Heyy all! I am sorry for my lack of recent updates...I have been incredibly busy. Last week a few close family friends came to visit me for the week. We spent the week in Heidelberg and then on the weekend traveled to Strasbourg...my first steps in France!
Crepes...even better than the American pancake!!!
View of the entire city...its quite the looker :)
Really interesting cathedral...we climbed up stairs for like an hour to get to the top but well worth it!
In the lab I have been experimenting with various imines and isonitriles and different methods of isonitrile formation for optimization. I have also continued with my platinum catalysis tests and reporting the analytics for these reactions. It was frustrating because one of the starting materials necessary for my reactions was somehow contaminated by another source...of course I did not find this out until all of my long days work was finished. But I guess that is just chemistry research..you have to expect some mistakes every now and then..maybe the third time will be the charm?? I have distilled the starting material for impurities and will try again tomorrow. On a positive note, I have become quite familiar with Gas Chromotagraphy and Mass specs for analyzing catalysis. Sadly though all of the bachelor (aka German undergraduate students) have finished and are now on there vacations so the lab seems somewhat empty. It is also vacation time for several of the PhD students. Also, it is incredibly hot here...but unlike in the states there is NO AC in the lab! In fact, a few of the PhD students took the afternoon off of work to just go for a swim because the heat was becoming intolerable. We also made ice cream with liquid nitrogen to combat the heat...typical chemistry nerds :)
As for traveling I'm leaving for London at 6 am this Saturday! I found a 35 Euro round trip Ryanair flight! I will come back monday morning. I'm so excited to see such a bustling city because of the OLYPMICS! I have been watching the olympics like crazy (our lab streams it while we work) but now I'm going to be there...literally in the heart of the 2012 London olympics. (I'll believe it when I see it). I'm staying with some friends from Emory who are studying abroad at the London School of Economics. Unfortunately I lost my camera charger but hopefully I can find a new one in the next few days so I can post London pictures.
Until next time...which will not be that long again!
Kristen
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