Things Are Movin' On Up

No Chlorine gas today. Nope, no chlorine at all actually. To avoid poisoning ourselves, we used Sulfur based compounds today. So instead of chlorine gas, we generated lots of Sulfur Dioxide and Sulfur Trioxide. I will go ahead and let you read a little bit of the Wikipedia articles on those compounds so you at least know how fun my day was.

On the brighter side, preliminary results show that the experiment was a smashing success! In fact, I'm pretty sure we were able to recreate the experiment that I personally didn't think would work. My supervisor is out of the office until Friday (I finished up the experiment alone), so I will have to wait to break the good news. I'm so excited that we finally got the baking soda to bubble out of the volcano........... ;-)

On another good note, I noticed that my Deutsche Bank account (or "Konto" as the Germans say) has a nice deposit from the DAAD. Now I can buy the fancy Leberwurst! I actually find that I have been having to buy a lot of bread, mostly because I can't keep it from molding. I buy a half-loaf, and then four days later it's all covered in green and yellow. I hate not having artificial preservatives that will probably give me a terrible disease in the long run! Ugh natural foods!

Well, we're off to Mannheim tomorrow. We (a few of us from the institute) are heading up to check out a waste-water treatment plant. Being a Chemical Engineer with a focus on the environment, I've seen a few of these, but I will be interested to see if the German one smell just as bad as the American one do. I will let you know. Maybe I will even bottle some of the air so I can better describe it when I get back state-side.

I've been getting out and enjoying myself quite a bit these days. This weekend a group of RISE interns are headed over to Munich to spend the day on Saturday. I think I will push back Verdun to August so that I can go with them. I have also been spending a lot of time writing my book. My goal was to write 30 to 40 pages a week. I'm well behind.... but hopefully it will be done by the time I get back.

So with that said, "No really, don't you smell that?".