I have some good news since my last post: I don't have to move out of the place I'm staying in! It's a bit of a long story what happened... I will probably explain once I return. I'm glad things are settled now.

On the work front, eight of our zebra finch pairs have eggs now. We replaced the pairs without eggs with new birds, and have a couple of those with eggs as well now. Things are starting to look up, and hopefully we will have a good sample size in the end. I learned a couple of new things this week: preparing blood for hemoglobin assays (we will do the assays soon), and injecting the birds. I was a little bit nervous at first but I was careful and they looked alright afterward. I've also been sorting through some older data that we will use for this project as well. It's been a pretty busy week.

The Canucks lost the Stanley Cup in the middle of the week... I did not get caught in the riots, thankfully. :) It was pretty shameful but I wasn't suprised about what happened. I was downtown yesterday though, and the streets looked clean. Many people volunteered to clean up. There were wooden boards put up as well (for the broken windows) and many people were stopping by to sign them with things like "respect our city". It was nice to see how much people here care about where they live.

In other good news, I got a new camera. I'm still tinkering with it a little. This weekend I went to Granville Island. It's an island in the middle of the city, where there are many shops, bakeries, etc. Here are some photos:

Beautiful, Beautiful Ireland...and more food

So the lab went on this Tapas Trail thing where we went to 5 different pubs/bars and ate 3 tapas at each place. A tapa is like an appetizer of some sort. It was a lot of fun, but not Muslim friendly. haha. At every place at least one and sometimes two of the tapas were either pork or prawns.

Okay, so this past weekend I went to Northern Ireland and Belfast to see the Giant's Causeway. Naturally, when one goes on a 9 hour tour, lots of pictures come about. I took over 275:)..don't judge me. So this blog will be very picture filled!

So on the way there, the guy didn't fill up at his usual spot because there was no space for the bus; he thought he could make it to the next gas station...but that didnt' quite work out as much as he hoped. Haha..we were stopped in this one little city for like 30 minutes.

Near the Carrick rope bridge.

Here's me excited about the rope bridge

The water is so gorgeous!

The rope bridge connecting the two cliffs. So this bridge was made my fisherman who fished mainly salmon back in the day. They made this bridge so that they could carry their salmon to the main land; however, when it was first fashioned, there was only one side that had a rail..yikes! Heavy salmon+1 rail on a high bridge=no good.

The view down from crossing the bridge

Deep in thought after I crossed the bridge.

The water is so clear!

Crossing the bridge to get back to the mainland.

The Giant's Causeway. Rumored to be the 8th wonder of the world (what isn't the 8th wonder of the world these day?...probably Oklahoma..I still love you OK, but you're not as pretty as Ireland). These rocks formed from a volcano like 60 billion (or was it million?) years ago.

I could just stay there for hours..too bad we only had 1 hour. Bitches. You take this 9 hour tour to the Giant's Causeway, but you only spend 1 hour there..who plans these things?

Deep in thought again. SO PRETTY!

So what's cool about the Giant's Causeway is that almost all the rocks are hexegon shape..onlya minute amount are pentagons. Too bad there aren't any rhombi

Dunluce castle. Built (or was it taken over? I don't remember...not important) by the McDonald's from Scotland. Are these the same McDonalds that took over America too? No one knows...

Belfast City Hall

War on want...nicely put. I think this can go out to some people in my family:)

Pretty much sums up Ireland's history in one sentence.

Interesting..

So all over Belfast, there are murals depicting the Catholic and Protestant conflict painted on random walls. This conflict has engulfed the city. There's a Catholic side and Protestant side of the city, and in one area there is ecen a huge wall dividing the city. The rest of the pics are mostly devoted to showing the murals.

At this one stop on the way to the Causeway. Beautiful countryside around.

This is a church in Belfast turned into a shopping center...pretty crazy.

The pics are done for now! I hope you enjoyed them:)

Okay so now the research part: I finally figured out the whole FRAP thing. It's perfected to the best that it can be perfected. I talked to Mani last week, and he suggested cutting out the CNS in my dissections, which will keep the boutons from moving. I did that, and it worked! so one problem solved. Then, about the entire bouton being bleached instead of the ROI...I decreased the laser power some, and then I tried using AIM (an older program) for shits and giggles to do the bleaching. It was more of a 'why not?' type of deal, but it worked! The only problem was that it didn't mark the ROI...so then I troubleshooted that by writing down the coordinates and such so that I could do the FRAP analysis on the precise place that I bleached. So AIM sucks when it comes to FRAP analysis...so I then uploaded the images and FRAP assays into ZEN, the newer program. I am able to do the FRAP analysis there, so it's all good. It's kind of annoying having to go back and forth between programs, but hey, whatever works right?

I finished imaging all of my syt-GFP control flies. YAY for getting results already:) Now I just have to wait a couple of weeks for the other flies to come in so that I can dissect those. Haha...so it's exciting that I'm done with the controls...but then I don't have other flies to dissect....so I'll have to figure out what to do in the mean time. I actually started on making figures for my final poster. I know, I know..it's pretty early, but I just want to use my time wisely in lab.

So today is Blooms day. From what I gather, it's to celebrate James Joyce's book Eulicias (sp?). Apparently, it's a tough book to read beacuse he writes it in streaming consciousness...so if something random pops up in his mind or a noise is made in the background he writes it down. Anyway, it was a great holiday because we had a Blooms day breakfast in lab:) we got muffins, danishes, and scones, and just ate them in one of the offices while John read us a passage from the book. Hahah it was cool. I discovered that I am a big fan of scones, except for the scones made by Starbucks in the U.S. They really don't do scones justice.

