I am actually learning!

This week there wasn't much to do because Dr. Bose was on vacation in the Grand Canyon. I am excited to say, however, that I was actually able to a question about heart valves the other day. One of my mum's employees asked me which type of valve-mechanical or synthetic- was better to get in a replacement surgery. Surprisingly enough to both myself and my mum, I was able to answer this question easily. Turns out, a mechanical valve will last a lifetime, but unfortunately, the patient in question must be on blood thinners for the rest of his/her life. On the other hand, a synthetic valve will only last about 10-12 years before it must be replaced once again. The upside to this is that the patient does not have to be on any blood thinners. I was really happy because I knew what I was talking about. :) This is a good sign because it means I am learning!

Herland update

Hey there!
I've been having fun with my project. So far I've re-read Herland up to chapter 8, highlighting things that I think will translate well visually, but I've only got chapters 1-5 sketched out on paper.
I've also been reading some comics to see if I can use some of their techniques in my own comic. I finished Making Comics by Scott McCloud (which is a great instructional book as well as a great comic), Garage Band by Gipi (an Italian comic about a group of boys who start a garage band and steal an amp), and a ton of mini-comics an excerpts of comics from The Best American Comics 2008. TBAC'08 has a wide variation of comics, so some of them are really awesome, intelligent, beautiful, and/or funny, and some... well, not so much.
I have also been sitting in on block printing classes with my advisor who teaches the course. I don't really do much -- just roll out ink and clean it up, but, surprisingly enough, I've learned a lot about it. It's much more involved and complicated than I had imagined, and there are so many things to consider: what type of wood or linoleum you're using, how your tools will or will not work well with your medium, what type of ink to use, what kind of paper will work best with the ink as well as your image, etc. I haven't tried block printing yet, but after sitting in on these classes I really want to try.

The news

So I have been working in the lab now for two and a half weeks. Mainly I have been repeating the same kind of process everyday. Most of the reactions I am doing are overnight reactions so I set them up in the afternoon and work them up ( separate the different components, run tests to see if these components have reacted, interpret the graphs from the tests) the next morning. It is quite fun! I have two different phosphine ligands, an imidizol and a pyradine, and I am attaching them to a known catalyst, PDT-cat, which I actually synthesized at the beginning with a uv reaction. So, last Friday I actually learned that with the imidizol reaction I had collected the wrong material and that the material I collected was actually worthless. My compound was actually not polar at all so it did not move when i ran a column in hexanes to separate the compounds. On Friday, the bands wouldn't move so I made the solvent more polar by adding dichloromethane and suddenly there was a nice purple band. It was quite surprising. But know, when I reran all the tests, I discovered that this purple band was the mono substituted imidizol PDT-cat, and that it was quite similar to the pyradine!

Sore Feet and a Big Smile

Its the strangest thing as my Spanish slowly gets better my English has deteriorated rapidly. I am picking up the basic communication skills.... talking with a buss driver or buying a sandwich. I have been spending alot of time with Magali, the daughter of a friend of my Aunt's who goes to a french school nearby. She is about to start her last year of highschool (summer is ending and schools are starting) and speeks better english than my spanish so we get along great. Magali has been showing me around Buenos Aries and I have become an expert at navigating Belgrano (the neighbrohood that we live in). Magali's mother Sophie is an artist and we visited La Boca (the birthplace of the tango) to see the bar that she is renovating. It was amazing, four stories with balconies and amazing architecture. I am falling in love with the city, there is always something to do or visit, the night life is amazing, on the weekends bars will stay open until six or seven in the morning with liveley conversations all night. Truly amazing.

I also visited my family's crypt in the famous cemetary in Recoleta (a ritzy more european part of Buenos Aries). The crypt was interesting because it consisted of a little house structure with a grate in the floor and a view of the cascets of my ancestors. Up top were urns containing ashes including that of my great grandfather, Enrique Rayces (the founder of Villa Arcadia). I was also reminded of how lucky I am to be staying with family and attemptiing to blend into Argentine culture as I saw the numerous americans with hawian shirts and zinc paste on their noses.

