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.

I should post things more often!!

On Tuesday two of the grad. students from my lab took Brian and Tiffany and I out for lunch at a pizza buffet. They had tons of great food, I especially liked these chicken on a stick things (and so did everyone else). People would pile like 20 of them on a plate. It was a pretty interesting place and it was very loud b/c there as a group of middle school students there, I’d guess maybe they were mostly around 16 or 17 years old, and there was also all the beer you could drink on tap. So they were taking advantage of that and everyone had a pint size mug (or 2) in their hands full of beer at all times. A few of them were pretty much covered in beer by the end of the lunch and the floor near the drink machines was flooding with spilled drinks. I was curious about how their teachers were going to react to them all being drunk when they got back to class… anyway it’s true what they say, drinking does make you look cooler.

On Thursday we had a our usual lunch with the JI and then we went to the bank b/c we had to pay for a deposit on our apartment and then we also bought some more minutes for our cell phones. I was really surprised when I checked my balance b/c after having the phone about 3 weeks I had only spent 21 yuan or about $2.50. I mean I don’t use the phone that much here but that still seemed like very little compared to home where I think people pay that much for about 2 days of phone service.

Then on Thursday night my lab went out to dinner to celebrate the graduation of one of the PhD students. He is the first student to earn his PhD in our research group. The restaurant we went to had a karaoke thing on the TV and a couple of people sang but really not that many people wanted to try it. Oh and I also found out on Thursday that one of my friends from UM is going to be living on the Beida campus this summer and so she moved in today. Hopefully we’ll find some cool stuff to do this weekend.

Back to Work

Yesterday we saw the first rainstorm we've seen since we got here. It only lasted about half an hour though and afterwards it was nice out again for the rest of the day. Tiffany actually had to go in for work in her lab and then to a group meeting so Brian and I went back to the Chemistry building in the evening to pick her up and then we all went to the grocery store and I got a bunch more snacks. Today we're back at work in the labs. The buses are always really crowded on Mondays it seems like... well for the last 3 Mondays they have been anyway. It doesn't seem as crowded on the other weekdays.