Tristeza

I leave Maine tomorrow and today was my last day in the lab. For this year. Dave asked me earlier in the summer if I would consider returning next summer and the more I think about it the more I really want to return. So today I told him that I will definitely come back, but that we will just have to discuss the time frame because I want to spend two weeks on Beaver Island with my favorite bio prof doing field research.
To celebrate my last day, a couple of friends and I went hiking last night on the back side of the islands (where there are no tourists). We intended to go up two peaks: Parkman and Bald. However we forgot that it is getting dark much earlier now so we found ourselves stuck on top of the first one watching the sunset. We made it down with a combination of cell phone backlights and lighters but the stars were amazing. It was a good adventure to end with. Today after a morning in the lab my lab mate and I went kayaking to check out an oyster aquaculture facility across the bay. Now it's just packing and saying goodbyes.
I wish I could skip school and stay here :(

a year ago today....

I arrived in Ecuador to start seven months of wonderment. I really wish I was back there right now. I'm trying to decide if there's any way I could visit my family for Christmas and my real mom wouldn't kill me for not spending all my winter break with her.


Memories:



Some of the people I interviewed for my oral lit class


A spider in the Amazon


My family at Christmas


One of Darwin's finches


Climbing down a mountain on the inca trail trek where I almost died from altitude sickness

para mi mama ecuatoriana: algunas fotos de maine

Una puesta del sol sobre el mar desde mi laboratorio



Todas las personas que trabajan conmigo con sus familias en una isla cerca del laboratorio. Estoy en la primera fila con un saco azul


La primera salida del sol en los estados unidos desde la montaña Cadillac. Subimos la montaña por la noche y llegamos justo con la salida del sol. Fue lindísimo


El lago "Burbujas" en el parque de Acadia


Unas flores cerca del mar

Te extraño muchísmio,
Un beso y abrazo fuerte,
Emily

no more volleyball...

I broke my finger :(

Fourth of July and beyond

I finally have a project for my thesis! I'm definitely going to be looking at how long ex vivo tissue cultures can stay alive. The cool part about it is that I will be attacking the problem from four levels. First, I will use a couple of stains and a confocal microscope to tell the ratio of alive to dead cells. Then, I will run a PCR to check to see if the cells are producing RNA. I will make sure the cells are producing proteins using a Western Blot and finally use a ussing chamber to see if they are still transporting. If all of these turn out to be true, this could be a very nice and easy model system for culture. Much easier and simpler than traditional culture.
For the past few weeks, I've been doing a lot of hiking.
I climbed Pemetic mountain in the fog. We hiked through the clouds on the way up and when we reached the top we were above all the clouds and it was sunny. Maine mountains are amusing because the initial climb is really steep but the last third is usually much less so and meanders to the top. I also climbed Seargent and Acadia, as well as several other mountains with French names that I can't pronounce.
My roommate is a really good whitewater kayaker and she's teaching me how to roll in a whitewater kayak in between sea kayaking trips around the bay. So far she hasn't let me actually do roll, just practice the 'hip snap' but hopefully I'll advance to real rolls in the near future.
The big event in the recent past however was definitely the fouth of July. All the student interns made a float for the parade so we were working for the days leading up to the fourth on costumes and decorations. The theme of the parade was "fun in the sun" and like true science geeks we turned it into "fundulus in the sundulus" Fundulus is the genus of a species of fish that is commonly worked with in the lab. We made our float into zones of the ocean with a beach in the bed of the truck with people playing volleyball in muscle outfits followed by an intertidal zone where fishermen 'caught' individually wrapped sweedish fish and tossed them to the crowd. The best part of the float was behind the truck, in the deep ocean. There we had people dressed as sea creatures worked on in the lab. There were lobsters, crabs, jellyfish, dogfish shark, sea urchins, kelp, and of course fundulus themselves. One of the fundulus was actually mounted on a racing bike in a stroke of late-night genius. So my Fourth of July began around 1am when a couple of friends and I took a break from making costumes to drive into the national park and measure a 5K race for the fun run later that day. We got back around 2:30, went to bed for a couple hours before getting up to go to the parade at 6:30am. The parade iteself was tons of fun and we ended up winning first place for the most humorous float. After cleaning up the float, we went to a clamb bake sponsored by the lab where I ate my first clams and mussels. They were realy good. Immediately after eating a ton of seafood, we all drove over to the fun run. It turns out we didn't measure the run correctly so it was actually almost 6.5K instead of 5K but it was still a blast. Finally, we went to see the town band play and the fireworks. Unfortunately, the fireworks were almost completely hidden by the fog in the harbor. Their anticlimactic appearance was softened by the fact that we were all sitting in the harbor eating take-out thai food.
The next day we heard the cook talking about some other fireworks in a town about an hour away from the lab. We decided to go check it out and they turned out to be a private party at the house of a man who owns about 1/3 of the island. We walked in anyway, obviously out of place and ended up meeting the owner himself during the fireworks. Some of the wiring during the fireworks went awry and their dock ended up catching on fire twice but we had a great time pretending we ran in the circles of wealthy Maine.
Jellyfish lead the float

