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.