Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Blog 13

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday:

Monday, June 2nd, was a holiday in China called “Dragon Boat Festival”. Professor Xu explained to me that this holiday commemorates the death of a famous poet named Qu Yuan. This is not a big holiday in China, but the people that live close to the school will go home and everyone else will have a day to relax. Below is a photo of the food that is traditionally eaten on this holiday. It is a mound of rice wrapped in seaweed and filled with meat or jujubes. The wrapping is used to add flavor to the food, but is not eaten.

 
Most people didn’t go into the lab on Monday. When I got there the only other person in the room was Jiaqi. I worked for a little bit in the morning, and I went on a long walk with He Yutong around campus in the afternoon. Afterwards we got lunch in the faculty cafeteria with the other students from the lab. Professor Xu gave us his faculty lunch card because we were in the lab on the holiday.
On Tuesday morning I worked on developing a new protocol for my experiment. To do this I read articles that performed similar experiments. After lunch I went to the police station with He Yutong, because any foreign visitor to HeFei needs to register with the police if they are staying for over a month. I didn’t know what was being said between He Yutong and the woman working the front desk, but it seemed like there was an unusual amount of conversation going on between the two. After we left, He Yutong told me that I was supposed to register with the police 24 hours after I arrived in Hefei. Instead, I waited about a month! I received a paper with the title “Punishment of Warning”, but He Yutong told me that it should not be a problem.
Later in the afternoon, Yuan Shuai told me that he built me my own experimental set-up! I wish I had been able to help him do this, but I didn’t know he was working on it until he was almost done. It makes me laugh when I work with Yuan Shuai because he works and walks so quickly that it is hard for me to keep up. I am happy that I will be able to start my experiment soon!
On Wednesday morning I worked on my eye model project. Dr. Roberts recently gave a clear outline and goal of this project and established communication for all the people involved in this project. Another student at Ohio State has created a detailed model of the eye. My job in this project is to determine how the model can be 3D printed. Our goal is to initially make a very simple model, and to add levels of complexity as we determine what works.
I spent the afternoon going to the bank with Lei Fan so that I could figure out how to exchange my USD for RMB. I was also very excited on Wednesday because Jiaqi invited me to go with her on a trip to Zhangjiajie. We will be traveling there with the rest of her class as a graduation celebration. We will be leaving on June 13th and arriving back in Hefei on June 17th. This trip is about a 4 hour train ride away from Hefei. The area looks beautiful and I am so excited to have the opportunity to travel there!


No comments:

Post a Comment