This last week I feel like I’ve gotten more done in the lab than I had been in previous weeks… which is good because I was concerned that I wasn’t getting a whole lot of work done. I still don’t know that I’ll have a lot of results to present at the poster session in 2 weeks… but maybe I’ll be able to get a lot done this next week.

A couple of people I know from the research lab were preparing for the TOFEL exam… it was this Saturday. It seems like a pretty hard thing to cram for right before you take it… since it’s a test on a whole language and especially the spoken part seems hard to study for in a short period of time. I spent some time this week helping out a friend from my lab with practicing for the exam. There was also a talk this week given by an organic chemist who was a nobel prize winner in the 90’s, but his talk was actually about China’s fuel economy and what options are available in the future. It was pretty good I thought… I found it interesting because it focused on a lot of more practical issues that everyone (from different fields) could relate to. It was a tricky situation though for a lot of people to understand his speaking I felt like, since it was in English but with a very strong (I think Hungarian) accent. Earlier that day even, my friend from the lab had been saying how he has trouble understanding other non-native English speakers because of their accents.

On Saturday I played badminton with a couple of people from my lab, and it was a lot of fun. I hadn’t played since I was really young I think but it was pretty easy to get used to again. It was really hot though, I think I drank about 3 bottles of water during the couple of hours we played. Today I spent some time at starbucks working on medical school applications and we went out to get pizza for dinner at the Kro’s nest.

Week 7

Last Sunday Brian and I had dinner w/ three girls from the Simmons College in Boston. Then we headed home to watch some prison break and Tiffany was at her lab having her lab meeting. We love prison break now… and I’m afraid of what I’m going to do once we finish watching season 2. It won’t be quite as bad as when lost season 3 finished but I’ll have to look for something else to watch. I better go to the movie store after working or at lunch today.

Hmm, on Monday we went with some people to the Movie Night at Lush, they showed the Matrix and it was in English, haha! It was cool to watch that but it was really loud and hard to talk at all. After the movie night we looked at some dogs at a dog market that is apparently where all of the individual dog sellers go at night or something (at least I think that’s what this guy was explaining…). The dogs were incredibly cheap compared to American prices for dogs… you could get a dog for about $10 USD. I felt bad for these dogs though b/c I donno what happens to them if they get too old before they are sold… all of them are really young puppies.

Yeah then on Tuesday after lab I just stayed in and watched some Prison Break and did a little work on the med school applications… those things are never going to get finished. Wed. we went to this outdoor food market place where they cook food outside and we ate a huge pile of chicken wings. It was a really nice night to be outside. After that I went to the propaganda club for a bit with my friend Victoria and a bunch of people from her program here but I came home very early.

Yesterday night I stayed in and talked to my girlfriend online for a long time. She’s in Ghana this summer and we don’t get to talk often enough. Tiffany was at a lab meeting and there was a lot of confusion about how she was getting home. I guess what happened was she got a cab near the restaurant they ate at but somehow she ended up sharing it with a couple of people who were headed the same way… but it was late at night and she was understandably nervous about the situation so she just got out of the cab near the JI building and called Brian and I. It was a bit disappointing to hear that someone had stuck her in a cab w/ unfamiliar people, as it was dark out and for a girl in a big city that just seems like a pretty scary situation. Anyway though so we got a cab to where she was and just all came back together. I was pretty happy with our ability to explain to the cab driver that we just wanted to go back to where we had come from b/c he didn’t seem to know the same name for our apartment complex as we did at first but it wasn’t too difficult. I’m nowhere near as good at Chinese as I would have expected to be for being here almost 7 weeks now. hahaha I always think of how embarrassing it will be when my friends at home see how little Chinese I’ve learned.. I know enough to get around and stuff but that’s very little and having a real conversation would be nearly impossible… :(

Oh, and on Wed. afternoon the wallet and cell phone of a guy from my lab were taken right out of the lab computer room! I mean that stuff happens at home too but it’s crazy how much crime we’ve been hearing about lately. I was really happy that I had my computer with me or it would probably be long gone. Anyway, needless to say, I’m being extra careful with things now!

This weekend Brian has found a place we might go to called “Happy Valley”. It’s some kind of amusement park and it looks like it has shows and stuff too so we might go out there.

Last few days

We’ve gotten a new door on our apartment now. We haven’t heard anything back from the police about anything related to the break-in… but it seems like it might be nearly impossible for them to catch whoever did it anyway. The lab work is going well. I had kind of a funny thing happen in the lab… I’ve learned how to tell the solvent bottles in the lab apart by the characters, and so I know the character for water but there’s one that comes before it that probably means like ‘pure’ or something, I’m not really sure what it is but so I just know the water one. I was filling up this water bottle the other day and I’m smelling something really strong and I thought someone was just using something with a strong odor and so I keep filling up the bottle and then the guy I work with comes over and he’s like oh that’s not water! It turned out it was a really concentrated solution of ammonia and so the character for water is still there but the other one was different. So I’m an idiot anyway and now I know to look at it more carefully or to just smell it.

