may 24, 2006

today's our last day of the field course... well, our last day of doing work. we did a super long genetics/pcr lab today. i kind of like it, but it's just annoying 'cause there's times when you have 2 hour breaks in between (to wait for the reaction to happen), and our dorm is like 15 mins away. so today, in total, i walked 5 times back and forth. it's ok though. ya, so today's the last day of our field course. tomorrow, we're going to fly from here (Chongqing) back to Hangzhou (where Zhejiang university is). we're going to have a final dinner with all the profs and students from that university, and then the next day, we're off to shanghai!! so for the next week, i'm going to be touring in shanghai and beijing... then next friday, i'm flying to kunming to teach for a few weeks. pretty excited about that. my chinese friends here tell me how beautiful a city it is.. and that there's a rainforest there with lots of cool animals.... like elephants :p

ok, here's a funny story i forgot to mention last week. back when we were in Wuhan, Charles got up one morning and his stomach was really hurting him. at breakfast, he told Dr. Lougheed that he thought he had appendicitis (pfffft lifesci's). so they took him to a doctor, and he told them that he thought he had appendicitis... and so the doctor's thought he had appendicitis. so usually, with acute appendicitis, it hits you REALLY hard out of nowhere, and then you have to go to the hospital right away to get surgery. so Yuxiang had to take Charles all the way to beijing to a hospital there 'cause charles didn't want to get treated in Wuhan. So they went all the way to beijing, and when the doctor at the hospital did a check up, they found that all he had was a sore stomach. ok, not really a funny story for yuxiang, i think he was pretty pissed, but it's just funny that it happened to charles.. 'cause he's always the one driving the profs crazy. so yuxiang came back the day after, but charles didn't... he stayed in beijing ('cause his grandparents live there)... and last i heard, he was heading back to canada soon.

ok, so.. things have been going pretty great. can't believe the course is already over... and i can't believe my stay here isn't even half over yet. getting pretty home sick, but that's ok 'cause i keep reminding myself that i might not come back here for a really long time... so i should just make the time worth it.