BLOG MOVED!!!

Due to unforseen circumstances, I had to move my blog to a different site. The Chinese government blocked many American sites, including blogspot, so it is unaccessible. My new site is lgeiger09.weebly.com. I am sorry for any inconvenience, but I hope you will continue to follow my adventures in China!

Day 24

Today was a very productive day for me. I went to the lab this morning and started on extracting the DNA from my cotton samples. We did it as a big group because there were also about fifty corn samples we had to test because Dr. Li didn’t think he had been sold Bt cotton from Monsanto. He asked the graduate students to test all the plants to find out. Everyone helped who is in our lab except Lily, Alex, and Chen because they had their own things to do. It took awhile because each sample has to be carefully ground up while being cooled with liquid nitrogen. Everyone had their own job, and I worked solely on my own samples with the help of Ibraham, so I didn’t mess up the corn samples. We got everything ground up before lunch. Then we all came back after eating, so we could finish it today. I had to add chemicals and centrifuge it many times, but there weren’t many gaps of waiting like there was with Elisa. After I had extracted the DNA, which is a tiny pellet that I dissolved in water, I learned how to make electrophoresis gel. When you inject the gel with the DNA samples and blue dye, it runs through the gel due to an electrical charge attached to it. My ending result ended up being what you are shown in forensic shows. It’s the blue lines of a DNA profile. It was so cool, and I guess I did a really good job for my first time because I injected it correctly with only two of eleven mistakes. I guess that is better than most first timers. The ending result wasn’t very good though because we shut the electrical charge off early, so we could make it to supper. It’s okay though because I will be doing it again sometime this week for more practice. I basically did everything myself since everyone was busy with the corn samples. If I had a question they gladly stopped and answered, but I understood the directions I had copied down pretty well. I am pretty proud of myself for being so self sufficient.
Alex and Lily had already gone to supper by the time I was done, so Baria took me. We went to a different cafeteria that I have been going to. The food there was pretty good, too. Then, Baria invited me back to her room to see it and meet her roommates. She shares a room with five other girls. It was about a half size bigger than standard dorm rooms in the US. The undergraduate students have eight people per room, and it is usually the size of a normal two person dorm room. It is just big enough for four bunk beds and some storage cabinets for clothes. They used their space very well, and it looked much bigger than it was though. She showed me a bunch of her pictures and showed me different things in her room. Her roommates are very nice and speak very good English. They also don’t have a bathroom in their building, so they have to go to a big shower house for bathing and using the bathroom. That would be inconvenient to me. I am glad I have my own bathroom.

Day 23

Today we went to the Great Wall, and it was even more magnificent than I imagined. We hired a car to take us there because it is about 70 km from Beijing. We went to the Great Wall at Badaling. It is the most well preserved area on the Great Wall. It is huge! I knew it was big, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so tall or well preserved. It was as if it were built ten years ago. I can’t imagine how much man power was needed to build something like that. We entered the Great Wall and went to the highest point on the left side of Badaling. It was so steep going up; I was looking forward to the walk back down. However, it ended up being just as hard going down the slope as it was going up because I had to control my speed. It was very steep. In some places the stairs go straight up or straight down. The Mexican Pyramids seemed like a walk in the park compared to walking on the Great Wall. Once we got back to where we started, we went to the right to go on the famous section. We started to make our way up to the highest point on the entire wall. It was very crowded because it was mid-morning when we started on the famous part. In some places, the wall got very narrow, so people were pushing and shoving to get through. I was really nervous about it because we were so high up. The wall just lifts up from these huge valleys, so all you can see are the tree tops. It took us until about 11 to get to the highest point. I looked it up on the internet, and it is about 800 meters above sea level. I was exhausted by the time we reached the top because it was so steep. Then, we continued on the wall because it eventually makes a circle putting us back to where we very first started. Going down was very difficult also. I had my good running shoes on, but my feet were sliding really bad because it was so steep. There were a lot of women wearing high heels and dress sandals and some wearing no shoes at all. I was struggling in just plain tennis shoes. I have no idea how they were doing it. Many people had young children and babies with them also. We saw this one little boy, who was about five, knock out all his front teeth because he started running down the wall and couldn’t stop. He fell right on his face. I felt so bad for him.
It took us about an hour to make it to the area where the wall is no longer open to tourists. We walked through a marketplace that reminded me of fairs in Iowa. There were games, food vendors, and souvenir shops all along the road. We made it back to the car at about 1. We hiked for four hours (taking out the time we took for breaks). I was so tired, and we all ended up sleeping in the car. Then, we stopped at the Ming Tombs. It is where all the Emperors and Empresses during the Ming Dynasty were buried. I had just finished reading my book about them. We walked along the sacred road that has willow trees and statues all along it. There were four of many different kinds of animals. For instance, there were a pair of elephants (one on each side). Then right next to them would be a pair of elephants that were kneeling in order to show respect to the imperial visitors. It was very beautiful. We couldn’t go to see any of the tombs though because they are closed to the public. There are 13 Imperial Tombs total. They are all very extravagant and built like miniature palaces.
Then, we came back to the university and had a rest. I showered right away and washed my clothes because I was absolutely drenched in sweat. We actually had nice weather here. There was a storm coming, so it was cooler and there was a really nice breeze. It was also very foggy on the wall, so the sun didn’t beat down on us. It was still humid though. Plus, I just sweat a lot too. We went for supper later than usual and went to the marketplace to eat. It was a pretty nice restaurant. We each had our own burner with a pan with broth in it. Then the waiters bring you raw vegetables and meat, and you pick what you want to cook in your broth. I ended up just eating boiled eggs and some vegetables. The other types of meat were veal, which I don’t really care for, and cheese made out of blood, which didn’t appeal to me at all. When we left, it had just started raining and by the time we got back to our building we were drenched. I will be uploading pictures tomorrow of my day at the zoo and the Great Wall to send out.

