Geez...this is the end to another week for me. What did I do this week? Let's see...

MONDAY:
Monday was my first time to work with Stacy, a faculty working under Professor Geiger in the Chemistry Department. She explained to me about my chemistry research project, which is basically to find the structure of a protein in the Drosophila (fruit fly) called CtBP. It is a co-repressor to a repressor that inhibits the transcription process. I made buffer for my experiment.

Ah, the fun begins at McDonald Hall when I met Ms. D in the lobby of W. McDonald and Janelle in the cafeteria. We decided to visit Joyce and Lindsay's room to find out whether we want to live there next year. We went to the basement, and we were totally amazed by the numbers of washers and dryers down there. Clean laundry smells good, especially when the pieces are all warmed and fluffy. :-D Then, we walked to some dorms by Grand River, probably Phillip and Abbot. We explored different floors, knocked on people's doors, and asked if we could just look around the rooms. The rooms on the first floor are really cool, because they have really high ceiling which I love. However, when we went down to the basement (yes, they have rooms down in the basement), we just ventured through some "study lounges" that look really much like empty law courts or law firms. We joked that we should have a role play in those rooms one day if we really decide to live there next semester. The bedrooms in the basement are really unpleasant. They have tiny windows on the very top of the wall looking into the ground level and pipes running through the room. Ms. D and I have decided the pipes are sewer pipes, just to make it more unpleasant. We concluded that if we live there next year, we must build a "second floor" in our room on the first floor and make that floor a study retreat.

TUESDAY:
Nothing that I can recall really happened on Tuesday other than I went to Plant Bio and got my genetics final from last semester back. I did better than I expected.

At night, I went to the Relay to Life meeting and got completely lost in the meeting since it was my first time.

2 very special guests knocked on my door at 12:30ish or some time around that. I had to go to bed early every single day this semester because I have 8 or 8:30 classes every day from Monday to Thursday. I grabbed my glasses, turned on the light after acquiring Ms. D's permission (hehe), and opened up the door. There they are, standing, somewhat awkwardedly... They found out that I was already in bed from my outfit (the blue pajama with teddy bear prints) and felt sorry for waking me up from the bed. Actually, I felt kinda sorry that I was unable to focus and I was kinda irritated toward them since I was really really tired. Sorry, you two, I didn't mean it!

WEDNESDAY:
The most amazing day of the week so far. I found out so many things about the chemistry building during lab on Wednesday. After physics lab, I rushed to chemistry lab in the baseement. Stacy taught me how to make LB (food for my bacteria) and how to sterilize them using the autoclave. (I made 4 liters of LB for my dear bacteria. I am so proud! :-D) Did you know that there is a 6th floor in the chemistry building? Yep. There is one! That's where the sterilizer is. It is a huge machine, as tall as I am, and it has a lock, a smaller version of the one you would see in the bank. It took about an hour for the process to be done, and the pure white tape that I put aluminum cover on the flasks containing the LB all had black stripes when they came out. I found out that the tape is actually an indicator that shows whether the things in the machine are sterilized or not. Anyhow, so while my LB flasks and tubes were in the 6th floor, Stacy led me to the BioChem building to get my the long version of the bacteria (there are 2 versions of CtBP: short and long) after we went to the dry ice machine getting the dry ice. We placed our bottle of bacteria in the dry ice box and decided not to walk in the cold back to the chemistry building. Instead, she took me to the underground "secret" passageway that connects the biochem, biomed, and chemistry building. WoW. IT IS LIKE A MAZE down there. NOT A SINGLE SOUL was there (only a couple of people with the white robes...mad scientists. haha). It was amazing. I'd take Ms. D to explore that passageway with me. It would be A LOT OF FUN. Ah, Stacy also took me to another lab on the 2nd floor to store our precious bacteria in the -80 degree celcius freezer. She told me that I'll be going there a lot during the rest of the semester and that I should always be careful not to put my fingers on the freezer for more than a couple of seconds or else I'll burn myself. (lol...but in my mind, I have already decided to test how cold -80 degrees C is.) We, then, went to the copy room to get some paper on CtBP copied so that I can read over the weekend. I had a lot of fun using the electric stapler. I've never used one before. It is very amusing to see how efficient the electric stapler works. The copy machine is also very cool, too. Geez, technology is getting way to far ahead of me. It prints so fast that I cannot possible be able to describe the speed of that copy machine. I bet it can print 1000 pages in a minute. So, this is for the lab.

CSC meeting is as usual. The turn-out wasn't that great because of the coldness and the late notice that we sent out. I felt bad that we couldn't get more people to come. sigh...I hope the dance tomorrow is going to be better.

THURSDAY:
Today in physics, I was pretty much still in a very depressed mood because I am not learning anything new at all! I can't believe that I am just sitting in a class reviewing all the stuff that I learned in high school. It is such a disappointment...

After English, I went to the library to meet a girl from Taiwan whom I am going to tutor for the rest of the semester. This is another volunteer work I do for the semester. My job is just to chat with her and help her with her conversational English so that she'll be able to pass the test and become a TA next semester. As it turn out, she is an ENGLISH teacher in one of the high schools in Taiwan, so her English is pretty good already. I suppose that I'll meet her every Thursday at 2:30 PM from now on. Oh yeah...another cool thing is that she knows my physics TA! She told me that they were in the same university in Taipei! Isn't that something? The world is so small! I am definitely going to tell Chen about this and see how he reacts to it. It should be fun to watch his reaction. :)

I am going to bed now...must go. So, goodnight...kisses to everyone who's reading this blog...wish myself a sweet dream.