First Friday TGIF :)

The last of the week went a lot better! I got a gym pass and worked out some of my frustrations :) Also, I watched a ton of tv and relaxed lol so that was good too.  I went to my bio lectures-I'm taking a class called Drugs and Drug Targets.  It's fairly interesting; we are studying the effects of different drugs on the different systems of the body.  The first lecture was an hour, the second two hours, and our Friday class was a three hour lab day at the local hospital.  It's called Ninewells, and it's a teaching hospital too.

 
It was pretty cool I took the bus from the road adjacent to the school called Perth Road.  Perth Road  has a TON of restaurants and stuff so it's much more exciting that the other parts of Dundee so far!  It's also a lot better for the view because it's on the side of Dundee facing the loche.  I forgot my camera this time but we go to Ninewells every Friday so I will take pics then.  I was waiting for the bus and met a big group of people going to the hospital too; it turned out they were in my class.  So we all got to talking a lot and I partnered with two of them for my experiments.  The others were in the other half of the class that went to the computer lab. 
The lab experiment itself was really cool!  We are studying the effects of agonist and antagonist drugs in combination with other drugs.  We were using a little piece of pig ileum (which is in the small intestine) that was in a water bath, hooked to a ink reader.  Basically the reader measured the contractions of the ileum after we gave it drugs...all the while being infused with oxygen to keep it alive.  It was cool cause we got to use drugs like atropine and mepyramine and histamine.  We established our control contractions to Acetylcholine and Histamine, which are agonists (which caused reactions) and then incubated the ileum in solutions of mepyramine and atropine first before using ACh and histamine.  The second two blocked the contractions because they act as muscle relaxants.  All the while we would flush the water that the ileum was sitting in and this little machine drew out the actual contractions.  Pretty sweet actually really interesting! This is a version of what the organ bath aerator looked like.

Anyways after that we took the bus back to Perth Road and I rode on the top of the double decker:) !! It was really cool lol the view is awesome! I'll take major pictures next week.
So the night before I had gone to the pub quiz at a place called Braes (pronounced Breeze) and the pub quiz was kinda lame but the pub was really cool.  I didn't eat anything there that night and wanted to go back so I suggested to Fiona and Alanah two of the girls I partnered with if they wanted to go.  They said yes but we had to wait for the others so we walked from the bus stop to Alanah's flat and we just hung out for a while. Lol I showed them how to figure out their espresso machine and they let me try some of the Nestle chocolates over here that had come in a big tin. We had a good time just sitting and talking...then another of her roommates came home.  She is really nice too is from Switzerland.
So after everyone got home we walked to Braes but couldn't find a table so we went to this place called Tonic.  It was really good I got cajun chicken nachos.  It was the first place I have seen here that calls fries fries haha so that was kinda cool too.  They had a big burger selection but I didn't really feel like a burger.  Some of them sounded pretty awesome though!

I emailed the restaurant manager for a menu and better pictures cause it would be cool to show you guys what it was like for real:)
So other than that things are going well; I made a lot of friends yesterday and they invited me out tonight!  I might even be able to travel with some of them and it was really nice to just get out and get outta my doldrums and homesick mood...ha it's kind of a struggle occasionally and seeing new things and people definitely helps.
After I got back last night me and Ben and Hanah hung out and me and Ben played chess.  That was pretty fun too! He has a really nice board.  I was really mad though because I have been playing my whole life under the misconception that queens can move like knights and last night I found out they can't:(
 Damn. lol. Anyway, love and miss everyone-more to come!