After the packed weeks I had, this week was actually the exact opposite, as I started feeling a bit stuck. Although I knew what I needed to do and what my next steps were, I did feel very little motivation to get things done. Luckily, a meeting with Dr. Tang reoriented me in the right direction, and I feel a lot more secure in the steps I am taking right now. There’s still quite a bit of (self-imposed) pressure as I have a deadline to meet on August 15th (the day my flight leaves Germany), but I do feel that I’ll be able to make the deadline as long as I keep at it.

Besides research, I have a few notable memories from this week:

  • This enormous plate of curry chicken katsu that I accidentally ordered in Düsseldorf’s Little Tokyo.
  • Seeing local signs in Düsseldorfer Platt (the local variety of Plattdeutsch) in random places around town. As a linguist, it’s always cool to see the local linguistic heritage being retained despite German being the official language for so long. I took a picture of a sign in the mall near me, see if you can see a difference between that and German!
  • Playing the carillon in Venlo for a wedding, which I’ve never done before (the UF policy is to not play wedding songs otherwise people will ask us for them all the time)
  • All the trains from Venlo (NL) to Germany being cancelled for the rest of day, and waiting for a replacement bus that came 2 hours late (thank you Deutsche Bahn). It took me two hours (instead of 50 minutes) to get home.