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Shane Frank
I'm an American (or "Estadunidense") studying Forest Ecology and Management in Freiburg, Germany.Xexe
Travel Blog Posts
September 19th 2009
Hello. I wanted to quickly upload some pictures and talk about the work. I was walking up very steep inclines (up to 55+ degrees) and taking measurements on seedlings. The work was exposed, as there is no forest at this time, as a result of planting 100,000 trees in March. Still, there are a lot of climbers (~vines) with thorns and caterpillars that hurt a bit and leave discolored, blistering skin... jerks, huh? Anyway, the sun is challenging, and I am officially a redneck. I got a haircut recently to discover that I now have a bright white band bordering the top of my neck. In Gutianshan, Maria and I saw a snake in the river and this time, in Xingangshan, I was walking up a pretty steep incline to check out a planting position and ... read more
August 27th 2009
- Despite all of these dangerous-looking insects, Maria insists on being most scared of your common earthworm, because it's "just disgusting." She screams "Holy @$&!" and I look for a poisonous snake with shovel-in-hand, but an earthworm wiggles by. A big bug with the jaws of, well, "Jaws" crawls towards her with malicious intent and she doesn't care. I care. - Oh yes. Planes, trains and automobiles. It was (a 3-hour train from Freiburg to Frankfurt,) an 11-hour flight, 6-hour train ride and a 2-3 hour taxi ride to the hotel. The train ride was authentic loaded with Chinese, soup and staring (mostly not from us). - Don't know what else to write here, but I should mention that I will work another 3-4 weeks after my short trip to Shanghai. After the work, I will ... read more
August 27th 2009
Hello Everybody, I've been in Gutianshan, China for about 2 1/2 weeks now doing an internship which is required by my program in Freiburg. Actually, the first part of the internship, as luck would have it, is helping preliminary data collection on phosphorous nutrient cycling in the subtropics here, which includes helping Maria gather information for her masters thesis. That is almost finishing and I will now go to another town called "Xingangshan" (say it as you will--"sheeng-ahng-shahn"), where I will be a mountain goat climbing up steep hills to look at trees on a plantation set for biodiversity experiments. Perhaps, this sounds like "blah, blah, blah," so I will comment on a few things about my experience in China: - They are louder than Brazilians... yes. The men scream and the women not so much. ... read more
January 7th 2009
Hello Everyone! Thanks for the comments and messages! So, I finished up a statistics class before the Holiday break and went to Norway between the 21 Dec and the 3 Jan. That trip was phenomenal! My second flight from Amsterdam was delayed and they set me up in the same hotel in order to take the following morning's flight. Then the vacation... I arrived and spent a couple of days soaking in the finer pleasures of life: cognac, hearty food and a blazing fire. I stayed most of the time at my uncle's house which sits on top of a hill, removed from the city but not from a good view of it as well as the surrounding forest. We talked about everything as the cozy environment demanded. Also, he has a wood shop in which ... read more
December 23rd 2008
Hey Everyone, So, this is a blog site that I just started to hopefully be a little more routinely connected to you guys. I'll be periodically posting things here in case anyone is occasionally curious about the goings-on. I'll give you a quick update on everything. There's quite a bit of stuff that's happened since I left the States to study here in Freiburg, Germany, but as these blogs will prove to be a nice place to play out some "dear Diary" tendencies, I'm sure you'll get a good idea about my experience(s) here. Quickly: Living: I moved to Freiburg on September 4th, 2008. On the way to Stuttgart from Amsterdam, I met an American named Patrick. Ge's a good guy and I've since met his awesome family (played tag with his daughter) and snagged a ... read more
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