Rain Rain Go Away (or Not)

This was supposed to be our first day of full-time work...but I forgot we had another talk this morning. So I got to sleep in an extra hour, then attend a Lab Safety Lecture with Ger Fleming. It was a lot better than it sounds, though, because he decided to be awesome and take us outside to sit by the river and listen to it. Afterwards, Melissa, Ruth, Sarah, Nicky, Josh, and I went to get coffee in the canteen, then Sarah and I headed off to work.

It was a really easy day. Dearbhaile started us off reading background articles (bleh), which we did for an hour before lunch. We went downstairs to the hospital canteen for lunch, then sat on the grass outside to enjoy the weather. I felt a few sprinkles while I was out there - some foreshadowing. This is a picture of the building I work in, by the way.


When we got back into work, we finished reading articles and Sandra showed us how to take pictures of the gels we run using their camera. Then she got me to streak out isolates for her onto Blood Agar Plates, which was just fine. It's easy to do.

Then, it finally rained. More like poured. We could hear it while we were sitting in the lab. It was nice to hear, actually. I'm ready for some cooler weather (I might be eating these words later). After I finished that set of plates, I got to work on streaking out other isolates for DNA extraction tomorrow, and then did some onto a special agar to detect the purity of the E. coli isolates. Good stuff. Sandra let us leave after that, and Sarah and I biked back in the drizzly rain.

I was a lazy bum from then on, just sitting around the apartment. Sarah and Josh went to the store, and I made a few phone calls. Not too many people answered, but I got to chat for a while with Antoine and my mom. Molly too, but she said she could talk more on Wednesday night. It was nice. I miss everyone back home, and it's really hard being on such a time change, since nobody's ever online when I'm awake. Ah well. So look out for a random phone call, maybe.

After that, I hung out with a lot of kids from my program, and a few others. We watched TV, exchanged jokes, and had generally a good time. I'm glad they're so easy to get along with. Well, I'm being lame, so I guess I should get back to socializing. Til next time.