Portobello Road.

I've got to say, the classes here are way better than your average U.S. class. We are basically never in the actual class room, instead we are always out exploring the wonderful city of London. The classes I am taking don't require any tests, which is always a big relief! One of the trips with my Global Foods class was to Portobello Market, where we explored the market most of the class. The market had variety of things to choose from, most of it was antique things. I enjoyed a lot of the photography and paintings they had in some of the shops along with most of the antiques.

Chair made out of a stump,
we found walking to the market.

Brightly colored buildings on
Portobello Road & some friends
walking on the side.

The Medical Side

I got to do rounds with a Doctor today, it was impressive, definitely a change from the research side of the hospital. I was with the nutrition team so it was more about if the patients were getting the proper nutrition. We got to see many of the patients in ICU all over the hospital, I was given a brief background of each patient as to why they were in the hospital, then the team discussed how they were going to help the patients nutritionally.

I also sat in on a meeting that was like a webcam meeting with 4 other hospitals discussing patients and getting other ideas on what the doctors should do.

Last night I went to China Town, it was crowded because many people were celebrating the Chinese New Year. It was all very fun and decorative, with some great food!

Preparing for mid-term week!

Having a 4-6 page paper due in each class about the same week is kind of terrible. But I would almost rather write a paper than take a large test! I've finished two of the papers I needed to get done before  February 24th, I still need to work on one more but I have a week to get that done.
I received an amazing package at the start of the week that had all of my favorite foods my parents sent from home! They have froot loops here but they just aren't the same, it's more like a whole grain healthy type of froot loops, but they also don't have froot loops with marshmallows which is my absolute favorite! I was glad to receive some peanut butter too, I was on the last couple scraps from the bottom of the peanut butter I brought from home & Rice Krispies are always wanted! So thank you to my wonderful parents for sending some well needed snacks before I start this next paper.

Froot Loops, Jif, and Rice Krispies

This week during my Understanding Modern Britain class, we passed by a beautiful marina! Our professor showed us a yacht that he would love to have, which really wasn't the best looking one in my opinion. Anyway, after class a couple flat mates and I went to a local pub hoping that they would be serving pancakes for Pancake Day, but when we asked the bartender, he didn't seem to know anybody serving pancakes in the area. We decided to stay for a minute and watch some soccer highlights from 2014 on the T.V.

Kristen, Omar, and I at the pub.

Internship and walking around London

Recently I have been working in the Red Blood Cell lab. It has been great because it is a change of pace. Basically it is a room full of girls doing a lot of tests and reading results, but half of the girls are a younger generation so we have been having a lot of fun. I have learned a lot about Sickle Cell Disease and how to read the results of High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and Isoelectric Focusing (IEF). I've also learned the procedures to doing an IEF. I think this next week I will be headed back to Toxicology to finish reading some results from the research we have been doing.
This weekend I found an amazing place to eat called Nandos. They had some grilled chicken, mashed potatoes, and garlic bread I had been craving for quite some time. Then, I went out exploring later on in the weekend and found the Traffic Light Tree which I had on my list of things to see in London! I also tried to see the water pump John Snow broke the handle off of to stop the spread of cholera, but when I got to the location, the pump was gone. Where I should have been they had cut off with a fence for construction purposes, also the John Snow pub had been shut down for construction purposes too. I had a nice journey though so I cant complain.

Havisha and I looking at blood samples,
and punching out blood spots.

John Snow Pub

Traffic Light Tree

Greenwich Boat Tour

I took a Greenwich Boat Tour today with a flatmate and some other CAPA students, it was fun. We got to ride along the Thames River. We went under all of the bridges, then ended up in Greenwich. In Greenwich I got to stand on the Prime Meridian line splitting the eastern and western hemispheres. I also visited the Queen's House along with some other museums, then we finished up the tour at the Greenwich Market where I got some delicious food before heading back to the flat.

Tower Bridge

Prime Meridian

King's

Adding diluted blood samples to solvent.

Mixing samples before putting them in the "bath."

On Friday at King's, me and my co-worker Havisha finished up samples to put into the Mass Spectrometer. After punching out spots from patients blood cards, we put the spots into little tubes. We then added water to the tubes to try to bring the blood out of the card and dilute the blood. After diluting the blood, we added Trypsin to each sample allowing the hemoglobin protein to break up into small peptides. Each sample was placed into a "bath" of 37 degrees Celsius, which is the optimal temperature for Trypsin to work. After about an hour, we took all the samples and extracted the diluted blood and put it into solvent that would stop the Trypsin from breaking down the protein and dilute the blood again. Once the final dilution was made, we placed all of the tubes into the Mass Spectrometer for it to read the masses of each peptide, determining if the peptide is a disease causing peptide. Tomorrow we get to read our results, I hope we find an unknown variant.