USA :(

this week was nice but fairly uneventful... In lab, I labeled tadpoles with a fluorescent toxin which labels neuronal receptors so you can see the neurons that innervate the muscle cleft at different stages in development... after labeling, for the first time we tried putting the tadpoles in histo clear (we were trying to see if putting them in histo clear would get rid of the fluorescence), which makes it so you can see through the animal and so you can more easily observe the parts of the animal you would like to. In addition, we mounted these animals onto slides so we could observe them under the confocal the next day and take various images...this was a very interesting experiment for me because we learned about different types of labeling techniques in 302 this year!... I also went to a microscope talk this week to learn about some new software the lab just bought.. it has a computer program which controls the microscope and does various other cool things! I also went to my second lab meeting and watched the world cup with a bunch of my lab mates in an auditorium in the building i work in!... I met a bunch of new people through someone who lives in my hall! one of them loves to cook and has a cooking blog that she posts to regularly! Her cooking is wonderful! Some of the best food I have eaten here! She cooked some homemade french toast this morning (including the bread) and I'm going back for dinner tonight! I also went out to a grad party this week at a pub where they had live music playing which was soo much fun! everyone was swing dancing which i wasn't used to but joined in for a couple songs!.. I also watched the game last night with the group of emory people I met here and their whole gang of friends and went to another pub after which was a lot of fun! except disappointing that the US lost :( ... i also booked a weekend in Paris for next weekend with a good friend from Emory! I'm kind of worried about the hostel/ hotel we're staying in after looking at the reviews but it shall be a character building experience!...I'm off to watch the England game!