My Week (Photos!)

Monday night was Burns' Night which is a Scottish holiday in honor of the Scottish bard Robert Burns, so after my History of Medicine class (which I actually dropped in order to take Genetics, Nature and Society, but which I am still attending when I can because the subject matter is really interesting) my flat had a Burns' Night supper. Although we didn't have a traditional supper of haggis, tatties (potatoes), and neeps (turnips)--as Tesco was totally cleared out of these items--we did have a delicious supper of spaghetti, wine, cake, tea, and gummy candies. We listened to music and played the game where everyone gets a card with a famous person/character and they have to stick it on their forehead and ask questions to try and figure out who they are. I was Big Bird and Michael Jackson. It was lots of fun.

Tuesday was my long day with two Molecular Cell Biology lectures, one BioTech lecture, a BioTech practical, and a History of Medicine lecture. In MCB we changed lecturers during the second lecture and we are now talking about cell signaling which plays an important role in gene expression and is far more interesting then the cytoskeleton. In BioTech we also got a new lecturer who is much better than the first. He has a dry, British sense of humor and is incredibly knowledgeable. The only downside is that sometimes he gives us so much information during lectures it is hard for my hand to keep up. After class we had practical. Once again the protocol was horribly written. We "ran" a PCR. By run a PCR I mean we lysed cells and then added them to a pre-prepared master mix. I didn't even get to see the PCR machine. The rest of the practical was looking at plates and the yogurt we had made.

On Wednesday Lee and I bought tickets to go see Grizzly Bear in March. The venue is probably about a block away from my flat at most. Afterward we had some tea and then went to get Indian food at this kitchen connected to a mosque cleverly named the Mosque Kitchen. The seating area is a courtyard filled with long plastic tables and chairs, and the cold air served to increase the amount of steam rising off my giant bowl of hot food. Everyone's food looked so delicious (mine sure was!) and nice with steam rising off of it. I didn't finish my portion of saag aloo at lunch, but I did finish it for dinner that night. Later that day Lee and I went to play on The Meadows playground (which is apparently built over a bubonic plague graveyard?). There is a zip line, which was lots of fun.

Thursday I had my Nature, Genetics, and Society class in the afternoon. Currently we are talking about who should be involved in technological decision making and how we can increase and improve communication between scientists and the public. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy this class?

Friday was another busy day. I decided to walk to the King's Buildings that morning (it's a 30 minute walk) because I was worried the bus might run late and I wanted to get there on time for my 9:00 MCB practical. The MCB practical is proving much better than the BioTech practical. Granted all we have done so far is pipette solutions from one tube to another, but I feel a lot less coddled. Also we are going to do a Western Blot! Then again I shouldn't get too excited as this might actually mean the demonstrators are going to run the Western Blot for us. Another down side is that some of the people in my lab group are incompetent. One of the girls tried to set a p 20 pipetter to 60 µL. The 20 on top means it can only go to 20 µL. When I told her that she said, "Oh, well then I will just use this one three times." My response was to hand her the p 100 already set to 60 µL. I worry because this is a third year honors practical. Practical was followed by lecture and another practical. Then at 1:30 I had a BioTech lecture followed by a Biotech practical. The BioTech lab that day was excellent. It was simply a wrap up of what we had done over the entire unit and lasted approximately 25 minutes. It was really hard, however, looking at a gel that someone else had run using my PCR product.

On Saturday I decided I wanted to go on a long walk around Edinburgh. The sun was shining and when I stuck my arm out the window it felt so nice outside. Lee came along too, but what started out as a nice walk turned into the coldest moments of my life. We didn't walk for too long as we got distracted by a street performer on the Royal Mile (he was quite funny), and by the end of his performance we were so cold we ran to a nearby cathedral and ducked in... to the cafe. Why a cathedral has a cafe I don't really know, but we were able to make our way from the cafe to the actual cathedral, which had the gorgeous stained glass. Unfortunately, if you wanted to take pictures you had to pay £2, so we just wandered. We didn't spend enough time warming up in there and the moment we walked out I was chilled to the bone again. My toes were so cold I couldn't feel them anymore, so I rushed back to my flat and snuggled in my bed. Lee stopped by his flat and then brought over tea and Jaffa Cakes to warm me up and make me less cold and cranky. Here are some pictures I took on our short walk:

Old College

Old College + Zombie for fun

Pie Shop!