Yesterday I worked on some med school applications and Tiffany got a manicure or pedicure or something like that and Brian played a lot of basketball in the morning. At night we went to Kro’s nest again for dinner and then I went to the San Li Tun area (not sure if I spelled that right) with my friend Victoria to meet up with some other people we met here. It’s a really long cab ride to get there but I actually like it b/c you get to see a lot of the city and stuff it’s pretty cool I’d almost take the cab rides just for fun. We went to a bunch of bars and clubs and stuff and it was a ton of fun… probably my favorite thing I’ve done here so far. I didn’t realize how late it was though… I didn’t check my phone all night and when I got out of the cab near home I was thinking, ‘boy, it’s bright out at night’ and then I realized the sun was rising and I was like, oh crap… hahaha. Well it was a lot of fun and I feel kind of dead today but I’d def. do it again. We also met some girls from Simmons College who are here for a chemistry program also and we’re having dinner w/ them in about an hour. I honestly donno if I’ll be able to stay awake for it but hopefully it’ll be fun.

A break in!

Ah so we had some things stolen from our apartment! The police came by and investigated a lot and they even dusted the apartment for fingerprints! It was pretty interesting to see them do that. We were with them over at the apartment last night til about 2:30 or 3:00 am, so we were really tired today. We were at the police station early this morning, and Tiffany was in the questioning room for over an hour! She was answering questions about the items that were stolen. When we asked what was taking so long… Helen told us it was because of very slow handwriting! Hahaha! The police have been very helpful to us and they seem very dedicated to helping us try to get our things back. Helen suggested (and I agreed) that the treatment we were receiving was likely because of us being foreigners, which seems really nice. It would also be nice to get the stuff that was stolen back, most of all Tiffany’s computer, b/c it really sucks to lose all of that information and work and everything that’s on there. Most everything else is pretty replaceable but that one is a pretty big pain to lose.

Weekend

This weekend I spent a pretty fair amount of time in the mornings working on medical school applications… it’s a lot of writing and stuff but I think actually it’s not such a bad thing, b/c it makes me spend time looking at what schools sound like a good fit for me and considering the reasons I want to go. On Saturday Brian, Tiffany and I checked out a market area and went shopping a little. At night we went back to the Kro’s nest.. Brian and Tiffany ordered this really sick looking pizza though with no cheese (b/c Tiffany doesn’t like cheese) and so it was this giant pizza just soaked in sauce. Today I went to the Starbucks on campus for awhile and then Brian and I walked around for a long time looking for this mcdonalds that we thought was near our apartment but never found it… but we did get to see a lot of new stuff so it was probably worth it. Oh yeah we found a great dvd store right next to our apartment buildings too that has each dvd for 8 yuan. Hmm, yeah then Brian and I watched like 8 episodes of prison break tonight while Tiffany had to go into work for her lab meeting. I think it was a boring weekend probably, but I wasn’t feeling too well and I think I’m getting better tonight though so next week I will do a lot more partying. I can’t believe the trip is half over!

Today is 7/7/07!

Brian found this great pizza restaurant that’s pretty close to one of the bus stops between our apartment and the campus, it’s called Kro’s Nest. We went there last night and it had very good food I thought.

I went to my first lab group meeting this morning. The whole thing was in Chinese and the ppt slides only had a little information so it was a kind of boring 2 and a half hours but it was cool to see anyway. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep going to them b/c they are optional for me and the Professor sort of warned me they would probably be boring and that I wouldn’t enjoy them but I wanted to see it anyway so I’m glad I went. I was pretty surprised by the format though, it’s not what I thought it would be. There were 3 grad students that each gave a presentation on a research paper, but then the papers were all stuff our lab doesn’t really do and the papers used techniques none of the students in my group use, so there’s a lot of questioning and discussion that was going on over the techniques used and stuff like that. The Professor pretty much just stays out of the way and lets the students talk and there’s a lot of debating that goes on. I’m not sure if it gets a lot done toward furthering our group’s work but everyone took part pretty actively (except me of course, haha) and it seems like a cool way to learn about new things.

Lab

The graduate student that works on the project I’m working on in my lab just now finished his exams, so we did our first experiment together on Tuesday. I’m really hoping these experiments go well, since there’s not a whole lot of time. The stuff I had been doing wasn’t really related to my project, and I was just learning to use equipment and reading literature until this week. I think things will go pretty well though, and it sounds like we have a pretty reasonable plan of things set up for me to work on.. so I’m optimistic about it. I didn’t even realize today is the 4th of July until last night. I think we might go out to a 4th of July celebration at the foreigner bar we like… I’m not feeling so well today though, so I donno if I’m going to go yet.

Weekend

This last weekend I went out to the bar for about the whole day w/ my friend Victoria from UM. We had a pretty good time. She’s had a couple of really scary allergic reactions to fruit here and she’s been to the ER twice already. I think I would be thinking of going home right now if I was in her situation. I got to see the dorms here a little bit and they are really nice. Sunday was mostly just spent sitting around watching movies and stuff... Brian and I had dinner at the Italian restaurant that we like. The dishes are surprisingly small there compared to just about every other place I think I’ve been since we’ve been here… we each ordered a couple of things though.