Burgers are delicious, and now I have tried them Aussie style = beetroot as a topping

So yummy. And I don't really care for beets...

Ketchup is called tomato sauce here, and you have to ask for it even at french fry places.

Oh my gosh! I saw little sauce packets of Vegemite at McDonald's. I need to steal some next time I'm there! I must try this Australian delicacy

And one other note- pumpkin pie isn't big here, in fact I don't think they even sell canned pumpkin. This is unfortunate. I wanted to bake all these American classics for people at work. So far all I've done is soft chocolate chip cookies. I still have to make nice, fluffy pancakes, bisquick style strawberry shortcake, and real Mexican tacos.

The last few days have been much better :) I'm still getting migraines frequently, but oh well...I'm moving forward in my projects at work; I'm even about to start a repeat of this one experiment to verify my results. It's nice having actual results to show for the work I do :)

Thursday, everyone in the lab, including Dr. Kappler, went to lunch because this girl in our lab is graduating and going back to Singapore. We went to a Japanese place, and I got to see all this beautiful Japanese food. When ordering, I stuck with words that I knew- ramen (I know this from top ramen) and teriyaki beef. It didn't taste like our cheap teriyaki back home, definitely more authentic. Even the dishes were cool looking, wooden and decorated with Asian spices.

Today I took the longest walk ever. I decided to take a bus into the city and then just walk the rest of the way to the market. That was a good walk. There's a huge bridge connecting the part of the city that is south of the river to the north. It was quite relaxing to walk across the river. At the market, I bought farm fresh strawberries carrots, lettuce, spices, bread etc. But then my walk back...I took the long walk back across the river to try and find a bus. I never saw one, so I just kept walking...30 minutes later I saw a bus that said Taringa, which is the suburb next to mine- Indooroopilly (pronounced Indro-pilly) I got on and hoped for the best. Luckily it dropped me off near my Dominoes so I knew where I was! Of course my landmarks are food places...

My roommates left right when I got back :) So I had my homemade baklava from the market, a cup of green tea and watched my Doctor Who finale. Then I made homemade chicken, veggies and dumplings and baked cinnamon cookies. I feel pretty good. Now to study for the GRE

Work has been so frustrating lately. I'm doing things non-stop from 9 to 5, and I come home so tired. And I've been getting so frustrated with this one, dumb experiment, that I literally have to stop what I'm doing and give myself a break before I burst into tears. At this point, I've already began to tear up and have a migraine from stress. I think I have some sort of "get stressed and crabby way too easily" thing wrong with me too. Actually, I know I do. This is my messy, little bedroom. It's my comfort place after work. I either sit on my computer, while drinking delicious jasmine green tea and relax or read The Fountainhead in bed. On the weekends though, relaxing for me is organizing my room, cleaning, and shopping. Speaking of which, I went shopping Saturday and Sunday, and it was quite overwhelming. There is an enormous amount of shops and restaurants crammed in every corner of this city. It's amazing, but also very dangerous. I've gone through like ten accessory shops already (and have some beautiful new necklaces to show for it). In the CBD (the actual city part of Brisbane), there are 3 shopping centers right next to each other and shops and places to eat crammed on every street in between. It's insane. Oh and the girls here have a really great fashion sense. There are some very distinct looks that I'm hoping will catch on in America when its our winter.

Common Australian words/phrases-

"I reckon"

"bloke"

and the worst one to answer- "how are you going?" This is equivalent to "how are you?" and EVERYONE says it all the time, but when I first heard this I was caught off guard. "By train", "by bus? but no, I just need to remember "fine thanks" or I awkwardly answer, "fine, how are you?" (emphasis on not using the word "going")

I have yet to try a meat pie and that is so huge here. That is my next mission.

This past weekend Christine, Julie and I headed to the Gold Coast after I got off of work. It only took about an hour on the train and then a bus into town to our family owned hostel. Our room was quite big, and luckily we had it all to ourselves and our own bathroom. On Saturday, we went to Movie World, a mix between Six Flags (because it's owned by Warner's Brothers) and Universal Studios, but dumber. I woke up with a migraine that day, so I was kind of sick the whole time. But, we went on the few roller coasters, saw some shows, and ate some Australian food- spinach and ricotta rolls, turnovers, basically tons of puff pastry.It was pretty fun.

Then we came home for a nap before our "club crawl". This event is something where you pay $25 and get picked up on a bus, along with a few other hostels, and taken to 4 different clubs. So we got a free drink at every club and had about an hour and a half to dance.

At the second club (which we are now boycotting), we were so hardcore that they had to kick us out...actually, some loser from our hostel gave us fake free drink tickets that we tried to use, thinking that they were real and he was just trying to be nice.

So dumb. Some loser Samoan bouncer escorted us out.

At the last club, I thought I was just being nice by talking to this half elf, half Australian guy, but then he ended up hitting on me all night. He is now known as Mr. Elf. His friend tought us some new phrases-

fair dinkum = are you serious?

hooroo = goodbye

Overall, I really had fun. I'm not one to go out, but I liked this whole club crawl thing, at least with Julie and Christine it was fun :)

The next day we slept half the day away because we are so hardcore and stayed up late. But after that, we got a free shuttle ride into the main shopping/dining/beach area.

The beach was basically deserted because it was very cold, but it was super pretty. We had a beach photo shoot, did some souvenir shopping, got Julie to get her nose pierced, and had fish and chips at a beach-side restaurant.

