Awesome but somewhat creepy

Hey all,

I've been working in the heart lab at the VA hospital.

It's been generally pretty interesting with some crazy moments scattered throughout the last few weeks. I've been working a lot with cells, doing cell culture etc which isn't the most interesting of tasks. It can yield some really exciting results though! Yesterday, I got to look at some heart cells that the lab has been cultivating. So the interesting thing about heart cells is that they beat...well that includes in culture. So I got to see heart cells, in a petri dish, beating. It was pretty amazing.

-Catherine

Really?

Contradictory to most people's assumptions, especially my parents, I have been extremely busy!
It's harder work than I realized to call foreign agencies and represent both yourself and another company's goals in a way that makes them want to rent you a free room for a few nights!
I have encountered more skepticism than I imagined, and from agencies I least expected it. For example, my biggest battle both this week and last week has been trying to convince Honduran orphanages to let me and my aunt come visit on our site inspection trip... they all seem to be run by American families who have moved to Honduras and started their orphanages strongly connected to religious missions. Not one, but two people have hung up on after finding out that I am not a devoted member of the christian faith.

I have to go teach a spanish classs right now but I'll be back to post more later today, my stories do not end here.

The Trip Within The Trip

So as I have been telling every new person I meet, in my documentary I will be traveling to the town of Villa Arcadia in the municipality of Coronel Suarez Argentina. Villa Arcadia is about 350 Km south of Buenos Aires (about a seven hour buss ride). My current goal is to visit Villa Arcadia for about a week and explore the entire area. The plan was originally for me to visit the town alone but my family down here is worried about me travelling alone so I am going to stay with family who live neer in Coronel Suarez. However my visit comes at a bad time politically because the president of argentina is raising taxes on the farmers in patagonia. These new agracultural taxes have resulted in proests against the goverment by farmers struggeling under the new taxes. One of these farmers is my mother's cousin, Susana (who I will be staying with) who has hit economic hard times. However, my family in Buenos Aires who have been amazingly hospitable and had me feeling at home by the first night I spent here are going to help me out to make shure I get out into the country. I must admit I am enjoying the big city lifestyle but the pictures that I have seen and stories I have heard about the country have me counting the days until I leave (which if everything goes right will be 6 or so).

I have also been reading my film books including "The Filmaker's Handbook" a 800 page two inch thick book about everything from HDMI cables to dutch angle tripods used in Citizen Kane. It is more of an encyclopedia than anything else. On the more creative side of the spectrum I have drafted up a basic layout for my documentary and compiled a checklist of places and people to visit and film. The rush of being soley responsiable for this project is unlike anything I have ever felt and I have trouble going to sleep at night because I am constantly thinking of new ideas for my project.



P.S. As an added bonus I have included pictures of the family crypt and my room in Buenos Aires

Teach!

As most of you know, my senior project involves comparing the Saxon math curricula to the "traditional" math curricula. For the first three weeks of my project, I stayed at BASIS and participated in math classes from Algebra II through Calculus II. In fact, I was allowed to teach some lessons to the classes, which was very fun in my opinion. Now, I am at the Immaculate Heart middle and high schools--and there is no chance of misspeaking and calling it the lower school, which is a good thing. Yesterday was my first day at the school and it is interesting to see the differences in teaching styles and the challenges that students face, especially those who do not care for math as much as myself.

Next week, if everything goes as planned, I will be giving the kids a quiz on some material they are learning in their Algebra I and Algebra II classes, to see how well they are retaining the information learned in class. The reason for this is because the "traditional" style teaches topics in blocks whereas Saxon revisits topics throughout the year. Hopefully the students don't get too mad at me for making them take more quizzes this quarter...

I just want to share one more thing I find common between both schools. Students really enjoy the thought of having a substitute, but should probably look around for their teacher who is usually standing right behind them when they ask the question "Are you the sub? Is the teacher gone?"

-Matt

Good posts!

Hi everyone! I've been reading your good, informative posts: keep up the good work! Remember, everyone doing a Senior Project (and any other senior/graduate who wants to) should be blog-posting and commenting on other posts.

I went to the Bardo Museum yesterday, which was incredibly cool, but disappointingly irrelevant to my research paper. Tomorrow I am planning my first big day at the national library, which should be really awesome, if not a little tiring. On my last, brief trip I scoped out a good number of sources, so, since I'm not allowed to check out books, I will spend most of the day photocopying, I think. I've almost finished learning the Arabic alphabet, which is good, because I'll be able to start learning grammar and vocabulary.

Trial and error

I visited Mt. Lemmon again. The snow is mostly gone and in its wake it has left several creeks of gorgeous crisp water. If any of you have some free time this week, I recommend going. It's breathtaking.

On to less peaceful news, this trip yielded some bizarre results. Only one of my samples of tape had any noticable hair (maybe under a microscope I will be able to see more), three of my ten apparatuses were not located where they should have been (I did find all of them, but some of the metal stakes holding them in the ground were missing) , and one of them was gone altogether. No biggie though, I can always make another and choose new areas.

I also noticed a huge, heaping pile of bear scat just about seven feet from one of my sites. I will check my sites again Wednesday, and if the story is the same, I'll need to do some rearranging. Oh well, that's how science works, isn't it? Trial and error.

I'll update again shortly. Hope you all had a nice four day weekend!

Katharine