Rolling down Cadillac mountain at sunset

Acadia lake

Biking fundulus

My lab dressed in 4th of July finest

The whole gang

My hiking buddies, Lindsey and Liz

Glorious crabs

and the awesomeness continues to increase...

My Saturday:
1) wake up and eat bananas with peanut butter at the co-op for breakfast. Pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a granny smith apple and a couple of nalgenes and head out to Acadia with some friends.
2) climb one mountain, the second highest one on the island.
3) get to the top and decide another mountain looks pretty cool and climb that one too (the highest peak on the island as well as the Eastern Seaboard)
4) hike back to the car through a creek scrambling over boulders
5) see whirligig and other cool aquatic beetles swimming in a pond
6) hang out in Bar Harbor and eat the most delicious french fries known to man while chilling under a tree in the park
7) drive back to the lab and see my lab mates walking over to my PI's house to take out his kayaks
8) run back to help them
9) end up sea kayaking for hours, crossing from the island over to the mainland while seeing porpoises, seals, bald eagles and comorants
10) make a really yummy dinner with lab mates
11) play volleyball as the sun sets

Yep, I had a pretty cool day today. My friends Alex and Lindsey hiked up Dorr mountain and then hiked over to Cadillac before heading down to the car for the day. When we got back around 3pm, I went out kayaking until 5 or so and realized that I love kayaking.
I don't have any pictures of the kayaking but there are some pictures of the hike:


Alex and Lindsey halfway up Dorr mountain looking onto the bay between the island and the mainland




Some ant-pollinated wildflowers...I also took lots of pictures of mosses and lichens but I will spare you those :)




Lindsey, Alex and me at the top of Dorr mountain




View from the top of Dorr, looking out onto the outer islands. You could actually see Rockefeller's boathouse as a small shiny rectangle from the top




Cadillac mountain as it appeared from the top of Dorr mountain. Little did we know we would have to climb down Dorr mountain and then all the way up Cadillac. This would be a good place for a zip trek :)

Maine is the coolest!

I arrived in Maine Sunday evening. By Monday evening I had jumped into the frigid ocean for a night swim and hiked one of the mountains in Acadia National Park. Things kind of slowed down for the rest of the week but tonight I'm going in to Bar Harbor to hang out for the evening and tomorrow morning I'm climing the second highest peak on the island with some friends. The environment in my lab is way more relaxed than anything I have experienced. We get there early in the morning but often leave before 5pm for the day. We take a long lunch break where Nancy, the lab cook makes us a wonderful lunch and then go out to catch killifish in the river before returning back to the lab. I haven't started my project yet but basically I've been working with these oligonucleotides called morpholinos to try and get the to skip and exon in the pre-translational mRNA in the opercular and gill cells of the fundulus. So a typical day starts with making and running a gel, isolating mRNA from the fish organs and running a pcr. Eventually, I will be doing my own project with the urotensin II receptor in the gills of fish. Urotensin is basically a potent vasoconstrictor and there's some evidence that it might play a role in osmoregulation as well so I will be sequencing the receptor and looking at its expression and physiological role in fish. Fun :) Then I will also be doing some physiological work with a special chamber where you can measure the flux of ions across the gill by measuring the voltage it takes to nullify the current within the chamber. I'm probably most excited by this work. As promised to some of you, I finally have some pictures of the lab. I will try and get more of Acadia and Bar Harbor this weekend.



Daisies enjoying the ocean




My lab...note how it overlooks the ocean :)





Chairs to sit on and ponder the ocean and possibly your pcr results



The ocean as seen from the lab




More ocean from MDIBL property




Star point by the dock in the lab

DONE!!!!!

