Week 4 Second Part

This week I took a vacation to go to the coastal city of Qingdao. I was lucky that my graduate student understands that I want to do research, but I also want to explore China. He gave me an extra day off, so that I could spend more time in Qingdao. He is amazing and I am glad that he is so understanding.

We decided to take the train to Qingdao. The trip was about six hours. We had soft seats, so the trip was not too bad. When we got to Qingdao, we had to find our hostel. We asked around until we were able to locate our hostel. Some of our group arrived earlier in the week, so we spent most of the night trying to find them. We eventually found them and we talked to them about the plans for the next day. After we made our plans, we all went to bed. I had a little trouble sleeping but eventually I fell asleep.

The next day we went to the beach. There are multiple beaches in Qingdao, so we started at the furthest one and walked all the way down to the first beach. We climbed a lot of rocky islands on our trip to the first beach. Climbing the islands was a lot of fun. The scenes were also very pretty. We saw a lot of couples taking wedding pictures by the sea. It was pretty funny because apparently they were carting around all of these people that were getting married in a bus and then dropping them off on the beach to take pictures for their wedding.

We stopped at one of the beaches. We went swimming for a while. I thought the water was going to be really cold, but once we got into the water, it was not too bad. After we were done swimming, we hung out at the beach for a while and then we continued to walk towards beach one. We thought we were taking the correct path to get to beach one, but we accidentally kept taking paths that led us into peninsulas. So we would have to back track to the original path. It was really fun because we did it more than once, and we never realized it until we would get to a point where we could not go any further. We saw some of our friends at another beach and we stayed and talked to them for a while. I did not seem them initially, and I thought that the person who saw them was mistaken, but then I looked and in the middle of the beach was another group that had come to Qingdao separately. After we talked to them, it was getting late so we went to dinner. We went to a very good seafood place that was located on beer street. It is called beer street because it is located on the same street as the brewery. After dinner, we were pretty tired from spending the day at the beach, so we went home and slept.

The next day we went to the Qingdao beer factory. It was fun but I thought maybe at the end we would get to try all of the different types of beer, but that did not happen. We did get to see the old brewery and the brewery that they currently use to make beer. After we saw the brewery, we went to the beach and some of the group went on boats that had bikes in the middle that paddled the boat through the water. We hung out at the beach for a while and then we went to an open market where some of the group bought kites. We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to fly the kites. We got all of the kites to fly except one, but that one required some skill because it had two strings instead of one that controlled the steering.

Eventually we went back to the hostel and got our stuff. We went to the train station and headed back home. We had hard seats on the way back home. We knew this may be uncomfortable, but it was fairly cheap so we got them. Unfortunately they were really uncomfortable and my entire body was sore after riding on the train for nine hours because we decided to take a slower train. I probably will not do that again. It was a fun experience and I had fun in Qingdao. That pretty much wraps up my vacation in Qingdao.

Week 4

This week was a little more eventful than last week. I continued doing reactions in my lab. My reactions have worked so far, which is good and bad. It is nice that I am getting the expected product but this also means more work. Since I am getting the correct products, I get the opportunity to scale my reaction up. This means that I will get a lot more product, which means I have to spend more time on the reaction and purifying the product. So now my reactions take a lot longer.

I decided to go with some people from the program to Qingdao which is a coastal city known for its famous beer. The night before I left, I got a very unpleasant surprise. I was doing my reactions, when my graduate student came in and told me that he had spilled a chemical on his hand and he had to go to the hospital. Well I was expecting him to leave, but then he started explaining to me the things that I needed to do. I told him I knew what I had to do, but he seriously needed to get to the hospital. It was funny that he was going to take the time to explain things to me, while he has this chemical on his hand. I knew what I needed to do and I was just worried about him getting to the hospital. So he left and I was by myself again, which is not too troubling because nearly done for the day and I normally have some sort of autonomy while I work.

After I was done cleaning, I went to go to the student room to grab my stuff. It was locked, which is not so good. I had my things in the student room, but I do not have a key for it. So now I am pretty sure that I am alone without anybody that has a key. I go back to the lab and contemplate my options. I really did not want to leave without my stuff and I also did not want to leave the lab because it would be unlocked. While I was pondering, another student that I had seen before came into the lab. He asked me where was my graduate student. I told him what happened and then I asked if he had a key. But he did not. Well back to square one I guess, but then he said he could call one of the graduate students. I thought they all went home, but lucky one was downstairs doing analysis of compounds. She came and I told her what happened and she came and unlocked the door to the student room and I was able to get my stuff. This is a long post so I will stop here and the next update will have the details on my trip to Qingdao.

Second Update of Week 3

This is going to be a fairly lame update, so I am going to make it short. I have been sick because of my sinuses so I have not been able to go out and explore and experience China. It is really depressing. I hope that I can get better sooner rather than later, but the pollution really irritates my sinuses. I have been working in the lab fairly extensively. My normal day consists of going into lab at 9 am. I run reactions and purifications until noon, then I go to eat with my really amazing graduate students. When I get back, I do more reactions and purifications until dinner which is around 6 pm. On some days I go home after dinner, but some days I go back to lab until around 9 pm doing reactions. I hope to feel better, so I can actually write about something interesting. Sorry to the people that are reading this boring update. Hopefully my posts will get better.

