USA!!!

(To the left is a picture of Gibralter since I didn´t put any pictures on last time)

Here I am in the lab. It´s almost 6 in the evening and I am ready to go home. We didn´t have Spanish class today. I missed yesterday´s class which was bad. This weekend some of the girls are going to Paris, some of the others are going Granada (another city in Andalucia), and two of us are staying back here in Puerto Real. The trip last weekend almost cleaned out my wallet, so I figure it will be good to stay around here for a bit.

Tonight is the night when Spain plays the USA in soccer. So all the people working in the lab put some money in a jug on what the final score will be. I bet one Euro that the US will beat Spain 3-2. So we shall see.

In lab yesterday and today, we started two procedures. One procedure is to measure the fatty acid composition of the lichens, and the other procedure is to measure the protein composition of the lichens. To measure the protein composition, we are using the Kjedahl method which uses a bunch of oddly shaped glassware. The lichen material is digested with very strong acid. This decomposes the proteins into ammonium ions. Then we use the previously mentioned oddly shaped glassware to distill the solution into a known amount of acid. The ammonium ions turn into ammonia which neutralizes the acid, then we measure the amount of acid left over. This tells us how much ammonia was there, which tells us how much ammonium was there, which tells us how much nitrogen was there, which tells us how much protein is in the original material.

Anyways, that is interesting, but only if you are interested in chemistry. The fatty acid composition is analyzed with a completely different method.

My attempts at speaking Spanish are not improving drastically, but I think I can understand better than before. It is frustrating not knowing the words for simple things like ¨pen¨ or ¨wall¨ or ¨crumpled-up piece of paper that is really important that is missing, but was setting here just a minute ago¨. That last thing didn´t actually happen to me, but it could. If it does, what will I do? Since I can´t say that in Spanish, I guess I will have to furiously point in random directions and speak loud English to people who understand neither loud English nor quiet English, nor even English that is spoken in a normal, everyday voice. As Michael says, ¨Pointing works¨.

So I will update later, but not today. It is late and I am ready to go home. Even though it is six o´clock in the evening the sun is still really bright. There are no clouds in the sky.

So lastly, Go USA!!