Yey! Spring quarter is officially over. I finished my entomology exam today and did most of my packing before cycling to work for the afternoon. I've decided I own entirely too much stuff to be carting it off to storage lockers every 10 weeks. Either I need to stop moving so often or I need to do give away the majority of what I own. Seeing as how the majority of what I own consists of books (which I have a seriously hard time parting with) I think the solution is to stay in Kzoo for a while. Fortunately in the fall I will have a car to transport said books from the storage locker to my HOUSE. Thar's right, I am graduating from dorm life to house life, renting a three-bedroom house across the street from the science building with three of my friends. We just signed the lease a week ago.
House aside, Katie and I leave Saturday morning for Detroit and we plan to spend the entire day at the Detroit Festival of the Arts...there's even a free Al Green concert in the evening! Then I'm off to Maine early Sunday morning.

Columbiana

I couldn't remember exactly when I was supposed to work today and I wanted to show my bug collection to the veterinarian who helped me to collect some of them. So I ended up walking the five-ish miles to work, bug collection in hand about three hours before I was supposed to be there. As I was hanging out and pretending to study entomology, I heard a woman speaking Spanish to her kids in an exam room. It turns out she's Columbian and we exchanged phone numbers (I think she may have felt sorry for me being so eager to speak Spanish with someone) and she said I could call her anytime and she would love to talk in Spanish with me. I was so excited. It's a first: I have a new friend, and she is not an insect :)
After I walked home from work my roommate Katie and I decided to go out for a celebratory dinner. We finally decided on Cosmos (pretty much the best place for dinner in Kalamazoo). We ate our spinach feta burger and sesame-encrusted tofu ginger stirfry on the balcony and listened to other people's conversations around us. We decided we should top the night off with ice cream and since I had some gift certificates from work we headed off to Cold Stone Creamery. Yum!
Otherwise, the day was fairly boring. I tried to identify a caterpillar that is eating the broccoli in one of my professor's garden, then listened to my best friend's final ecology presentation much to the confusion of her professor.
I honestly don't have that much studying to do for finals week. My two term papers are pretty much done since I wrote over 60 pages on Sunday/Monday. I just need to spend some of tomorrow studying for entomology and revise my papers. I feel kind of guilty for not studying and stressing out all week, but I just don't see any reason to.

Spring quarter, encapsulated

The normal number of credits you take each quarter is three. For various reasons, I took 5. With the addition of various extracurricular activities, I became really busy. That in combination with serious culture shock arriving at school and having to re-learn how to learn at a U.S. College kept me far away from opportunities to blog. So my apologies for disappearing off the face of the earth for a few months. Here is what I have been up to, in pictures, to avoid a super-long post.
I took an entomology class (translates to collecting bugs and running around outside at every opportunity:

(Chasing a butterfly in a field at the nature center. Look for the white dot, a cabbage butterfly. Then note how far away my net is from the butterfly. This was at the beginning of the quarter when I couldn't catch anything.)



(Identifying the final bugs for my collection)



(My entomology class exploring the MSU bug collection)



(A nest of tent caterpillars)

Entomology was my excuse to be hiking around rural Kalamazoo at every possible moment. Coordinating this year's building blocks class gave me an excuse to be outside in the city, painting, gardening, and getting my life-time dose of lead paint scraping old houses.

(My Building Blocks class)



(Scraping a porch at a Building Blocks work weekend)


There are no pictures of the rest of my quarter, but I took an amazing class on feminist Latin American poetry in Spanish with my favorite Spanish professor. I took piano lessons and trained for the K College triathlon. Unfortunately my trusty duct-taped bike broke down in the middle of the biking portion so I was only able to complete the swim and the run. I'm still working at Pet Vet, the local veterinary clinic and it continues to provide me with great distractions from school-life.
In six days I will be in Maine for the summer (I'm currently finishing up final exams) and there hopefully things will be less hectic so I can blog more regularly about happenings and of course the beautiful Acadia National Park that lies across the street from my summer home.

Thanks for the prodding to write, Gavin :)

Studying for the GRE...