Obligatory red telephone booth photo. Except I chose the first one I saw which happened to be covered in graffiti and smell like piss.

The Royal Mile

The Royal Mile

Later that night I baked with Aby and then Aby, Phoebe, Su, Aby's friend Rhiannan, and I all sat down and had tea, cupcakes, and peanut butter cookies as well as a nice chat. Here is what the table looked like:


Afterward Aby, Rhinnan and I watched a movie together. So despite the cold, Saturday turned into a nice day.

Today has been cleaning and homework. To come, pictures of my room, the deal with grocery stores, Irn Bru, and Jelly Babies!

The Flat

My flat is located on South Clerk Street and it is a 6 person flat on the fourth floor, Flat 21. The location is perfect. It is on a main street, so just outside the door there are tons of shops. Right across the street is a chocolate shop, which I have not been into yet as I am afraid that if I go once I am going to end up going every day. I browsed in the window the other day and they had these massive chocolate cupcakes with Mars Bars in them. They looked fantastic. There is another shop on the corner of the street called Peckham's. Peckham's is a bakery/deli which also has a variety of biscuits, drinks, and snacks. They are somewhat expensive, but it is such a lovely shop I couldn't help popping in.

There are also a lot of fish and chip places in the area. So far I have discovered there are two kinds of fish and chip shops: Indian fish and chip shops and Mediterranean fish and chip shops. The Indian fish and chip shops serve fish and chips alongside Indian snacks while the Mediterranean shops serve fish and chips alongside pizza, kebabs, and felafel. Mostly, the places tend to be Mediterranean. My first fish and chips experience was at The Meadows Fish Bar. They covered my fish and chips in "brown sauce" which seemed a little dodgy at first, but was a nice addition to the fish. The chips had a good flavor, but they were a little too soggy (due mostly to the sauce). All in all it was really good, and now I want to stop writing, walk the 5 minutes over there, and get me some fish and chips. It was also at The Meadows Fish Bar that I tried a fried Mars Bar. It was so delicious. Frying makes the Mars Bar just the perfect amount of gooey and the batter on the outside keeps the chocolate from getting everywhere and going where it belongs, into your stomach. The only thing keeping me from eating a meal of fish and chips everyday followed by a fried Mars Bar is the memory of how greasy my hands were when I had finished. I can't even imagine how much oil was used. Sends a bit of a shiver down my spin.

So more about my flat. It is actually more of a 6 person hallway with a lounge/kitchen then a flat. You walk in and you can either take a left or a right. If you take a left you find the door to the kitchen and four other doors to single rooms. If you take a right you find two doors to two single rooms, one of which is mine. In the middle are the bathrooms, one for each side of the hallway. For those of you at Hampshire, it is sort of configured like Merrill. My room is really nice, and not too loud because it is on the side of the flat that isn't facing the street. I don't have an amazing view of the city, but it is nice and in the distance I can see the spire of a church. Also right below me and to the left is some other buildings courtyard. I have my bed against the window and sometimes when I look out I see chickens. My room came with a bed, a nightstand with a reading lamp, a small shelf, an armoire, and a desk. I will take a picture when it is cleaner.

