It's HOT.

        As I am currently writing this post it is 90 degrees, there's not a cloud in the sky and my apartment has no air conditioning. People keep telling me that this is an unusually hot June (it was close to 95 everyday this past week), but if it's already like this in early June what will July bring... Heat aside I'm loving the city more and more each day. There's always something to do and something new to see. Last weekend I met up with a girl in my lab and we went to the Parque de El Retiro. This is a huge 350 acre park in the city that was once owned by the Spanish Monarchy and is now open to the public --it is beautiful! While the current monarchy doesn't have that much power (it's a constitutional government so there are elected officials such as a president), it's sill weird adjusting to the idea that a King and Queen rule and do oversee the country to some degree. The other interesting thing to me is the religious factor that can't be ignored by the abundance of churches throughout the country. Spain is a primarily Catholic country and today is the Corpus Christi holiday in honor of the Holy Eucharist so there is no work or school today. In the U.S.,  aside from the major Christian holidays such as Christmas and Easter, the other Catholic holidays are typically not observed by the country as a whole. However, here in Spain, each holiday is observed and celebrated. Two weeks ago was another major religious holiday in Madrid "The Feast of San Isidro". And yes I said "Madrid" not "Spain" because Saint Isidro was the patron Saint of Madrid so that was just a day of celebration for the people of Madrid. The other regions of Spain have their own days to celebrate their patron saints.

People boating on the lake in the park

The rose garden in the park, it has over 4,000 roses 

         Life at the lab is going great. Last week I assisted on another project and helped perform stereotaxic lesions to the striatum on rats. I helped anesthetize, open up the skull, lesion and stitch the incision back together. Since I don't work with live animals in my lab at Emory, I feel as though in just these few short weeks I have acquired so many new skills, and definitely new lab experiences. Yesterday, one of the women in my lab defended her doctoral thesis so we went as a lab to watch her defense. While I had a hard time understanding much of it since it was all in Spanish, it was very interesting and exciting to watch the whole process. Afterwards, the whole lab threw a huge party for her that went from early afternoon until late at night. It was very special to be there for this girl on such an exciting day and it was a great bonding experience for me with the whole lab. Tomorrow during our weekly lab meeting I will be giving a powerpoint presentation on the work I do at my lab at Emory. I'm excited to share with them the research that I do in the U.S! In terms of my experiment,  my mice have finally arrived for my project. However since yesterday was the defense and today is a holiday I will be beginning the main part of my project on Monday. Life is very hot, but Spain still manages to be enjoyable!