On Monday we returned home and turned right around to go into the city. Oh and it was a holiday, the queen's birthday, so I was off work :) I had never been to that area of the city. It felt kind of like Chicago actually. There was a huge shopping center and a winter festival going on with an outside ice skating rink. We met my work friends for a chocolate high tea, where they served me this tray of super fancy chocolates and an Italian hot chocolate (just super, super thick).

I miss hangin' with Julie and Christine already, and they just left...

I thought I'd try and explain what I've been doing at work.

Alright, first of all a bacteria cell has a circular genome. So its DNA looks like a circular zipper (two sides, complementary). I needed to manipulate the bacteria cell so that its genome contains a (DMSO reductase) gene, aka a piece of DNA, that I want it to translate into a specific protein (DMSO reductase). (Because that's what DNA does --> is read like directions on how to assemble proteins=cellular machinery) This process is so much more complicated than that and has already taken a couple weeks and is still happening now. Next week I may finally have bacteria that contain "foreign" DNA! This means that I'll be able to grow up the bacteria, let them produce all my protein for me and then blow them up and extract that specific one out. This protein is supposed to be the one that is important for haemophilus influenzae infection ability.

At the same time I've also been doing h. influenzae growths. (This is the bacteria that gives ear infections, among other things.) I have been growing up two strains, in various conditions, then I basically spun the cells at 45,000 rpm to separate out the different layers. This gives me a cell membrane extract, a periplasmic (inside cell part) extract, etc. in which I can test for activity in each section. I can add a certain chemical, such as DMSO, and see if that extract contains a protein that converts it to something else. (That something else triggers a reaction that I am able to monitor.)

Ok so if you're confused that's fine. If not, then yay :) glad you have a tiny idea about what I'm doing.

This weekend was pretty fun...

On Friday, Christine and Julie arrived. They met some coworkers and I for lunch at the pizza cafe, and then I found out that I was allowed to leave early to hang with them! That night we went to Fortitude Valley, aka "the valley", where all the major nightclubs and bars are. We walked around for a bit, ate some ok Chinese food in Chinatown (why does every city have this?), then ended up at a bar. The guy ID-ing us saw our Arizona

licences and was like- hey I'm from Tucson, I went to Pima! and then when we left he was like- Go Wildcats! It was very random. Lucky us, the first Friday of the month was 'ladies night', and we got free drinks! In Australia alcohol is extremely expensive, so that was amazing. And the drink was delicious! We tried some more pretty looking cocktails, got some free carnations, and took the train home. I don't remember if we did anything else that night...

On Saturday we spent a million hours walking around the other side of the river.

First we went to the West End market (West End is a suburb). The market was so cool! Lots of fruits and vegetables, spices, meats, and some interesting, ethnic foods. Christine and I ended up getting baklava. I couldn't resist.

We also got some other cheap groceries. After that we walked to South Bank, the next suburb over. It's kind of the performance area/ cafe-filled part of town. It was a long, but nice walk along the river. (There's a huge ferris wheel next to the river as well.)

Finally, we found an Asian looking restaurant to eat at. It was a very hard decision because there are literally a hundred little restaurants in this little area. Julie and I wanted to try something new, so we both got Thai red curry chicken (made with a coconut cream). It was...interesting. Not bad, but wouldn't order it again. Each time we've gone to a restaurant we have to find the waitress and the check ourselves.

It's the norm to just sit there for hours on end eating and visiting. The Davis girls eat quickly.

Then we walked around the market

in South Bank that was more jewelry/clothing/nicknack's. After that we found a train home. Saturday evening we went to the "bottle shop" and got some cheap wine and cocktail ingredients. We had our own little party in the living room, and then we heading over to my roommates joint birthday party in some far away suburb. It was pretty awkward at first. We sat by ourselves, no one was that friendly, and just looked weird. Eventually, we started talked to this guy named Ivan. He was very nice and looks like Edward Cullen but really tall. It's funny because we found out that he was staying at my house for the next week (working in Brisbane short term but lives in Melbourne).

Sunday I made pancakes with my bisquick!!! Yay :) and then we went to the mall to check out some of the cool accessory stores, the Japanese bakery, the tea store, and to eat some cheap sushi. Afterwards, we met Ivan for the new X-men movie. I really liked it, but then again I always wanted to be Storm when I was younger. But really, it was very good. Afterwards, I had an attempt at making pad Thai and failed, and that was our night. Good weekend.

I thought I would share the fact that work is going so well :)

My boss figured that several "reactions" (easier term for you non-scientific people) would have to be repeated and adjusted, but nearly every one has turned out perfectly. I'm basically ahead of schedule!! AND- nerd alert- I'm so excited that I'm learning these techniques. They are huge in the world of molecular biology, and having this summer where I learn a completely new and different set of techniques, along with all my experience at the UA, I will be a pretty great PhD candidate. I'm just happy. But I'll be happier when I wake up and Christine and Julie arrive! YAY!!! It will be so nice to have best friends (yes Christine, you count) to go places with and not worry if they will enjoy themselves. And tomorrow, everyone at the lab is going to take a long Friday lunch at the pizza place on campus so that Christine and Julie can meet us there :) I would have been able to get off early, but I'm just that dedicated... I really want to get through my digestions. (I realize no one knows what this is)