Mice and dating.

You will all have to forgive me for writing so rarely, but my blog entries now depend on how much time and energy I have after work. Yes! I officially have a work schedule!

At the moment, I am busy with the training, and working on a memory experiment for mice. It’s quite tedious because you need to repetitively observe them, take note, and run numerous trials every day, but it really is quite fascinating. The baby mice for my future drug experiments arrived today and I’m super excited to get started. Because there are so few in this generation, I will only be able to observe them, but it should be really interesting! Anyways, experiments, and tons of reading have been occupying my time. Things are slowly starting to pile up. Luckily, the people here really help each other out and nobody is left hanging.

On a completely different note, I wanted to share a few thoughts I had the past few weeks as I have been able to travel back and forth between Germany and Switzerland via trains. Firstly, the atmosphere here is different. Unless you are in a huge hub like Frankfurt, people in general are pretty laid back and mellow. Not only in their personality, but also with their views on life, like relationships. Maybe it’s because European countries are so small but relationships here are taken so seriously. And I mean that in a good way. Casual dating exists here too, but it’s rare, in my opinion. People that I know in relationships are really in love. And people really care about relationships. It’s an important part of their lives here. Personally, I felt that back in Canada, work, school and family/friends were top priority, in general. But I’ve noticed that most of my German friends here feel that their boyfriend/girlfriend are just AS important. And friends ask their friends how their relationships are going because it’s important for them that they are going well too. If it isn’t, they talk to each other to figure out a way to fix it, just like you would for university course selections, a deadline for a presentation, etc.

Just this past Sunday, I was on the train and I am going to unofficially say that Sunday night in Germany is a sad night for all the people in long distance relationships. At every stop, there were couples hugging and kissing each other goodbye for the week. I have never seen so many long distance couples part from each other in a group at the same time! It was so interesting to see and I truly felt like I could relate. And maybe I’m just being a romantic, but it made me really happy to see these people caring and loving someone so much at the train station. I should have been sad because they were leaving each other for the week, but it didn’t! Just picture a whole platform of men and women waving goodbye to their significant others, anticipating the next week until they can see each other. And until then, technology has to suffice.

Of course long distance is not ideal, but that is the situation for them. And this is how they are working through it. I admire that. It gives me strength and hope.

If any of you are struggling, I only hope that you do whatever makes you happy. Life’s too short.

Love you all,

Erin.