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.