Not much is different on the home front. I did buy 3 more jars of nutella...stocking up, just in case:) you never know if there could be a nutella pandemic, causing all the nutella in the world to be depleted. I would at least have 3 jars left:) I also discovered that I like dark soy sauce more than light. It brings a new deminsion to fried rice.

Well, I'm off to finish getting ready for bed. I am off to county Donegal tomorrow to see the Shliab Liagh cliffs. They're the tallest cliffs in Europe. No worries, more pictures will come.

Until then,

Sara

Fun times!

Hello all again! Since my last post a number of updates have occurred. I am currently in my last week of Spanish school with the Instituto Superior en Quito, Ecuador. It's a bit bittersweet, but I'm glad I'm continuing to work on my Spanish outside of the classroom setting. Last week I was able to take classes in the morning and walked around the city more in the afternoons. Here are some fun pictures:


El Telefárico--A cable car took us to the top of Mt. Pichincha and we hiked about half-way up.







Peguche Waterfalls in Otavalo, Ecuador--

Cuicocha Lake--hiked for about 3 hours before we went and saw the crater in the center of the lake.


El Panecillo--the Virgin Mary at the top of the highest hill in Quito.


We went whale watching too!!


Fun stuff. Off to the field right NOW. Chao!

Extra parts

So starting off my second week, I decided that I should look into getting a flat since everywhere I had looked months ago didn't work out, but it's the end of the semester here, so something might open up .... ended up finding an AMAZING place to live, that had just been fully renovated, and is cheaper than where I was! Ta da! Moving commenced!

Old place ...


New place!


I've also started working in the lab on the actual data collection ... and my project seems to be at least three times bigger than what was expected! I'm looking at every single synovial joint in the body, and recording and describing if there are any lesions or not, and so I also have to side every bone and fragment for recording. This was all expected and great, except for the fact that I have to side phalanges too, which is something I've never had to do before, and there is VERY little literature out there on how to do it! But I'm getting better and faster, so all should be well :D though I just love it when there are extra parts in a single burial .... I mean, in this sort of data collection, and individual with three feet is COMPLETELY normal ... right o.<'

Wasn't feeling too well for a couple days, must have caught some sort of bug here, but much better now and back on my feet :) Having a warm place that's actually insulated and an electric blanket sure have helped, it's getting cold! X.x'

So Tired

"Hi.

I would be interested in giving you lessons on the Sibelius

Violin Concerto. I am part of the Violin faculty in Sibelius-

Academy, and the great-granson of the composer.

Hope to hear from you!

Jaakko Ilves"

Sweeeeet

I'm on a boat, I'm on a boat

Everybody look at me, cause I'm on a boat

Hey ma, if you could see me now

Arms spread wide on the starboard bow

I love big cannons that shoots big balls. (Suomenlinna Fortress/Islands)

• Pink/purple trains? Seriously, Helsinki?

• Gabriele (Ph.D student from Italy) being tortured in the MEG

• MEG lab with too many monitors and computers.

I've been in lab for most of my time and days here. In a very busy month when subjects and the MEG machine is open until the end of June due to July being the official month of traveling and Finland being a ghost country, we have been recording from the beginning of last week and need to get up to 13 subjects (who come in for two-day sessions) while sitting in a very uncomfortable seat in a dark room for 6 hours at a time. This means work begins at 9AM and ends at 9PM, including weekends. It is never dark here, however, and only is "dusk" in the night.

Nevertheless, St. Petersburg/White Nights Festival this weekend, Stockholm/Midsummer Festival the next, Lapland/Sauna/Lake the following.

PS. Coding sucks. Labview sucks more than MatLab.

No pictures this week, since my camera is still messed up. It works but the pictures are bad quality, so I haven't been bringing it. I'm taking it to a shop this weekend, so we'll see where that goes.

I don't like to talk about negative things in general but this week has been very stressful for several reasons.

In the lab, only 5 of our 24 pairs of zebra finches laid eggs, when I expected more than half of the pairs to lay. Of those that did not lay, 9 still made nests, but I can't find eggs in them. My mentor said he'd think about it this weekend. He is very organized and knowledgeable, so we can probably find a solution. I'm thankful for his guidance and I'll stay positive. I'm confident that I can still complete a project and obtain data by the end of summer.

The bulk of the stress is due to something that should be mentioned given the premise of this program (doing research in another country). I moved closer to SFU in the middle of this week. Now, though, due to some misunderstanding (I won't go into details), I may have to move out again. Although I have ways of finding other housing, I want to be settled. Currently I feel uncertain and unwelcome. This is difficult because I already feel out of place in unfamiliar territory.

Despite this unpleasant situation, I'd like to say that everyone associated with SFU has been very kind and welcoming to me. I'm enjoying my work and being a part of the SFU community. I know that in the end everything will work out, I just have to be patient. I suppose that in the big scheme, this is only a bump in the road, and I shouldn't let a bad situation get in my way of exploring this beautiful city and enjoying myself.

If I still feel any doubt, I can always call my mommy. That never fails.

I'm off to watch the Stanley Cup Finals at SFU this evening. I think hockey will get my mind off of the situation.