Hello from Ireland!

I'm here! Yay. I arrived yesterday at 6:30 AM, and let me tell you I am pretty tired.

I have some really nice roommates. They helped me go buy things yesterday, Can I just say that you can buy nutella for like under 2EUR? Pretty exciting. I really don't have that many exciting pictures. I'll try to get some more as time goes on.

Lesson learned #1: No one cares about your shoes. For now on, I will wear comfy shoes to lab b/c my feet definitely hurt from walking all the way to lab.

To my mom and sister: NO ONE WEARS RAINCOATS HERE! Haha, but I'm happy I got a raincoat b/c it's colder here than I thought. The weather says like 65...70...and it definitely does not feel like 65 or 70. It could be because the sun doesn't come out. Also, it hasn't rained, which I'm pretty surprised b/c you would think it rains like every day in Dublin. Oh well, I'm sure it will come. It also doesn't seem like people wear rainboots here...weird.

The taxi driver taught me a cool fact: there are not Catholic cathedrals in Dublin, even though Dublin is primarily Catholic. However, there are two Protestant Cathedrals here. Can I say, that they're really really pretty.

Trinity College campus is also gorgeous. I woke up really early this morning (not by choice), so I went and just sat at different benches on campus. Architecture is AMAZING. All of the pretty architecture here was built during the UK invasion. There are soo many pretty columns. I do have pictures below.

My labmates are absolutely nice! I will primarily be working with Adrian (sp?), who I believe is a postdoc. He will help me with the FRAP experiments. That's where you tag a specific protein that you want to see with GFP (green fluorescence protein), then you photobleach an area and track how long the area takes to recover. Pretty cool stuff. I got to see the two photon microscope today. I envision something really big and with doodads sticking out of it..but it pretty much just looks like a regular microscope. Haha. (TCD [pics below)

You'll love this Dr. S. So the way it works, is that the microscope takes many slices and at a particular slice (not below or above) two photons are excited, and their energy levels combine at that point, and you're able to take really cool pics of it. Oh physics:)

The above picture on the left: there's like this stage in front of the tower thingy. They're having a Shakespear festival..and I think I'm going to go see a couple of plays. I really don't know what the picture of the gold thing is. It seemed odd, so I took a picture of it.

Anyway, one of the people in my lab is helping me get a phone. He's giving me his old iphone! So nice of him!! I expected to be buying a pretty low key phone so that I could just get by, but I'm not complaining if I get an iphone:) There's an Iranian girl in the lab too, which makes me happy. Maybe she can help me out with my Farsi!

Mani (my PI) is very nice. I'm excited to be working under him b/c he challenges you to find things out on your own, and then he'll explain it to you later, which is nice because I think you remember things better that way. We had a journal club today..which I never have been too. It was a good experience, but let me tell you, I was so tired at that point that I just wanted to curl up on the ground and take a nap. I stayed awake through the whole things, though, so no worries.

For now, I guess that's it. More pictures will be coming, from Will's request.