1st Update of Week 3

I have been working for three days now in Professor Ma's group. I work in the same lab as another student from the program, which is nice because it gives me a sense of familiarity. The first day was an introduction of the research and learning about the mechanisms of the reactions that I would be doing. The graduate students are very nice and they are very helpful. We also had homework that was assigned to us by my graduate student. We had to look up reaction mechanisms and describe the substrate preparation. The second and third day consisted of doing reactions and purifications. The labs in China have a lot of similarities and obviously a lot of differences. A lot of the techniques are similar, but there are also many things that I am learning. The lack of safety wouldn't be acceptable in the US, like they do not have safe ways to dispose of the chemical waste. Overall the lab experience is amazing, I am really enjoying the cultural change and everything is a new experience

I also went to my professor's group meeting on the third day. That was fun because he made all of the students speak in English and after each presentation he would ask me questions and he asked me to ask the students questions. He told me that he wanted me to speak to all of the students, so they can explain to me their research and practice their English. It was a fun experience because he would turn to me and ask me what I thought of the presentation and if I understood the presentations. There is nothing more fun than telling people that I didn't understand their presentation and that they had to learn English from me. I guess it is a quick way to get people not to like you. Honestly though, I don't have a problem with teaching them English. If they want to learn from me, I will be more than willing to help them, but I feel really bad if they have to speak to me when they do not want to. I will see how everything goes, but I think that pretty much wraps up the things I have been doing. I will have more updates later.

Week 2

I am blogging a little later than what I had planned, but this one should be better than the first post.

I was not as sick this week as I was last week. I started to get sick again towards the end of this week. I am hoping to get better soon, and then stay healthy. I don't know why my sinuses are out of wack but I know that I am tired of being sick.

So back to the good stuff. Korean BBQ is amazing. It tastes so good. It is pricier than the Chinese food but it is still relatively inexpensive. I will probably splurge a few times and treat myself to Korean BBQ. Food is really fun in China. I can get a huge meal for less than 90 cents (United States Dollar). Most of the restaurants that I go to are less than three United States Dollar. It is quite amusing to watch my friends worry about the bill, because they see a bill for 100 kuai (yuan) which looks like it is really expensive but it is about 15 United States Dollars which isn't bad for 6 people. A few of us went to Pizza Hut. That was an interesting experience. The place is a high end restaurant in China where the more wealthier Chinese people eat. It is really classy and it is way better than the Pizza Hut in America. The food is much different in China than in the US. For instances, in China the pizzas have themes and you can't order custom pizzas. It is very expensive but it is definitely an experience.

As for activities, we have been doing a lot. I have been trying to stay healthy so I have been trying to rest. I did go to the Temple of Heaven though, it was very fun. We danced with the locals. They really liked that we wanted to participate. We also went to a Kong Fu show. It was disappointing to say the least. It was basically ballet and it was rather long. I will probably never go to it again because I really didn't care for it.

I started work today in Professor Ma's research group. It was quite different from the work I had done in other research groups. I have mainly focused on Inorganic Chemistry and Biomedical research. I will be doing Organic Chemistry research in China. I have a good background in Organic Chemistry but it has been a very long time since I have had Organic Chemistry class and Organic labs. I really need to refresh my knowledge of the subject. I studied a lot of Organometallic Chemistry before I came to China because I thought it would be focused more towards Organometallics, but it seems to be focused on Organic Chemistry. I will need to refresh my memory quickly in order to contribute. I was assigned homework today to look up reactions and mechanisms. I will have to explain the mechanism tomorrow. Hopefully I will be able to explain the mechanisms to my graduate student.

I love learning about other cultures and observing cultural differences. I also like the language barriers that we have to overcome in order to interact with the people in China. A good example is my roommate in China. He wanted to print out some papers for his research. He called the front desk to ask if there were any facilities that would allow him to print papers. They told him no, then we get a ring at our door a few minutes later. It is a guy who is here to deliver my roommate his paper. They thought that he wanted paper, so apparently they sent a guy to give him paper. He went to the intercom to tell the guy that he was grateful for the paper, but he didn't want it. The guy insisted that he come to our apartment to give my roommate his paper, so my roommate let him in and we waited for the guy to get to our apartment so my roommate could explain to him that he didn't want paper. When the guy came to our door, my roommate answered it and tried to explain to the guy that he didn't want paper. But the guy thought my roommate wanted to pay for the paper, and he told my roommate that it was free and he didn't need to pay. He gave the paper to him and left. He came into my room and started laughing really hard. I looked up and the guy had given him toilet paper. Then I started laughing. To be honest, the guy was very accommodating and he was really trying to help us out.

So That was pretty much how my second week went. I am hoping that I can start feeling better. See ya later.

First Post

This is actually my second attempt. My first post was erased after I wrote it, sigh. This is going to be more of a highlight reel rather than the long story I wrote previously. The flight over South Korea was amazing. We flew over Seoul at night and everything was lit which was very pretty. The city is huge and I had never imagined a city that was so vast. We went to the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square on the first day. On the second day we went to the Pearl Market. That was a very fun trip because I got to bargain with the vendors. They would name a very high price and I would get to try and get the lowest price possible We also had dinner at an authentic Chinese restaurant called WuDaoKu. The food was very different from any food that I had ever eaten, but it was still really good. The next few days we explored Beijing. We toured the PKU Campus and Tsinghua Campus. We went shopping for phones and supplies. We also had language and culture classes everyday during the week. We went to a Chinese acrobat show. It was really intense and amazing. Over the weekend we went to the Lama Temple, Confucius Temple, Great Wall, and the Ming Underground Tombs. The history of these sites was very interesting and it was exciting to visit them. I made it to the top of the great wall. As I was climbing, I thought I had made it to the top at least 3 times, but each time I would get to the "Top" and there would be more to climb to reach the top. That is a quick summary of the things we did the first week. I will have future updates soon.