So my flat mates are all girls and there names are Wenqian, Keilani, Su, Phoebe, and Aby. Wenqian is Chinese and she stays in her room mostly. She barely even comes into the kitchen to cook as she keeps a rice cooker and lots of food in her room. I tried to get her to warm up to me by telling her I could speak Chinese, but she didn't seem to care and just went back to her room. She doesn't even say, "Hi" when we do run into each other in the kitchen. Keilani is American and goes to Brown. She is majoring in international studies and is part of the Parliament Program, which means she is taking classes for 5 weeks and the rest of her time here will be spent interning at Parliament. She goes out a lot with friends she has made in her program so I don't see her too much. Su is Malaysian and she is studying medicine. She is really sweet and a hard, hard worker. Phoebe is American and she goes to UChicago. She studies law and politics and is really fun, but she also works really hard. Aby is from London and is a first year medical student. She is tall and lovely and is another hard worker.

Mostly I have been hanging out with Phoebe and Aby. I really like them. On the Friday after the first week of classes the three of us went out to a club called City. However, due to the fact that they are such hard workers most of our hanging out occurs in the flat talking in the lounge area, watching shows and movies, eating dinner together, and sometimes baking. Phoebe and I made peanut butter cookies the other day that were really delicious. I really want to make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, but I haven't been able to find canned pumpkin here. That brings me to the subject of grocery stores, which are ridiculous here, but I will save that for another entry.

Classes Mostly

So I've nearly been here two weeks and it actually feels like I have been here for ages. I think that means I've settled in and am feeling comfortable. It's nice.

So I am taking the following classes:
Molecular Cell Biology 3: Tuesday and Friday morning
Biotechnology 3: Tuesday and Friday afternoon
Genetics, Nature and Society: Thursday afternoon

This means I get a three day weekend as well as a random day off in the middle of my week. Also I only have to wake up early two days a week. This has never happened to me before.

Molecular Cell Biology starts at 10:00 a.m. (most days, there will be about 5 times during the semester where class will begin at 9:00) on a different campus 30 minutes away. Luckily, there is a free shuttle that will take me to this different campus (the King's Buildings, where most of Edinburgh's science-y stuff occurs), however, the bus leaves at 9:20 and gets me there at 9:35 so I have to treat the 10:00 class like a 9:00 class and then when I get to campus I have to bum around for 25 minutes. This is one of the many times where I can read anything I please. Currently I am enjoying "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by Joyce. Oh pleasure reading! How I've missed you! Anyway, Molecular Cell Biology thus far has been boring. We are talking about the cytoskeleton. It's a structure within the cytoplasm that is made out of proteins and is basically the cell's skeleton. It is involved in motility. That is about the most exciting thing I've learned about the cytoskeleton. Hopefully, things will get more interesting when we start talking about cell innards. Also, we are only doing one practical in this class (they call labs practicals here) because apparently molecular cell biology techniques are too advanced for undergraduates. Instead we will be doing computer simulations of actual practicals. While I am a bit peeved, the subject matter is something I feel I need to know in order to be hired by a lab in the future. Also, like I said, hopefully it will get more interesting.

Biotechnology starts at 1:30 at the King's Buildings and lasts until 5:00 (this includes practical). Not all praticals take up the whole of the allotted time. On Tuesday we got out at 3:00. That was because the lab was absurdly ridiculous. We did the following: serial dilutions (for you non-science people this involves pipetting a specific amount of one solution into another solution and then taking from the second solution and pipetting the same amount into a third solution and so on), then we pipetted these different dilutions onto agar plates that had been made for us (!!!), then we spread out the solution, then we did this on a special plate with special agar, then we added 5 mL of one solution to 10 mL of another solution, then we looped colonies of salmonella off a plate given to us by the instructor and inoculated a tube. THE END. It took me and my partner longer to finish then other groups only because we didn't know where all the materials were located and some of the directions were horribly written. Not only was our lab completely prepped for us, but at the end our plates were taken to the incubator for us and clean up involved putting things in a basket for someone else to clean. This was all very absurd to me. Unheard of in the Lynn Miller laboratory. Tomorrow we are suppose to be doing a PCR and I hope that less hand holding occurs because I haven't done a PCR in, like, FOREVER and I am really excited. As far as lectures go the first lecture was interesting and the last two were boring so it is still up in the air. The problem is the professor went into so much unnecessary detail. Not to mention the slide show was poorly organized. Wow, I originally typed organized with an "s". How Scottish of me.