I am now working on the next part of my trip which is to travel 350 miles south to Villa Arcadia. This is dificult because the rural parts of argentina are suffering greatly in the economy. But my Aunt is helping me contact some family we close to Villa Arcadia. Hopefully it will follow through.

Gavin

New Alphabet

So, my Arabic studying has commenced. I went and bought a bunch of books geared towards teaching little kids to write Arabic. Many of them have goofy pictures of turtles and genies and such, but they've proven pretty useful to me so far. The alphabet doesn't seem too hard to learn, but I've come across a few problems. First, there are vowels that I didn't know existed. For example, there's a letter for the sound "Aa" as well as for the sound "Aaaa." That's not too complicated, "Aaaa" is just "Aa" but a little longer! But then there's "aaaAAA," which is just totally beyond me. People tell me that I'm not pronouncing it right, so I guess I need to practice some more. Also, there is no word for "Is" "Am" or "Are" only for "Were" "Was" and "Will Be" which is kind of confusing. It's a very different language than French, Spanish and English, but the limited experience that I've had with writing has been very fun.

I've been adamantly trying to get Mr. Meddeb to respond to me in order to schedule an interview, but he is a very busy man, so I'm not sure how that will work. Everyone here is very friendly though, so I'm sure if I can't set up an interview with him, many people will be able to help me with my research. I'm going to a library with a local college guy named Hatem this week to look for/buy some books, including a French copy of The Stranger, if I should be so lucky to find it.

Can't wait to read all of you guys' posts and I hope you're all having as much fun as I am!

Lime Green, Lime Green and Tangerine: The Sickly, Sweet Colors of the Snakes I'm Seeing..

The other day when I was on my lunch break at Saguaro, an africanized killer bee politely perched on my head for a good five minutes or so: lingering...crawling. And I, about one thousand times its size, could not do a single thing: helpless at the hands of nature. I couldn't swat it- it would sting me. I couldn't move- it would freak out..and sting me. And I don't think I have ever been so terrified.......
My internship has actually been going relatively smoothly. It has its perks and it has its downfalls, as to be expected.
Downfall number 1, a superfluous story: My very first day at the park, I worked with a crusty old curmudgeon who has volunteered for the park for a good eighteen years- his name is Jerry Potter (I consistently had to stifle a snicker everytime I heard it...). His social skills are far from apt, and his senior citizen status apparently makes it okay for him to call everyone "kid." But I absolutely adored him; I always got a good laugh with(at?) him, and he really was a genuinely nice guy. Wednesday was his last day for this season, though, so I bid him farewell for the rest of my internship.
That aside, this past week has actually been a ton of fun. I did several more education outreach programs, and I even got to go on a field trip! Interestingly enough, one of my education programs was with a group of about thirteen autistic kids, and it was an absolutely amazing experience! On wednesday, we went on a field trip to WACC (Western Archaelogical Conservation Center, I believe), which was an excrutiating three hours, chalk-full of apathy and fatigue. After hearing the woman blab for an hour as she pointed out various pottery chards and rocks, I was done.... unfortunately, she wasn't. My eyes soon after glazed over, and my mind wandered, so I couldn't even begin to tell you what she said that day..
Other than that, it has been fantastic!
Next week I'm supposed to start doing some tortoise tracking, and I've actually been elected to lead a group of 4th graders on a four-hour tortoise tracking adventure!

Digging in the dirt, for a not so early bird, it's the only way for her to get the worm =]

Heaven under my feet

Finally, after much delay (not my fault!), I visited Mt. Lemmon. I placed ten wire holders, containing nuts, at various locations. These holders are not traps; the squirrels can easily get out. They are lined with double-sided tape that catches hair samples for me to look at later.

