, I had found a Stanmer Park walking group. As Ben and I were waiting at the meeting point, we realized that everyone arriving was quite elderly. Apparently, what I had found was a walking society for the elderly to keep them active. I did not know this, as it did not explicitly say. So instead, Ben and I found a walking trail for Wild Park, which is right next to Stanmer Park, and we went through a little walk in the woods. It was beautiful, although I wish we had gone earlier in the year when the bluebells were in bloom.

The weekend after, we went on more walks- but this time in Chichester and Arundel! So far, I would recommend Arundel as THE city to go to in England. It is the American's idea of what England is meant to be- a tiny city with beautiful countryside and a big castle hanging over the town.

And our final adventure of August was going up to London to see the West End show Wicked! It was my first West End show and I LOVE LOVE LOVED it!!!
... Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, I have no pictures of this.

I had continued my very good routine of lifting and running, sticking to both of my programs really well. The running, especially, was a big deal to me. I've never been much of a runner and so it was very exciting for me to slowly be working my way up to a 5k run. Hopefully within 30 minutes as well! By the end of August, Ben and I were running a little over 3k and slowly increasing the distance weekly. The last week of August, the gym shut down for refurbishments. I wasn't too happy about this, as there is always a concern that I'll fall out of routine and not be able to get back into it. But more on that in Septembers update...

I had of course been chugging along with the research as well. The biggest project I had in August was to clean out the molecular lab. It was ridiculous, if I'm being honest. I was the first to properly clean out the lab since at least 2002. But I found stuff from as early as 1994. But my cleaning spree was fruitful! I found many antibodies and other consumable items that could provide very useful for someone in the lab. Besides that, I all but finished my molecular pathway work and kept working along on my APP cloning work.

Oktoberfest!

As many of you know, I went off to Oktoberfest for some epic German adventures. It was my first time in Germany and I loved it!

We did a road trip, since the flights were over 200 pounds each when we were looking to book in early March. On the way there, we split the driving over two days and stopped over in the Black Forest.

We stayed in a tiny town with a waterfall only 1.5 km away. It was beautiful and now I am determined to go on a camping/ hiking trip throughout the Black Forest at some point.

We then headed down to Munich; sad to leave the beautiful forest surroundings but excited to start the Oktoberfest fun! After we got to our camping hostel and pitched our tents, we headed out for a little history before starting the celebrations. Dachau concentration camp is just outside of Munich and we went for a visit. It was obviously a very sad  experience, but I am very glad that we went.

After the dose of history, we went to the wiesen for our first beers:

The next day, we went on a walking tour of Munich. And then headed off to the wiesen at night for more Oktoberfest celebrations.

We got our lederhosen and dirndls and spent the last two days of Munich at the Oktoberfest, in the tents. The first day we were in Lowenbrau and the second we were in Augustiner.

After Munich, we went off and stopped over in Cologne before the long drive back home. I LOVED Cologne! And ate the biggest schnitzel of my life...

Overall, I loved it. Every city we went to. And the German people are some of the nicest I've ever met. I can't wait to go back to that beautiful country!