Day 22

I have officially missed out on my two favorite holidays this year: New Years’ and the 4th of July. This morning I slept in a bit later than I usually do as I have not been sleeping well here. I went to the lab, and Lily and I went to the greenhouses on the edge of campus. We helped Alex change the water for his cotton plants, and then added a chemical called PEG to them. PEG is a chemical that induces drought-like characteristics in plants. It deprives them of the ability to absorb water and nutrients. He used several different amounts and also had a control group that didn’t receive any at all. Then we went to lunch and took our afternoon break. I took the opportunity to finish up the rest of my laundry and pick up my room.
After the break, we went to the Beijing Zoo. I saw every animal possible, including some very adorable pandas. They have animals from all over the world. I saw almost every type of bird, snake, turtle, and deer like creature on earth. I also witnessed a crowd of people go nuts over a raccoon taking food through the cage. I never thought I would see the day when a raccoon would be a star at a zoo. I also saw an Asian leopard cat. It looked exactly like my cat Tara did. It was just a bit bigger though, and its face had longer hair. It is a nocturnal creature, so that explains why she never came out during the day. It was kind of sad though because it was so hot today, most of the animals were sleeping or laying down in the shade. People were throwing empty water bottles and such at them to get them to move. The zoo was huge. It had the animals sectioned off by both continent and type, so certain birds were in several different places. I even saw some Chukar partridges and peacocks.
We left the zoo at about six o’ clock because it was closing. We had to walk quite a ways to the bus stop. We ended up stopping at an outdoor restaurant on the way to have supper. Alex and Lily don’t really understand that I shouldn’t eat certain things, like food from a roadside vendor, because it could make me sick. I ended up just eating the hottest food that was served in hopes of not getting sick. I should be okay though. It was very spicy. Tomorrow we are going to leave pretty early in the morning, so we can go to The Great Wall. I am excited for it.

Day 21

I spent most of my day today graphing the results of ELISA. It was a long process and had many steps of equations. I must have done something wrong during one of the steps because my final answers were pretty far off what they should be. I went back through everything, but I still couldn't find my mistake. I asked a few of the graduate students to look at it, but they don’t do it regularly enough to tell me where I went wrong. It was very frustrating. I took a break and ate lunch. Then, Lily went with me to try to get a laundry card from the front desk of my building. It turns out that I can’t have one because I am not a permanent student here for a long period of time. I began my first book about the Ming dynasty today. It is actually very interesting while sticking to the facts. I got quite a bit of it read. The author wrote it like a bunch of stories rather than listing facts. It’s more like a novel of short stories than a history book.
After the break, I came back to the lab and tried to work on my graph. I got frustrated pretty quickly though, so I worked on my Chinese instead. The Chinese language is very hard because there are “tones” in the way you say vowels. It is really hard for me to distinguish and pronounce the different tones because they are so much alike, but this is the most important aspect of the Chinese language.
After supper, I came back to my room and started my laundry. I had a lot of it once again. When I figured out that there was a washing machine in my building, I stopped doing my laundry in my sink because I could just do it all at once in the machine. I had about three days at that time (I was going to do it that night in fact). I ran out of clothes again today, so I had to do it. I only got half of it done though because I ran out of space for everything again. It’s a big pain in my butt to have to do it in the sink, but I will never take for granted a washing machine again, or the leprechaun at home who takes my dirty clothes and returns them clean and folded. Thanks mom :)

