Nothing's better than good wine and an explosion (not correlated to each other of course)

So... I'm bad at blogging. It's been around two weeks since my first post BUT I have a lot of news and great stories to relay from the beautiful hills of Tuscany. Sorry ahead of time for the super long post... :D

Starting from where I left off two Sundays ago...

So for the Monday-Wednesday following my last post, I was fortunate to be invited to attend the Fourth European Workshop on Drug Synthesis. The lecture series included professors from around the world that were talking about varying stages of their career and drug development. The lectures were actually extremely interesting and we were able to go to the beautiful Centrosa di Pontignano, an old monastary that the University owns specifically for housing guests and holding conferences. The center was smack dab in the middle of the hills of tuscany surrounded by iconic vineyards and mountains and was positively breathtaking. The lectures themselves were held in a chapel (the irony of science being conducted in a catholic chapel still gets me) and included many interest methods towards solving problems that are relevant to both medicinal and pharmaceutical research.

After the workshop, I was able to start my project full swing. The project that I am currently working on is actually completely different from the project that Dr. Taddei originally assigned me and now involved Pd on charcoal catalyst development through microwave assisted organic synthesis and hopefully will lead up to the development and synthesis of the catalyst (so we don't have to keep buying it commercially). The first reaction was very successful but my luck quickly ran out after that. The reactions that I have been running recently have been completely nonproductive often times yielding only stating material and small traces of possible products, but you know I guess that's research. I participated in my first group meeting on that Thursday and the group seemed slightly confused and disgruntled about holding the meeting in English... Since I can't speak Italian Dr. Taddei has asked the students to make all slides in English and to conduct the meetings in English when possible. With their English experience often times lacking, they were a bit annoyed/confused but I hope they will get used to it... :/

The weekend wasn't particularly exciting as I took it as time to relax and enjoy myself after a week of 8am bus catching and 9am lectures. My lab mates have been extremely welcoming and invited me to happy hour (called an aperitivo) and I was able to order my first legal drink (as I'm 20 and can't drink in America). the food here is just phenomenal. We sat on the piazza del Campo and enjoyed the night. Sunday I took the day to relax but my internet was totally fried. The university doesnt seem to care as much as Emory/other American schools about propogating an effective internet connection so it's a constant struggle daily to see if the internet will connect and work. Of course, I don't mind but it makes it difficult to research articles and write blog entries... It was a great excuse to explore the libraries of Siena and man, do they beat Woodruff Library by a longshot. Each faculty has their own library and each library is not only extremely intensive but equipped with a beautiful building and garden to match. I studied in the garden and read up on some articles for work on Monday and it was just amazing to be able to not only breathe fresh air and enjoy nature but also escape the noisy center that is usually bustling with commotion and drums (contrada's are starting to prepare extensively for the palio...)

The next week was the same, day in and day out at work but I have been able to start really getting to know my lab mates. While Dr. Taddei is rather elusive, I see everyone else in my group on the daily and are able to chat extensively (but slowly, haha) about literally everything. I went to the cafeteria there and found out that it is run by Sodexo (I can't seem to escape) but the food was so many levels better than DUC food, I can't even describe my astonishment.

On Wednesday afternoon was when things started getting exciting!! So, a difficulty of MAOS is that there are times where the irradiation of the MW causes a rapid gain of energy that causes the molecules to experience a rapid increase of pressure, often times resulting in an explosion of the reaction vessel in a closed system. This phenomenon is called electron arcing and previous to Wednesday I had only read about it in numerous papers. Well, let it be known that one Wednesday June 6th, 2012 at 4:30 pm I was able to witness my first explosion and my first view of the electron arcing phenomenon!! While, it was frustrating to have lost my experiment and a day's worth of work, it was EXTREMELY EXCITING to be able to have seen this phenomenon. It's like one of those things where nerd victoria takes over and reads too much over a short amount of time. When I witnessed it I was first in shock and then astonished because it was actually true. It was great. It also allowed me to take apart and examine (and clean) the entire MAOS apparatus. It was just too fantastic (and fortunately it was only on a 2mL reaction on 1 mmol of material).

