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September 2020 Reading List

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September was a great month for reading! Of course, this sometimes came at the expense of doing actual work... But reading is a very productive form of procrastination for me and I love devouring a new novel. I also really enjoyed some of the non-fiction books I read, which is pretty out of the ordinary for me! Here's what I read this month: Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher This is a novel presented in the form of a collection of reference letters that the (fictional) professor has written over the years. It was hilarious and touching, and I found myself rooting for the students and especially the prof. You hear about his messy divorce and subsequent romantic failures, a tragic incident involving his favorite student, and the ever-present beef between the Creative Writing and Economics departments. I found this book from a post on PhD in Clothes , and I look forward to reading the other books she recommended as well. Definitely pick up this book if you're interested i...
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An Update: Two Weeks In

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 Hi everyone, welcome back to my little corner of the internet. Over the past year, I have graduated with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and begun my journey as a PhD student! I'm remaining at the same school, but the whole COVID situation means that my life looks a bit different now than it did last year.  Things that have changed:  I bought an electric bike and I've been riding it to school! I really like it - it makes riding up the hill to my house feel just like riding on flat ground. I haven't been late to class yet and I've only caved and asked Tim to drive me to school once. My research focus is completely different. For my PhD, I'm studying a method of transforming mine wastes into concrete, specifically the durability of the resulting concrete material. I don't have a lot of experience with this yet, so I've been reading lots of papers lately and studying up! I got to tour the lab I will be working in, and might get to see a demo of th...
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A Trip with Mom: Prague

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My mom and her friend Trish came to visit me in Germany! They spent one day here and I showed them the lab, my apartment, and the most delicious street food :) After that, we were off to Prague! It was so much fun, and I'm so happy they were able to come visit. An unforgettable adventure! A selfie by Charles bridge :) Prague has canals too! We took a walking tour and our guide explained that the little troll guy on this water wheel is actually a water sprite... I thought they were supposed to be cute! Even though John Lennon had never been to Prague, the Czech people were very fascinated with him and young people used to come to this wall to play his music and soak up the hippie spirit. The graffiti on John Lennon wall used to be more thematic, but now is mostly made by tourists and has no overall message.  We saw the changing of the guard at the castle... And sampled some Czech beer after the tour! These "chimney breads" are billed as a tradi...
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RISE Conference: Heidelberg

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The first weekend of July was our program conference in Heidelberg! Everyone who is in Germany for this scholarship program met up in the south for two days of lectures and sightseeing. We learned about other scholarships for continuing your studies in Germany, and some students also gave presentations on what they'd been working on in their internship so far. We left at 3am on July 5th, so we spent the night of the Fourth of July lighting sparklers and hanging out at a music festival in Bochum! After that though, we just waited in McDonald's until our bus arrived... Look how cute the streets are! This is so cool! Maybe I can convince my professor to take us to Germany instead of LA to see the tunneling construction sites next time :) Heidelberg's history was so fun to learn about, and every building we came across was more beautiful than the last. I'm not totally sure what this one is though...  This Protestant church in Heidelberg was way pretti...
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German National Championships: Bouldering

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After we ran our 10k, Megan and I hadn't had enough of athletic competitions for the weekend and one of our friends invited us to the German National Championships of bouldering! It was at a gym that we had climbed at before, but it looked totally different for the competition. There were people packed in as tightly as possible, and the routes were totally crazy. It was also like a thousand degrees and other people's sweat was dripping on me, but I digress... I was really surprised by how young all the competitors were! The oldest one was probably 23 or 24, and most of them were between 16 and 18. Each person was so strong and technically proficient though, and it was amazing to see them all solve the problems in their own style. You could definitely tell that some of them preferred powerful, risky moves, while other relied more on balance and technique to get them through. So cool! We're planning to go back to the gym tomorrow, and hopefully the routes will stil...
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I ran a 10k!

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When I arrived in Bochum, I saw tons of posters for something called the Bochum Urban Trail, which is a 10k race that was held yesterday! I convinced Megan to do it with me, and we've been training for pretty much all of June. I have to say, it exceeded my expectations! We took most of our photos before getting all sweaty :) I knew that it was an urban race, but I wasn't prepared to actually run through the buildings! We saw so many cool places, like the Planetarium, the Ruhr Congress, an art museum, a petting zoo, and a bunch of local companies. We also got to run backstage through the Starlight Express, which is a roller skating show that's super popular here. It's sort of like Disney on Ice, except with roller skates and a different play to go along with it. We ran through a church! This photo is so blurry because I was still running ðŸ˜‚ There was also live music in a lot of the buildings, and some people even paused their run to start a dance party! ...
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