The Thirty-Seventh Day

I got up at 720 and then ate some yogurt and went back to bed for 10 minutes. Last night was not happy; I had some vomiting which is never good but I think it was due to the amount of salt in the food or an inkling of food poisoning.

This morning at work was good. After taking another thirty minute nap (I know, I am struggle with fatigue), Yulan and I took samples out of the co-cultivated dishes to test whether the gene had been picked up by the fungus. I watched and was given the task of resealing the opened petri dishes. We went and watered the plants and took care of a few other tasks. The faucet in the room (where those plants were) was being used. Someone had threaded a hose on it, and the faucet was going full force. The hose snaked out the window and up to the roof. For what reason I have not an idea; there must be plants of some sort up there that they want to keep alive. After we finished our activities, we had lunch. Last night it seems that Wendy had a party with some of his friends, and they ordered too much food. He brought in all of the leftovers and we ate them. Lili, I think, went and got some of the tortilla-like bread that they eat that I had never tried before. The "tortillas" were very good, almost like a thick tortilla. Wendy tried to tell me something, and I did not get his meaning initially. He meant for me to go get more food out of the microwave. He does not speak very good English (but, of course, I speak no Chinese).

The air quality is very good today so I will swim a hard workout tonight, or try for a long run.

This afternoon was pretty good. I was in charge of heating up some medium that we were going to plate in order to do more co-culturing. After heating we waited for it to cool and then plated it in the fume hood. By this time, I was extremely tired and struggling to stay awake. As embarrassing as it is, I napped and Yulan finished up. I did manage to get it together and help with some other tasks. We pulled out some bacteria to start getting ready for co-culturing. At 500 I said goodbye and headed up to my room to grab my swim gear. I got the necessaries and headed out. On the stairs, I ran into Silvio, from Cape Verde on the west coast of Africa (it is a group of islands).  I told him what I was up to, and he commented that he would like to come with me the next time I go. So next time, I will knock at his door and see if he is in.

Swimming was enjoyable and greatly needed. I got in 5000 meters although not much of it was fast as I was not feeling too great today. I got in about 1000 kicking, and the total workout took about 1 hour 40 minutes.
After swimming I walked back to the dorm and guess who I ran into on the way back... Silvio! So I ate dinner with him. We went to a place that I had not been in before. We both got the same thing. It was an egg-y fried rice with a little meat in it - completely palatable.  He likes some of the same music as me, and he is very fond of sports and loves to play them. He recently hurt his knee playing soccer though. I talked to him about throwing the Frisbee around, and he sounded interested in that. Maybe tomorrow, I will see if he wants to throw it around - I've really missed being able to play Ultimate (frisbee). After eating we headed back to the dorm and said our goodbyes. He is in the room next to me so it is very easy to get in contact with him. Ben came in and told me that I needed to learn how to play Fishing in the Crawdad Hole. t was a pretty good day apart from the tiredness. I have been practicing on the guitar and uke and am getting a lot better at both.

I think one of my other pet turkeys was missing me - she came up to the back door at the house.

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This is Beaker - my pet turkey from home.  And no, I did not bring her with me to Beijing.