In a way I am glad that my project had a stalled beginning. There could not have been a more beautiful day to go. The sky was clear, the breeze was faint but present, and the snow twinkled when cast in sunlight. The snow lined Catalina Highway and coated the peaks but did not make a nuisance of itself. What I love most about being outdoors, though, is the comfort it rouses within me. There is no one to prove myself to, no one to compare myself to, no question if something is right or something is wrong. Everything falls delicately into place with no purpose other than being. Nothing needs to justify its existence, not even me.

Anyway, I will revisit the locations Monday to exchange the tape and replace the nut reserves. In the meantime, I will continue to read my sources and begin the bare bones of my paper.

Best wishes to all,

Katharine.

P.S. Duncan, I have not seen a squirrel yet, but if I do, his name will be Squirrely Duncan!

Tunisia Time.

I arrived about 18 hours ago in Tunisia but have just now figured out the blogging website (which is in Arabic here). My flights didn't seem too long and I met a cool guy from the army who was stationed near Tucson that was also headed for Tunisia. I think his name was Zorad, but I can't remember entirely. He was a nice guy and told me about how his medication for PTSD made the flights easier to stand. He'd been stationed in Iraq for the past 4 years. He told me about how he is going to see his son in Florida before he gets a knee replacement and gets redeployed. He's a translator for the army since he speaks Arabic. He didn't tell me it outright but I figure that since he's taking medication for PTSD and that when I asked about his knee surgery he said, "Well, that's the price we pay for Iraq," he probably had an accident in Iraq. Very sad, he's a nice guy.
That aside, Tunisia is beautiful. It's the rainy part of the year right now so everything is green and lush. Customs was surprisingly easy to get past and people here have been nothing but friendly so far. I'm meeting with my soon to be Arabic tutor later this week and am going to a different part of town to scope out the libraries in such with my Aunt on Saturday. I've got to go the bank to exchange my dollars for some dinars now.

A Long Two Days

I am sitting at my aunt´s computer in Buenos Aires, Argentina. After two days of travel, beginning yesterday at five in the morning with checking in for my flight to Denver. I was about half an hour early when I was waiting in line at security, until I got pulled aside and had ALL my video and camera equipment checked for explosives residue. I barley made my flight but I did become friends with the homeland security agent who searched my things

I flew from Denver to D.C. and endured a layover that seemed to last a whole lot more than six hours. After bording my final plane (to Buenos Aires) at ten last night I was dead tired. I ate my steak dinner which tasted more like a glorified strip of beef jearkey with lukewarm gravy I crashed and woke up an hour before landing.

I arrived at 11:00 AM (five hours ahead of tucson) and brezed through customs. Then it was off to my aunt and uncle´s apartment which is amazing (and whose exact layout I am still trying to figure out). I did some greocery shopping and am itching to go out and explore the city, which is georgous and huge (so far I am at least a head taller than everyone I have seen so blending in may be difficult).

Gavin

More gross stuff in the OR

Yesterday I saw a new type of heart surgery that I thought was pretty neat. It was an aortic valve replacement with a single bypass. Wow it was intense and quite long. I think that's the hardest part of this internship so far...standing up straight for 6 hours at a time. It's all good though, everyone at Tucson Heart Hospital has been very friendly and informative. In addition to that, I apparently look near to 10 years old all dressed up in my scrubs and surgery shoe booties, so the cafeteria ladies constantly give me free stuff :)

Talk to ya soon,
Molly

First Week..

