NYE part 1

Hey everyone!  Brief post... we are all getting ready to go out to celebrate right now.
Today was a nice, relaxing day. We got to sleep in some before heading to the lab for cardiac analysis of the zebrafish embryos we treated the other day. We had 4 embryos out of 40 we treated that survived, and they were all in the treatment that was supposed to cause heart failure. I didn't feel so bad because no one else's treatments worked either.
After that we went to meet a former professor from UWRF. He was an economics professor who now owns the top publishing company in Taiwan. This was an interesting lunch and I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet him and talk with him.
Following lunch, we decided to go shopping. Well that was at least our intent. Beth, Pafoua, Pheng and I went to a place for a shoulder and foot massage. It was one of the best massages I have ever had, and I think we all agreed we wanted to go back before we leave. The service we got for the price was well worth it, and since they knew we were tourists they put us together in a room with a great view of the city outside. I'm so glad I went and had a good time relaxing with friends.
We headed back to the hotel and now we are almost ready to leave for fireworks at Taipei 101. I think we are going to stop at a night market on the way. I will post later with pictures of that. I am so excited, this is going to be great!

Picture- view from my massage chair.

Day in Keelung

Hey everyone! Can you believe today was December 30th already? I am having a hard time really believe tomorrow is new years eve.
Today we traveled outside of Taipei to Keelung to visit the National Taiwan Oceanic University. Keelung is about a 40 minute train ride north of Taipei. When we arrived at the University we met up with 6 students who are in the life sciences program at the University. They took us on a brief tour of the campus, and then we were able to tour their aquarium that is on campus. We then joined the students and some of their faculty members for lunch, after which we left campus to go on a tour. We stopped at the National Museum of Marine Science and Technology. It was the grand opening of the museum,  and I think we all wished we could have had more than 30 minutes to explore the museum. We then took a bus to a park to look at rocks. The park was right on the coast, and the view of the ocean was beautiful. The pictures just do not do it justice. After we left the park we returned to Keelung to meet up with three of the students to go to a night market. This was an interesting experience. I personally think there were WAY too many people there, but it was cool to see nonetheless. Beth, Kayla, myself, and one of the students, Lin, went to do some shopping. Kayla and Beth both ended up buying a beautiful scarf. Beth and I tried some strawberries dipped in boiling sugar, and I also tried a tomatoe dipped in boiling sugar. The strawberries were really good, but I wasn't as crazy about the tomatoes.
Taiwan is currently hosting a giant, inflatable, rubber duck. It. Was. Awesome. I would track that duck down if it was ever in the US. We got some really cool pictures in front of the duck. It was a great way to end the night.
We are currently on the train back to Taipei, but I can't upload this until we get back to the hotel so I can have some wifi. Tomorrow I probably won't be able to upload a blog until pretty late. We are going to celebrate the new year by watching the fireworks off of the Taipei 101 building, which should be awesome. Have a great day everyone,  I am going to get some sleep!

Pictures- Nemo fish at the aquarium; view from the park; Beth, Lin (our student guide), myself, and Kayla at the night market; night market street; giant rubber duck.

Zoo day!