Genetics, Nature and Society is a perfect match for me, and it is so unfortunate that we only meet once a week. Today we discussed the history of Eugenics as well as the ethics of genetic screening and reproductive genetics. I was assigned an article called "Reproductive Genetics, Gender and the Body: 'Please Doctor, may I have a Normal Baby?'" by Elizabeth Ettorre and it was about how aborting foetuses with impairments will reduce the number of people in society with impairments and thus threaten those people's rights. It also talked about how society makes people disabled because society views people with impairments in certain lights, i.e. dependent on others, not able to work and contribute to society, etc. Really interesting stuff. I love this course. It was so easy to get into too. Originally I was told that I couldn't get into the course because I didn't meet the pre-requisites, but I just met with my Director of Studies, told him I wanted to be in the course, he said "That sounds interesting, sure!", and enrolled me. When I went to the class and told the professor I was studying biological sciences there was no fuss about pre-requisites at all.

Well, tonight I am going to a pub crawl hosted by the Literary Society of which I hope to become a member so I am off! Stories of chip shops and fried Mars Bars to come!

I Made It!

I'm in Edinburgh! I got to sleep in my bed! The public safety team here is the best!

The flatmates that I meet thus far are really nice. I slept pretty well last night, except I am having a bit of trouble with my heater. Luckily the heater in the hall is going full blast which I think helped. Also the duvet from the bedding pack kept me immensely warm, however, it isn't as big as the duvet I have at Hampshire and thus every now and then I would turn over and one of my limbs would come out from under the duvet and become cold and unhappy.

Well, I need to find something to eat and also an adapter so that I can plug my computer in as it is running out of battery life.

Ariane in Everywhere but Edinburgh

Number of flights delayed : 4
Number of connections missed: 1
Number of hours I should have been in Edinburgh: 6

So this traveling business has been going really poorly so far. Some of it has been snow, but the reason I missed my connection in Frankfurt is still somewhat of a mystery to me. My flight from Chicago to Frankfurt sat around for an hour, was de-iced, made its way onto the runway, and then had to go back to the gate because a girl had a medical issue. I saw the flight attendants escort the girl off the plane and she looked fine, so hopefully it wasn't too serious. After that they had to find her luggage in the belly of the plane, fill out paper work, wait around, and then de-ice the plane again. So all in all it was a two hour delay and I missed my connection in Frankfurt. They re-routed me through London and here I sit waiting for my flight to Edinburgh.

I can't wait to get into a bed. Hopefully, the bed that will be my bed for the rest of the semester not a bed at a hostel. I guess a bed is a bed though. I really just want to be settled in already.

My Last Day in America

I have about 30 minutes before I have to leave for the airport. I am sitting in the middle of my clean room, which is only clean due to the fact that all the clothes that were covering the floor have now been laundered and neatly packed into two suitcases. Despite the clean room and the suitcases and the day full of packing I had yesterday it hasn't really hit me yet that I am leaving for Edinburgh. Even the idea of leaving in general seems absolutely ridiculous to me for some reason. It will probably hit me when I change planes in Frankfurt. If that doesn't make me realize I am not in America anymore and I am not going back to Hampshire this semester then I don't know what will.

I am actually pretty nervous about going to Edinburgh. When I went to China two summers ago I wasn't nervous at all, so I don't really understand what is causing all this anxiety. Scotland is an English speaking country and when just walking around and not speaking I could possibly pass for a native. In China, on the other hand, the main language is obviously not English, there is no way I could pass for a native, and there are some major cultural differences. I guess I am just nervous because there are some things I still have to work out when I get to Edinburgh, whereas once I got on the plane for China everything was already all perfectly arranged.

Well, I better get a move on. Next time: thoughts from Edinburgh.