Two Weeks Later

Well it has been two weeks since I updated this blog. Since that time, I learned some new things, traveled around, and ate some strange food.

In lab we are pretty busy. Our Spanish classes have been cut back from 5 days a week to 2 days a week. So we have more time in lab now. I have been working on two different projects at once. Both of them involve lichens.

A lichen is actually two organisms, a fungus and an algae (or in some cases a cyanobacteria) that exist in a symbiotic relationship. They need each other to survive. Yet they function as one organism. As I said I am working with two different lichens. One is Stereocaulon Glabrum which is the fungus/cyanobacteria type. The other is Cladina Rangiferia which is the fungus/algae type.

So the point of the research is to isolate and identify secondary metabolites in the lichens. Secondary metabolites are chemical compounds that are not necessary for basic biological functions, but may be unique to the organism.

In other news, southern Spain is treating me well. We are planning a trip to Gibralter this weekend. It is a few hours down the coast by bus. Gibralter is a very tiny British territory on the southern tip of Spain overlooking the Strait of Gibralter. So far I have learned that Gibralter covers 2 square miles, has some mean monkeys, and a very large rock. So maybe this weekend I will dip my toes in the Mediterranean for the first time.

My forrays into the Spanish language have been interesting and sometimes embarrassing. I am a very long way from actually communicating on a normal level with Spanish speaking people. So far my Spanish consists of a few incorrectly conjugated verbs, some common nouns, and a lot of pointing.

For example last weekend I had a cold. So I stopped at a pharmacy to buy some cough drops. You would expect the cough drops to be out on a shelf somewhere. If they were, I could just pick them up and put some money on the counter with a minimal amount of speaking.

They weren´t.

I didn´t know the Spanish word for cough drop. The clerk didn´t know English.

So I coughed. The clerk brought out some cough medicine. I shook my head.

I coughed again. And made sucking noises with my mouth.

The clerk brought out something that resembled cough drops. I nodded and bought them. She laughed.

All of this because I didn´t know the words: Tengo tos. Necesito pastillas, por favor.