Singapore: Day 18

Today was a long day. I crammed for and took my safety training test early this morning, which concludes my safety training at last! Afterward, I headed to the lab and prepared for the RT-PCR protocol. I diluted all 38 of my primers, which was time-consuming in that I had to wait for the primers to first defrost to room temperature. After I finished, I grabbed lunch with Jian and Gao (the research associate and surgeon from China.) It has become my daily routine to eat with the two of them at the Duke-NUS canteen, and I probably spend the most time with them out of all the members of the lab. Jian told me about his travels around Asia, and emphasized that I go explore and see the world as well. He was even giving me two days off of work so I could make a 4 day trip to another country! After lunch, we returned to lab and our procedures. I prepared the reverse transcription mixture and reverse transcribed the total RNA to cDNA with the PCR machine. This may be uneventful to read, so I will summarize by saying that today was basically lab work. I am almost done with my first run of the procedure and will hopefully finish up tomorrow! I was deadly tired by the time I got out of lab at 6:30 PM, and quickly grabbed a salad roll and soya milk for dinner while on my way back to PGPR. As soon as I got back to my room, I relaxed, showered, and knocked out for an hour. I then worked on my ISF 187 assignments until my Reach the World meeting at midnight. Learning more about RTW and my tasks definitely made me super excited to be a part of this program! Apparently, there are 20 travel correspondents for the summer, and we are spread out over 15 different countries, which I find to be super amazing! We are all internationally connected for a similar cause, and despite being thousands of miles apart, we are all passionate about making a difference in American (specifically New York) classrooms. I will be paired up with an under-served classroom and teacher, and my articles and blog entries will be incorporated into their lesson plans. I will also be connecting with the students through messages and webchats, so I am beyond excited to meet everyone :) I can't wait! It is getting late here in Singapore (2:32 AM) so I must head to bed soon and potentially dream about all the lovely students I will meet!