Although this week was off to a significantly rocky start, my internship has finally began to pick up momentum. Due to the fact that my advisor had been out of town for the week preceding the start of my internship, he had to make up a lot of work...meaning he had to find a ridiculous amount of odds and ends chores for me to do around the visitor's center. Needless to say, I spent my first day down in the basement blasting The Cure and Depeche Mode, cleaning approximately 500 slides for the Park's slide show............ intriguing!
Yesterday, though, I got to do several school pre-visits with my advisor; pretty much, we toured around to several local elementary schools that are planning to visit SNP throughout the next couple of weeks, giving them basic overviews of the plants/animals and natives of the Sonoran Desert. To be entirely honest..the most fascinating and disturbing aspect of yesterday was that there is this distinct scent associated with elementary schools. The second I entered Walter-Douglas, I was consumed by this awful blast-from-the-past scent that lingered in every room: a disgusting collection of baby powder, cafeteria food, rubber erasers and moth balls.
Today was even more fun. A group of about 50 4th graders from Brika Elementary came out for a special 4-station program that we offer, which touches on different aspects of native life in the Sonoran Desert: food, shelter, storage, and communication. It was actually a load of fun, and the kids were great! By the end of the afternoon, I felt purty snazzy in my fancy-shmancy ranger uniform, with kids hanging off of all sides of me. How altruistic. I forgot how hopeful and energetic little kids can be.
Any free time I've had, I've spent doing a lot of independent research in the library in the basement. I've actually become quite interested in the culture of the park and the lives of the desert's natives.

Today I Observed Open Heart Surgery...Then Ate a Turkey Sandwich

Hey everyone, I finally got this silly blog thing figured out. Just wanted to update you all on what I have been doing for the past couple of days. I was supposed to start my internship on monday, but when I got to UMC at 8 am for my first observation, the RNs had a flip out and threw me out of the OR for not being 18. Lol, so yeah the first couple of days were super boring. I am excited to say though that today I did observe my first open heart surgery! It was really neat, and very very interesting. I was surprised to find that the heart itself is actually yellow. In any case, the experience was great and I didn't have a problem with anything; no passing out, no throwing up, no nothing. As the title of my blog says, after the experience I had lunch with Dr. Bose and some others from Tucson Heart Hospital. It was great. I will see you all soon I hope.

:) Molly

Forget about today until tomorrow

Due to the weather and various personal reasons, I will not be able to visit Mt. Lemmon until possibly Friday. In the meantime, I have been reading and taking notes on my sources. Also, ironically, I have been battling a nasty cold (again!) since Sunday. Thus I have gotten little work done, much to my chagrin. I will update again once I have visited Mt. Lemmon.

I hope you are all doing well and enjoying some free time.

Katharine

Hot for Honduras

Hey guys! Excuse my outrageous sense of humor but anyways, I will be leaving for Boston and Honduras on march 22nd, a little later then the other seniors, saving the best for last of course.
So far, everything has beeen going great, my responsibiloties as an intern for the company Travel Muse are a little more demanding then I thought but also more fun then I expected. I will be calling England later today about dinner reservations for some tourists later on this month.
You may have seen me around school, as I am at school right now on the computer blogging right now, and thats because im attending the 11th grade spanish class to help make my spanish skills a little more comprehensive by the time I touch down in San Pedro Sula.

Wish me luck!
Adios

One Week

As my departure approaches (17th) I am going though the exciting motions of dotting crossing the t's and dotting the i's for my trip to Argentina. Despite the lure of buying power adapters for foreign countries have begun filming for my documentary. To date I have one interview with my grandfather and some exciting b-roll footage. I hope to get a second interview by the time I leave. I can't wait to begin immersing myself in the culture of Buenos Aries. I hope to be doing a lot of photography and will be posting some of the better shots.


Gavin

Hi, everybody.
I will be working on a comic based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland. Maybe I'll post some of my work (or links to it) to get some feedback on it... or not.
Wish me luck,
Siobhan

Keep on keepin' on

I will be researching competition between squirrel species on Mt. Lemmon for the wildlife biology department at the UofA. I met with my advisors today and got my equipment, so I am all set to go. I will be working outside, which will be good for me I think. Very peaceful.

P.S. I think all of my post titles will be Bob Dylan lyrics.

P.P.S. Not really.