Rainy Wednesday :)

Buenos Días!

I think I have touched on this but here at El Verde, power lines to the station are tied to TREES, needless to say the power goes out quite often. The first week, we ran off the generator but two days ago, the power company actually came and fixed it! We have been able to stay up past 9, which either way, it's alright Well, I woke up this morning to a heavy heavy storm and heard the generator running. It was nice while it lasted, modern commodity of 24 hour power. Hello, modern commodity of 14 hour power. First world problems?

I finished my proposal, Sofia is editing it now and I am starting on my powerpoint presentation. I give a 15 minute speech to introduce my project to everyone here at the station. Not just REU students, but other researchers, and staff too. It is going to be good. I am excited about my topic and have no problem understanding the importance of it, which makes it easy to justify and also, explain to other people.

I made the agar gel yesterday that will go into the cups I am placing in the stream. The agar will slowly leech out the nutrients it is amended with. So anyway, I was making it on a hot plate-stirrer which is really cool. You put this magnet in the bottom of a flask and set it on the hot plate-stirrer and turn it on and the magnet spins and variable speeds. It stirs your solution automatically, which is nice. So it's a hot plate too, ya? Well, I turned it up and stepped away for like two minutes to read an email and I hear sizzling and look back and there is agar everywhere, boiling over my flask. I grabbed my oven mitts, (thanks to Hilda who had brought them in earlier, worried about my safety) and put the flask into the sink. Well, for those of you who don't know, at high temperatures, agar is liquid, but below ~127F or 50C, it turns to solid. The desk and the floor and my oven mitts and lab coat are not hot enough so once it spilled everywhere, my liquid mess turned into a gel mess. (go, me) Agar, when cooled is like the consistency of hard jello. So I peeled it up and had to start over, because what would have been the perfect amount for my cups, boiled out onto the floor. Good stuff.

Today, we are going to the grocery store and boy am I excited!!! We plan on grilling out friday, after our presentations and having a little party up in at the station. I am making Brats and fruit salad, and between the REU's we will also have a normal salad, potato salad, 7 layer dip, cookies and vegetarian options. I might make myself some sauerkraut because it goes well with bratwurst.. Not many people like sauerkraut, so we shall see. Ususally, Worm makes it with a bottle of Sweetwater 420 and simmers it for a half hour to an hour until the liquid is mostly gone and that gives it a nice flavor. We are sans Sweetwater here in Puerto Rico, so I haven't decided yet, what I will actually do. Maybe use the local beer, Medalla? (Pronounced meh-dajha or meh-dahya, depending on who is speaking) Hank, if you are reading, this is no Yuengling, you wouldn't like it. Domestic-light drinkers, you might. It's not too bad :) We went out last weekend and I ordered two of them, one for Emily and I, and I wondered why the bartender looked at me like some idiot when I asked for Modela..

good times, being a tourist and all. If I knew spanish, they might take me seriously.


Anyway, I have some streams to go mucking through. Good day :)