Hey! Hope everyone is doing great and isn't freezing too much!
Today was wonderful because we all got to sleep in a little bit before starting our day. Since we didn't do our chemical treatments of the zebrafish embryos yesterday, we went to the lab around 10 this morning to divide the embryos up into groups of five and treat them with different chemicals. My roommate, Courtney, also doubles as my lab partner. We treated 20 embryos with a chemical, AA (short for aristolochic acid) to give them heart failure. We then treated another 20 embryos with AA, and this time also with a chemical called NS-398 to see if it will help the embryos recover from the heart failure. We have to wait 2 days for the results, so we will see what happens Tuesday!
After the chemical treatments we went to the Taipei Zoo! It was really fun, and pretty cheap as well. It was 60 Taiwanese dollars, which is equivalent to about 2 US dollars. Myself, Beth, and Kayla (two of the other girls on the trip) walked around trying to find food. Kayla and I ended up splitting a pizza which wasn't very good. The crust was burnt, and they advertised cheese pizza but it was also COVERED in onions and had pepperoni. We made a special effort to see the penguins, since they are Kayla's favorite animal. She was almost crying from excitement! We went to see some of the other, typical animals you find in a zoo as well. We also went to see the pandas at the zoo. I know I was very disappointed because they only had one panda out. I really wanted to see the baby panda. Oh well.
After the zoo we took an awesome gondola ride to the top of one of the mountain s that is rich in tea gardens. The gondola ride was awesome because we were in a car with a glass bottom, so we got to see some awesome sights as we rode up.
At the top of the mountain we went for a tea dinner. We arrived and they served our group two different types of tea leaves to brew. Because our group was split up into two different tables we each started out with a different type of tea. Our table started out with a delicious green tea. We tried brewing it like Dr Huang taught us, but when his wife came over she tried the tea and realized he taught us wrong. So she decided to join our table (the students were all at one table and Dr Huang and his family were at the other) to make sure we had good tea. Boy was that even better! Everything was actually brewed right from that point forward. About halfway through the evening we switched types of tea to a black tea, which was still pretty good. Dr Huang was proud of our table though because it was the first time in a long while that the students finished their entire meal. I think it helped though that we knew what we were ordering, got the small size, and had it served family style instead of ordering our own entrées. I'm not quite sure how much tea I drank, mainly because the cups were tiny compared to American tea cups, and we did so many brews it was hard to keep track. Either way I really enjoyed it.
We took the gondola back down to the mountain but this time took a regular car since it was dark out. This was an amazing ride in a different way than the first rife because you cou, d see quite a bit of the city instead of just greenery (have I mentioned everything here is super green and super lush?), and the city was all light up. It was such an awesome thing to see. We were also able to see the Taipei 101 building lit up, which was cool.
We finally made it back to our hotel to do the gift exchange to celebrate Christmas that we had been meaning to do since we arrived. My mother always taught me that good things come in small packages,  which worked out for me with this because I picked the smallest box, which had a $5 bill in it! No complaints here! (:
Hopefully tomorrow will be a fun day, but I can already tell it's going to be a long one. Goodnight!

Pictures- panda at the zoo, myself and Erich (one of the guys on the trip) on the gondola up the mountain, Dr Huang's wife pouring tea at dinner

Day three

Hey everyone! I know I promised pictures but I am still trying to work on it so please be patient while I try to figure it out!
Today was another busy day. We were supposed to meet early to do some chemical treatments on the embryos we collected yesterday,  however we were all a little slow moving so that got moved to tomorrow!
We instead started our day off with a visit to a memorial dedicated to the second president of Taiwan. The building and grounds were beautiful, and the statue reminded us of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The building was designed specifically to represent different things. The number of steps leading up to the statue was his age when he died, the colors were the colors of the flag, etc. While we were there we witnessed the changing of the guards who guard the statue. This was a very interesting, educational visit.
After the memorial we went for lunch to this place that sold a noodle soup. It was not bad, but the beef in the soup had a bit of a kick to it.
Today was the day we got to visit the hot springs up in the mountains! It was suuuuuper relaxing and I think we all wished we could have stayed for a longer time than we were allowed. The only downside to that was my roommate and I are both still smelling (and I'm sure smelling like) sulfur. Hopefully the smell will disappear soon!
After the hot springs we met Dr. Huang's father and brothers for a vegetarian dinner. What an experience! It was 9 courses long, plus dessert and fruit. Quite a bit of imitation meat and seafood were included in the meal. I ate some of courses 1, 3, and I tried 4. Otherwise I was way too full to eat anything else! It was a fun meal getting to know some of the other people on this trip better!
Now it's time for bed. Tomorrow is our trip to the zoo!

