Starting to get my feet wet...!

Hello Friends!

The past week has been very up and down for me, but I would say I am on an "up" right now! After last Friday the weekend sort of remained to be kind of boring/anti-social. On Saturday I walked around the city with my camera for the first time and that was very nice/relaxing. I even went to the beach! The beach was very nice. I walked up and down and was amazed by how much of the Scottish coast I could see! I really enjoyed that, but it made me think of how horrible the oil spill in NOLA is! I want to help and I see all the reports coming in from the US but I can't do anything about it!

Anyways, on Sunday I slept for a VERY long time. I was so tired from all of the traveling I had done so i decided it would be okay to sleep in. OK ALSO! My sleep schedule here is totally different that it would be in the US. I went to bed at 9PM last night! When did I age 50 years? I don't even know. But I'm outta the hostel and OoOOoOoOOooO it feel soo good! (That's the hostel to the right)



On Sunday I went to a concert with a Spanish Marine Biologist and Brian the guy from Glasgow. It was heavy metal music, not exactly my thing, but it was culture and social interaction which I appreciated. Monday I was back to work!

I freeze dried my cucumbers and began the isolations. I have done most of my work with Morag's help. She is working on her Master's thesis. I talked to Dr. Ebel about what type of work I am interested in back at Emory and told him about my fungal experiments. He was very interested! I explained my plans to isolate 'cultivar's' anti-fungal natural product and he said that my experiment sounded very "publishable." Then he set me up with a fungal natural products chemist who works in the lab named Mustafa! He and I are going to grow some marine fungus in a liquid media and then use Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectroscopy to isolate some bioactive agents! The work is so incredibly similar to what I will be doing back home! I am so excited!

On Wednesday, on a whim, I decided to go out alone. Although I was nervous at first (even though the city is incredibly safe) I ended up going into a bar and making legit friends! Afterwards we went to several other bars and were out till 3AM! The next day of work was a bit rough, but I had some friends! After work they asked me to go get some drinks at a bar called Revolution.



Yes! They had VODKA AND FOOD! But I was really "tired" from the night before so after some social time I went home and got into bed.

This morning I moved into my new apartment! I found a room on Gumtree.com. It's really cheap and small but it's just what I need. Only 5 mins from campus! I'll take some pics of it and post them later!

Anyways, this weekend on Saturday I am going to some party with a British celebrity? My new friends are taking me. It should be quite a good time. On Sunday I am going to Stonehaven to see the castle! I will definitely post pics.

Anyways, the "store" is open and I have to get some funnels to finish my extractions!

Stay tuned for more posts!