On Wednesday night, they invited me to go to the discotheque (OMG i didn't even know they still existed because the only time i've ever heard about this was in 7th grade french class with a book dated back to the 70's). At first I was suspicious about the party because we met up and ended up driving (and getting lost) to this far restaurant/disco/pool called White. It was nestled in the far reaches of the mountains but when we arrived it was a fantastic place. There was a huge dance floor and a gigantic pool. It was completely outdoors and Aside from the normal bar and drinks, they had a fully stocked snack bar which was full of delicious homemade pasta and had a meat bar where you could get freshly grilled meat and french fries. At first, it was particularly anti-climactic because there was this terrible band (by anyone's standards) that was singing and playing bad cover music. But then the real music started playing and it was just like an American club! They played all American music (which I thought was surprising) and I soon came to find out that Italian guys are very...forward. My lab mates rescued me on multiple occasions of Italian men trying to say "ciao" and it was fun to just dance and enjoy myself with a bunch of great new friends. It was interesting because I always think that Italy is going to be drastically different from America and that I'm going to be culture shocked all the time everytime I try something new, but I find that no matter where I am humans are all the same and have the same interests. It's been extremely humbling and shown me great insight into human nature.

Friday and Saturday I joined the Emory study abroad students on their fieldtrip to Montalcino, a small city about an hour by bus. It was a beautiful trip and I was able to enjoy the great wine that the tuscany is most known for, Brunello di Montalcino and Rosso di Montalcino. We went to visit a beautiful civic museum that included a wide range of art from the 13th-15th century. The art was predominantly catholic and depicted a lot of famous saints, patron saints, the virgin Mary and the crucifixion. The best was these wooden statues and the frescos that were present in the building (the art museum was, surprise, an old monastary). The art was so beautiful and spiritual. I'm not a particularly religious person but standing there and looking at the paintings, sculptures, frescoes, etc. I could feel the passion and the beauty of the Catholicism at its simplest level. We also toured the fortress and I've never seen such beautiful views in my life. Standing at the top of the fortress, I was able to even see Siena in the distance, nestled in the hills of vineyards and green fields. We also visited the new city hall (which is the old hospital). We followed with a wonderful multi-coursed dinner. Begin your jealousy now: 1st course, antipasto toscano and bruschetta, the first is a collection of many different kinds of preserved meat like salami, proscuitto, etc. with cheese and bread and the second was a wide assortment of bruschetta with different toppings that included a mushroom mix, a cheese mix, pate, tomotoes, etc.; 2nd course, black truffle and ricotta ravioli in a truffle cream sauce; 3rd course, homemade pasta with fresh pork in a brunello sauce; 4th course, white belt pig with grilled potatoes; 5th course, strawberries in sugar and lemon juice and espresso. During dinner, we were served brunello, rosso, grappa, lemoncino, and orangicino. All of which were delicious except for grappa... DONT DRINK IT I WARN YOU NOW ITS SCARY.

We stayed in an quaint and beautiful B&B which has a great view of the horizon. Everything was smooth sailing until a PIGEON flew into our house at 5am and woke everyone up... It was kinda scary because it was just flapping around crazily and we couldnt control until someone finally caught it (what a ninja...). We then went on a 10k hike through the mountains where we visited a winery. We toured the winery and they explained the whole process from grapes to the bottle to the store and it was super interesting. We were served a small lunch and then we trekked to a wonderful little church that was built by Charlemagne after the   the plague. We witnessed the Gregorian chants during their afternoon service which was haunting. We then made our way back to Siena and I took a well deserved shower and long nap.

The trip overall was fun and breathtaking and it was nice to mingle with both students and professors that could understand me and are experiencing the same kind of things as me. My Italian family is growing larger and friendlier!

I'll post pictures up as soon I get them to upload from my SD card!

much love and olive oil,
ciao~!