Picture is of the memorial from outside the gates

Arrival and the first two days

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven't had the chance to update my blog sooner but it's been a busy couple of days.
So our flight thankfully took off on time Tuesday afternoon. The flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo took roughly 12 hours, and our route took us up over Canada and Alaska. That was an incredibly long flight, but at least we had free movies to watch to help make the time go faster. I was glad that someone was willing to trade my aisle seat for their window seat. The couple next to me was on their way home to the Philippines.  It was awesome being able to look out the window and see everything, especially flying into Tokyo at night! It felt like they were constantly feeding us on the plane though.... I got really full! We got a snack of pretzels, followed by beef stroganoff (or chicken teriyaki) which was accompanied by a roll, salad, shrimp and dessert. A little ways into the flight they came around with another snack which was a turkey and swiss sandwich with a banana and Milano cookies. Before we landed we were given another meal of chicken fried rice with a roll, fruit, orange juice and a hersheys bar. For being airplane food, it really was quite good.
When we arrived in Tokyo we had to try to hurry through security to be able to make our next flight since we had about an hour layover. However due to the amount of time it took us to get through security our next flight was boarding when we finally got through. There were quite a few people to board so luckily we had just enough time for a bathroom break, and what an experience that was! Because there was a line in the ladies room you had to take whatever toilet was available next.... and my luck was to get the squatter toilet (aka a porcelain hole in the ground). It was quite an adventure but I made it! We made our flight just in time. The flight from Tokyo to Taipei lasted about 4 hours and they fed us on this flight as well. We were given some sort of rice with chicken and vegetables in some sort of white sauce, along with a roll, salad, and some sort of desert. Because I wasn't very hungry I didn't really eat much of this meal. After we landed in Taipei we had to wait a bit to go through immigration, but luckily that all went smoothly.
Getting to our hotel was a whole other sort of adventure. After we collected our luggage we caught a bus to downtown Taipei, and then got on taxis to travel the rest of the distance to our hotel. Man are people crazy drivers over here!! By time we got to the hotel it was midnight (we landed at 9) and by time we got settled in and finally made it to bed it was about 2am.
After a very short nights sleep we arose and went to breakfast together as a group. There was an interesting mix of Chinese and American breakfast foods. I went for the traditional American breakfast of eggs, cereal, toast, and fruit. After breakfast we went out to learn the public transportation system, which is a very easy system to ride, even not knowing the language. Dr. Huang provided us with easy ride cards that work for the bus, subway, and a few other types of transportation. We took a bus to the subway station, and then took the subway what seemed like across town to Dr. Huang's fathers house. We met his younger brother who was kind enough to take care of getting track phones for us to use during our trip. We were also able to meet his father before we left for lunch with his brother. For lunch we went to a hot pot restaurant, which reminded me quite a bit of The Melting Pot, with the exception that everyone had their own broth and it was buffet style for picking out what you wanted to make. The bank for transferring currency was right across the road so following lunch we went to exchange the money we brought with. Taiwan currency does not deal in decimal places. The bills range in denominations of 100 and up, and coins are worth either 50, 10, or 1 new taiwan dollars. We all went back to the hotel to get some much needed rest.
Today we hit the ground running. We started our day off with a visit to the Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology to collect zebrafish embryos. Zebrafish are our model organism we work with in research, and many of the tests performed require the use of the embryos to observe results. Our hotel is on the Academia Sinica campus which is the research institution where the research we work on in Taipei will be performed.  Our first "test" was after we finished collecting the embryos. We had to successfully navigate the public transportation system without Dr. Huang or his family's help, and get us from campus to the Taipei 101 building, which is one of the tallest in the world. We made it without getting lost, which seemed like a small miracle in itself. We were originally going to get lunch in the food cor of the mall part of the building,  however it was so packed we walked across the street to find food. I would have loved to have had the chance to do some shopping,  however I couldn't afford to walk into any of the store there, which are all pretty much designer stores.
Following lunch we went to the 89th floor of the Taipei 101 building to see the surroundings.  It was such an incredible experience to be able to look out and see for miles. We also went up a floor to the observation deck. The elevator up to the 89th floor  is the fastest in the world. It was interesting taking pictures at the building because random people kept snapping pictures of our group as we posed for so, e group photos. Also while we were waiting in line to take the elevator back down, so, e gentlemen in line next to us asked to take their picture with Courtney,  or myself. It seemed rude to say no and they were so excited. Since whites are a minority over here, to them having their pictures taken with us seemed like having your picture taken with a celebrity. When we finished there, we went with Dr. Huang to his dental appointment.  While he got his teeth cleaned we went to see a temple, which was an incredibly beautiful building from the outside. We walked back to meet up with Dr. Huang and headed back to the hotel.
I am exhausted so I think I am going to end this post here and go to bed. I am hoping to post pictures tomorrow, along with a post of our days activities. Enjoy your day and thanks for reading along!

New foods tried: oyster, squid, seaweed/rice/salmón triangle thingy (no idea what it was called)

Leaving...

Hey everyone!
Merry Christmas! I hope you all have a fabulous time celebrating with your families. Take time to give them an extra hug since some of us will be on a plane for Christmas. I gave my parents their last hug just a few minutes ago, right before I went through security. That's right folks, I'm at the airport, getting ready to jet set off on my newest adventure in life!! Boarding is in about 1.5 hours... yikes! Our flight is from Minneapolis to Tokyo, then Tokyo to Taipei. Our flight will land in Tokyo at 5:10pm local time, and then we will board for our next flight 5 minutes later.... pray we make it! We will land in Taipei at 9:25pm local time, which is equivalent to 7:25 am Wisconsin time. To say I'm a little nervous is an understatement. However, I know this is a once in a lifetime opportunity so I wouldn't give it up for anything! I'll keep you updated with everything happening! Merry Christmas and thanks for following along!