Day 20

Today wasn’t quite as productive as yesterday. I took my laptop to the lab with me today, so that I could graph my Elisa results in English. I graph the values of my known concentrations, but I couldn’t figure out how to find the concentration values for my samples because Excel doesn’t have a function for it. The one it has was backward from what I needed. At about ten, Alex asked me to go to a lecture with him and a few others upstairs. It was a Life Science teacher at Texas Tech University talking about stress tolerance in certain genes. Alex said it would be in English, so I would learn a lot. The professor was Chinese, so he ended up speaking Chinese with a few English words thrown in every once and awhile. His powerpoint was in English, but it didn’t really help much because it was supplemental to what he was talking about. I lost interest in about twenty minutes and had difficulty staying awake. It got very hot in the room because it was quite small and completely packed with students. I was just pouring sweat. It got over at about noon, so we went to lunch.
I went to the old lab after the break so I could ask Cici for help on my graphing. She was busy with an experiment so Zhen offered to help me. He didn’t understand it either though. He ended up enlisting the help of a teacher’s aid. He helped us but couldn’t remember the formula for changing the results to a linear equation, so we could determine my unknown concentrations. I actually ended up figuring it out because I had done it in Calculus and Statistics. I have to wait until tomorrow to finish it though because I left my laptop in my room after lunch. It turns out that my results for my high concentrations of known protein were too high. I took to long during the last step so the higher concentrations reacted too long with the last chemical. I was lucky though because it is the low concentration knowns that are the most important. I just have to throw out my three highest numbers and everything else will be fine. I guess the protein levels I found of my unknown samples were better than some of the graduate students have ever gotten. That made me really happy because I was sure that I completely messed it up.
Then, I went back to the new lab and talked with Tina a bit. We decided that my hypothesis would test whether or not Bt cotton is still effective to use in China. I will be testing it in many ways and learning a lot of new things, including checking cotton bollworms for signs of resistance to Bt cotton. I am pretty excited about it. On the side, I will also be helping Ibraham with his herbicide resistant weeds. Then, we went to supper and to the supermarket for more water. I also picked up a new webcam since mine won’t work. It was very cheap; just under $7 actually. We even checked to make sure it would work. I also figured out that my cost to eat everyday is under $2. You can’t buy anything in the US for $2 let alone an entire day’s worth of food!

Day 19

It’s hard to believe that it’s already July. Only six more weeks, and I’ll be home again and starting school. Today was a very productive day for me. I went to the lab at 830 like I do every day. I called Cici on the phone and was expecting to have to pass the phone off to Alex in order for him to translate, but I was so wrong. She speaks perfect English. I could understand every word she said. She told me to meet her at the old lab at ten so we could begin ELISA testing. I just messed around on the computers until then. Then, I went to the old lab, and we got started. First I had to grind the leaves into a liquid and put them into test tubes. I had four samples total. Then, we had to refrigerate them for four hours. I talked with some of the graduate students before I went back to the new lab to go to lunch. They are all very nice. There was a man named Zhen who just came to the university six days ago to begin his masters degree. He was very anxious to practice his English on me which was also very good. Cici was embarrassed to talk to me because she didn’t think her English was very good, so she had Zhen do all the talking for her. I tried to tell her that her English was very good and encourage her to talk, but she didn’t believe me. At 1130 we all went to lunch. I came back to the lab at two in order to continue my experiment. I had to use the centrifuge to separate the liquid from the solid. Then, I had to create a control of known concentrations to be able to compare the concentration of protein in my unknown samples. I created 8 controls; each having half the concentration of the one before it. Then, I had to mix in chemicals to my known concentrations and samples and incubate it for two hours. We went to supper at this time and then went back to the lab again. I had to then wash the samples and concentrations with a special fluid and fill the wells back up with chemicals and incubate it for 30 minutes. I had to wash, fill, and incubate three times. Then, I added a special dye and a stopping agent. Then put it in the spectrometer for analysis of the color. It printed out a table for me, and I will have to graph it tomorrow to determine the amount of Bt protein in each of the samples. I know this is confusing to read, but I skipped a lot of details in order to save everyone from intense boredom. I was surprised my experiment was successful because Cici and Zhen didn’t tell me what not to do until I was doing it. I didn’t get back to my room until well after 9 tonight. I also have a pounding headache because the old lab doesn’t have air conditioning and it was in the upper 90’s again today.
I had a slight scare today too. I didn’t have a lot of money left, so before I went back to the lab after lunch, I stopped at the atm near my building. It rejected my card saying it was an error. I was freaking out because I was told my card would work here, so I didn’t bring that much cash. I mentioned it to Alex, and he took me to a different atm also near my building. Luckily this atm had an international banking option, so I was able to withdraw money. I also had the most intelligent conversation with someone since I have been here. Zhen is very interested in American politics and the economy, so we talked quite a bit about that. I also talked with Cici and another graduate student, Ming, about movies. Apparently, most of the movies shown in China are American. They just run Chinese subtitles. As we worked, we also watched the first Transformers movie on the computer because it is everyone’s favorite.