I feel like a REAL scientist!

Today, I am running my first OVER NIGHT NMR... which means, I finally did something right! After going through a partitioning scheme to purify my sea cucumber sample, I finally got some YUMMY products! Just now, I ran an H NMR and got some unique peaks! After quickly running a Carbon 13 NMR, didn't see any specific peaks which means I will be running scans all night and hopefully get a good spectrum tomorrow morning! I am so excited to see it!

This weekend was quite fun. I decided to stay in the ole Aberdeen and hang with friends which always makes for a great weekend! On Friday we went to the Chemistry BBQ! All of the chemistry students finished their finals last Friday so we celebrated with an amazing BBQ! It was cold and rainy, but I didn't mind! They had plenty of veggie burgers and beer to go around. The BBQ was held at a beach just 30 minutes north of Aberdeen called Balmedie Beach! There were massive sand dunes at the beach and at the top was cider and great views of the Scottish Countryside! It was really nice, despite the bitter cold. Also, there were these incredible WWII turrets all along the beach. I was so impressed and intrigued by the turrets but the Scots didn't think much of them. I kept exclaiming how cool I thought it was that they had these little bits of history right on this seemingly normal beach, but no one seemed to care... EXCEPT my WONDERFUL friends who are see here crouching on top of the turrets! It was a great BBQ, and after, all of us decided to go out for a night on the town! It made for a great Friday night.

On Saturday, my friend Mhairi and I decided to go out again, but this Saturday night was much more culturing than previous nights out in Aberdeen. Why, you might be asking yourself. Well, it's because I got a first hand look at how violent the Scots can be on a Saturday night! After barely stepping foot into town, Mhairi and I see this guy walking towards us with a broken nose and blood all down his white shirt. I was totally taken aback but Mhairi seemed unfazed. I was so shocked I kept asking if we should do anything, and she reassured me that he would be alright. So eventually we arrived at the bar and had a great time dancing the night away, until 8 cops raided the place, went into the bathroom and extracted some sketchballs who were doing something criminal in one of the stalls. I don't even know. That was my cue to leave, so Mhairi and I left.

When we left however, we were walking down Belmont street (the street where all of the nightlife is centralized, and that's me on the street this Saturday night!) and we stumbled upon PUDDLES OF BLOOD. JUST EVERYWHERE! I was so frightened! I kept telling Mhairi to stay away from the blood and asked her over and over again if we should get some help, but like the time before, she shrugged off the whole situation like nothing was wrong! I couldn't believe it! ABERDEEN CAN BE ROUGH! SO ROUGH! Last night, I was walking home from a friend's house (we had just had Indian food), when I saw a drunk driver run into a wall just about... 20 yards in front of me! HOW DOES THIS EVEN HAPPEN!

I have learned many safety lessons in the ol' 'Deen, and am very thankful for that! I just have to get used to all of the drunk fighting and stay clear!

This Friday is my friend Steve's Birthday, so again we are going out for a night on the town. Next weekend I am going to try to convince my friends to go camping in the Highlands! SO STAY TUNED!