I took my second practice test yesterday and scored 800 on math--yes in fact I can still solve basic algebra and geometry problems. However my verbal was a little less impressive coming in at 630, a 50 point drop from my first practice test. I decided that what I really need to do is improve my vocabulary. Having not spoken English for any length of time over the past 7 months is of course not helping. Nor is the fact that I have taken exactly one English class in college: freshman writing seminar. Reading the general requirements carefully I noticed that I could fufill the strict English requirements at my liberal arts school by taking upper level spanish classes. After reading that I never looked back. Reading great literature in spanish is much more interesting to me than in English, although I am noticing glaring holes in my english literature experience. Go figure.
Anyway, I was making flashcards yesterday and, to help learn words that frequently appear on the GRE, I began making sentences. With some encouragement from mom, all of my sentences had an interesting theme: describing Shiloh. Here are a few of the best; some are even accompanied by illustrations :)

1. Shiloh's ennui was especially apparent after she spent a day home alone.

2. While beautiful, Shiloh's monocolor coat was austere.

3. For Shiloh, walking calmly past another dog was arduous, if not impossible.

4. Shiloh's truculent appearance was only a facade.

5. Shiloh's tail had enough torque to power a small windmill.

6. Shiloh expertly stymied all attempts to keep her off the furniture.

7. Shiloh's ability to sleep under mountains of covers in the heat of summer was stupefying.

8. Shiloh's tail was never static.

9. Left to her own devices, Shiloh would quickly squandor her food supply.

10. Shiloh's sense of sanitation was sordid.

11. Shiloh had no intentions of recanting her belief that the gas station doubled as a dog treat factory.

12. Shiloh's prescience was especially useful to her when she had rolled in a dead animal and needed a dreaded bath.

13. Shiloh had a fierce predilection for human food.

14. Were I able to understand dog, I'm sure I would discover Shiloh prattling endlessly.

15. Nothing was perfunctory for Shiloh. She took a keen interest in everything she did.

16. Having run into one too many sliding glass doors Shiloh's mind was a little nebulous.

17. Shiloh's social skills were nascent.

18. Shiloh hoped to someday become inured to being left at home all day.

19. Shiloh's use of the filibuster was especially effective when one was attempting to put on one's shoes and leave the house without her.

20. Shiloh's employment of chicanery was erudite.

Snowshoeing

Mom and I went up to Government Camp at the base of Mount Hood this weekend to go snowshowing and forget about the fact that Graham had just left us :(
There was an amazing amount of snow there...way above my head. We neglected to take a map however so although we were supposed to be on a loop going around a frozen lake we ended up getting a little lost and walking over 3 miles before even reaching the lake then just turning around and walking the same three miles back because we were worried we were going to get even more lost. It was a great time though and I reqlly enjoyed the snow.

Mom sporting a crazy Ecuadorian hat

As I said, the snow was much taller than I was

Putting snow on your head is an excellent way to cool down during a winter workout :) Similarly eating snow is a great way to quench your thurst. Moderation in both these endeavors however is key.

I hadn't seen conifers in a long time...they looked really great topped with snow.

I tried to get mom to take a picture to show my histology professor just how high the snow was (she has never seen snow in her life) but it didn't come out quite as impressive as I had hoped.

I got an e-mail today from my histology prof in Ecuador so instead of packing to go to Grandma's for a week before classes finally start again I wrote to her and my host family and a few of my Ecuadorian friends. It was the first time I had written to any of them since coming back from Quito and it felt really nice to know that I at least had some way to contact them.

By the way Becca, we got a very cool postcard in the mail from you yesterday from Patagoina. Thanks!

First impressions

Don't worry, this one is shorter...
I felt very strange leaving Ecuador this morning. I was very, very sad to go but didn’t want to pass too much time feeling depressed because I thought that in that case I would lose precious moments with my host family. At the same time, I was kind of mad at myself that I didn’t cry a lot. I hope my family knows how much I love them and will miss them. Taking off in the plane was really hard. I will miss the Pinchinchas and the architecture in general every morning. I was crying while the plane took off and there was a Canadian guy sitting next to me who I am pretty sure thought I was insane. Landing in Miami, however was even harder. I was not prepared for the monotony of the landscape. All the houses were rectangular with orangy-red tiled roofs and arranged in neat nested squares around very fake-looking ponds. There were no mountains. There was no diversity in the landscape. I was completely unprepared however for the Miami airport. Everyone and thing seemed to be moving so fast. Everyone was speaking in English and the officials, although they did not carry machine guns, were even more scary as they shouted curt orders. There is no way to be polite in English like there is in Spanish. It simply isn’t possible.
Ironically, I guess my own culture will take some getting used to again. It is nice to be back in my house and see my mom, brother, dog and fish again.