Rain rain go away...

Well we have learned that we absolutely HATE Welsh weather...it has rained in some form or fashion EVERY day we have been here. The past two days had horrible weather.

Monday was our day to sight see around Cardiff. We went to the bay first, which was cold and wet. We saw the Millenium Center, the Roald Dahl Place, and Mermaid Quay. After the 20 minutes it took to do that we headed back to the city center. We wandered around a bit finding more alleyways and shops, then headed to Cardiff Castle. We took the 45 minute tour through the castle. It was a 12th-13th century castle (depending on where in it you were) but all the decorations were 18th century by William Burgess who did it all for the Butes, a rich Scottish family that lived there for awhile. It was pretty, and overall worth the £5.65 with the student discount.

We also wandered thru Bute Park behind the castle a bit. I love the animal wall. Along the one side of the castle are these animal sculptures of various species hanging over the wall that I love. We only walked through a tiny bit of the park, which is fine since I normally run thru the whole thing on my morning runs, so I knew that most of the park looks the same.

Lastly we went to the grocery store to get food for a late lunch (4pm). Then we went out again at 7pm for dinner and drinks, but were once again disappointed in the Cardiff night life, or lack thereof.

We ended up at Las Iguanas again, which has become our fall back. We both love the food, and we got lucky in that it was two for one night with cocktails. So I got 4 Iguana wanas for the price of 2. Then we went to our fallback bar, O'Neill's, for one more drink before calling it a night.

Today was a lab day, and still is. We have been here since 9am and will be here until 7pm doing PCRs and gels. I had my lunch time talk/presentation to the entire lab today, which went well. The entire lab was there, so I was nervous, but it worked out, and not many people in the lab are experts in microsats anyways. I was only questioned at the end by the boss in the lab, Mike Bruford, and luckily I knew the answers, yay! I really like it here and am enjoying the lab, and it looks like there will be a goodbye dinner for Muya this week so that should be fun to hang out with everyone we have gotten to know here before leaving for Kenya.

Speaking of, only 4 more days and we are off to Kenya!!! (Hopefully we will both remember to start our malaria meds this Friday).

~Lindsey