Chemistry day 1

Hey everyone! Hope you are all doing great! Today marked 1 week left in Taiwan. I can't believe how the time has flown!
Today we met at the lab to score the level of cardiac failure of the zebrafish embryos experiment we set up Tuesday. Our embryos that were supposed to exhibit heart failure actually survived very well. Our embryos that were supposed to show recovery did well as well, which was a good thing because the compound we were testing to see if it helped recover heart failure was more diluted than what is normally tested.
After we finished with our embryos, we had a break for lunch and some time to relax before our afternoon activities. Beth and I ate at the little coffee shop on campus, and then walked to the market to get some delicious fruit tea. We were able to relax for about an hour and a half back at the hotel before we left for the afternoon.
We spent the afternoon and evening over at the Chinese Medicine University. We will be working there the next few days on various chemistry experiments to extract compounds for research from two different Chinese herbs. We were not able to start right away when we arrived, so we wandered around the teeny tiny museum they had in the department for a little while. Unfortunately it was all in Chinese so we had no idea what anyone was saying. After, we went back up to the lab to find out what experiments we would be doing, and to start working on them. Our experiment we started tonight was liquid column chromatography. For those who don't know what that is, you create a silica gel in a long column, pour in solvent that can help take the compound you want to separate down the silica gel, and let it sit for a while. Because there was a lot if wait time, we were able to run and get dinner during our break. We were only supposed to take a half hour break, but Dr Huang was with my group that went to dinner, so we ended up taking almost an hour, especially because he wanted to go get doughnuts for everyone. We couldn't find the doughnut shop he wanted, so we ended up stopping at a bakery to get treats anyways.
We paused our experiment for the night and took a long bus ride back to the hotel. Tomorrow we will pick up where we left off, and work on some other experiments.
Thanks for reading along! Can't wait to see everyone soon.

Pictures - zebrafish embryos; bus driver this afternoon made a pit stop at the gas station; our liquid column chromatography