Hello,
Today I am going to write about the last week of my first
term as a university student. It has been a very light week on term of academic
work, but full of outside-uni activities :)
ALERT - long post, because there are lots of pictures!
Sunday 7/12: when I woke up in the morning, I went on
Skype and spoke to my Australian host mum, Rebecca, for about an hour. I always
enjoy these Skype chats because the make me feel closer to Australia and the
people I have left there!
The rest of the day was quite restful, because I blogged for
a while, then Isabela and I went to Westfield Shopping Centre to so that she
could buy Melanie’s present for our not-so-secret Santa (there were only three
people participating, so it was easy to work out who had who). We went to the
Disney store and she bought a soft Olaf for her, then we stumbled upon some
cuuuuute Wall-e mugs that we HAD to
buy lol Loooook, aren’t they too cute to be left in the store??
Monday 8/12: I woke up at around 8.50am, despite
being a Monday. There was no point in going to my Evolution lecture since it
was going to be only a Q&A for people who had questions to ask. I didn’t
have any, as I understood pretty well everything that we have been taught this
term in this module! I spent the rest of the day revising for the afternoon,
when I would have my last exam: a Lab test, working on my own on different
experiments that we had tried in the past weeks.
At 2pm it was time for the exam and I was kind of nervous, despite knowing that I had done all
I could to prepare and that I was ready to repeat the experiments. When I
received the exam paper, I felt better. I looked through it and I found it
doable.
- I started by doing a blood-dilution exercise, that required me to count the blood cells after having put the diluted blood in a haemocytometer. At first, I thought I had too fee cells in my haemocytometer, since we were asked to count at least 100 cells, but then the demonstrator told me that it was right, because some of us had solutions with very low concentrations. I counted about 45 cells in the whole haemocytometer, instead of 100 in a few squares, and then went on with my calculations of volume and concentration in the diluted and the undiluted sample.
- The next exercise was the usual observation of blood cells in the microscope, after adjusting the scale bars, and drawing of red blood cells and a white blood cell. In the previous Lab session I had learnt how to do so properly, including nucleus for the white blood cell, so it was fine. I also had to measure the cells I was observing by comparing the stage micrometer and the eyepiece graticule I was provided with, then I had to calculate the magnification of my drawing.
- The remaining pages were not practical exercise, but applications of what I had learnt. I had to do some molarity calculations and sketch a serial dilution of three steps, to reach a specific number of cell colonies through a to-be-calculated dilution factor.
I finished the exam within 1h15, whereas we were allowed
between 2h and 2h30. Because it took me so short, I am scared I messed
something up or misinterpreted some of the instructions... I hope not, though!
After 2 hours, those of us who had finished were allowed out and Coral, Andrea,
Laurana and I stayed outside the building chatting for a while, before heading
home veeery relieved!
Around 6pm, I went to Maria Stella’s place to watch the
second last episode of “Once Upon a Time” before the midseason finale (and the
three-months long break...). It was a very emotional episode, with the “Frozen”
storyline nearing its end :( When we finished watching “Once Upon a Time”, I
made pasta for me and Maria Stella, who went back to studying for her midsessional
exams, so we had dinner together and with one of her flat mates.
During the evening, I tried to convince Isabela to start
making our “music videos”, but we postponed to the next day after a while!
Anyway, we planned what we would do and e came up with some “artistic” ideas
for some of the songs. In the end, we picked six songs to do: our three Wicked
duets “What is this feeling?”, “For good” and “Defying gravity” (though we will
be doing Elphaba’s main part together, otherwise she, as Glinda, wouldn’t be
saying much); “On my own” from Les Miserables; “For the first time in forever
(reprise)” from Frozen (me as Anna, Isabela as Elsa).
Then, for the first time in a while, I went to sleep around
midnight! I was still sleeping in “my new room” (Isabela’s), but she was
watching some videos and I fell asleep as soon as I went to bed :)
Tuesday 9/12: I got up at 10am, after a much-needed
long night of sleep, and I went to meet Sophia from the photography society soon
after. I had to give her back the money she had lent me to buy a tube ticket to
go the photography exhibition! We chatted for a while, then I had to rush to
the SBCS (School of Biological and Chemical Sciences) reception to hand in a
form with my personal details to be
entered int he QM payroll as a student ambassador. Though, I found the
reception closed, so I had to give up and scan the form to email it in the
evening!
After lunch, I went to out with Isabela and we spent a lot
of time walking around the centre! We went to Oxford Street, where we looked at
the beautiful Christmas decorations around the street and in the shop windows :)
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| A gorgeous window at Selfridges (isn't the moon incredible??) |
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| Another window at Selfridges |
Then we went in random shops trying on
Christmas gadgets, without buying any because we are on a budget :P
However, our trip to the centre had a purpose: we had to go
to Primark to buy Maria Stella’s Christmas present, a onesie with gingerbread
men all over it! We also bought some fairylights for our kitchen *-* Done with the present, we went to the Disney store, since we were there... the Disney
store Oxford Street is A M A Z I N G!! It’s huge and it has a section for every
princess and for a lot of other Disney cartoons, like Tinkerbell :)
Around 6.30pm we went to Stratford, where we went to the cinema
to watch... *drum roll* “Hunger Games – Mocking jay part 1”!!!!! I had been
waiting to go and see it at the cinema since it had been released and I was so
worried I would have to wait for the dvd, instead I managed to see it on the
big screen! The cinema seats were really great, as we had no one sitting beside
us and we used two seats each (the armrests could be lifted) :)
We arrived home around 10.30pm, we set up the fairylights
around out kitchen, which finally looks very Christmassy *-* We used the
Halloween ghost-lights (shorter than any of the others) for Melanie’s cupboard,
since it’s a single one, and the three new sets for the boys cupboards, ours
and the freezer!
Before going to bed, then, we actually started our music
videos. To be clear, they are just recordings of us singing the songs we sing
all the time, to have them saved :) Let’s say it’s like when we play karaoke
with Maria Stella and we video ourselves, with the difference that on these
songs we have a lot of practice and we know them pretty much by heart hahaha It
was too funny, because it took us ages to do a proper video in which both our
voices and that of the originals singers would come out (with some emotions, since
the first “On my own” trial came out totally emotionless on our side)... and
then we found out my camera had cut our faces out of the video :P So in over an
hour we managed to make the Frozen and Les Miserables videos (the ones for which
we are not using any props), both coming out with head cut!
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