Emporio la Rosa

Today was really quite wonderful! Yesterday was full of not a whole lot besides looking up maps of chile, reading a few articles about my research project, and checking a whole lot of mail. Oh! and at lunch I tried tuna! No no, the spanish word for tuna is atun, with an accent on the u. Tuna is a fruit, like the prickly pear, that is DELICIOUS. You can't touch the outside, and you slice is 4 times longways and then sort of peel the skin off. Anyway, it's very fruit, and has tons of little seeds inside. It's sooooo good. So then after work yesterday I walked to the supermarket in the rain. It was really gross. But I tried this weird pudding thing. It's like pudding, but it's almost like thicker, so that it's not smooth like pudding, and it's in a syrupy liquid, so it's a little much for me, but it's still very good.
So, on to my glorious day today. One big difference between Santiago and New York. Both Santiago and New York have a bit of rain, but in New York, the rain seems completely unnecessary. In Santiago, the rain leads to a beautiful sunny day that is clear and beautiful, and displays the mountains quite prominently, which I see each day on my way to work while crossing the bridge.
Today I got to do real work. I did an RNA extraction, and ran a gel to test the RNA's strength, so to speak. I won't bore anyone with details, but basically we want to understand the mechanism by which changes in nitrogen levels in soil affect the genes within plants. My partner and I are working with a specific gene. Jose Miguel is the guy I work with, and he's wonderful. We have a very similar sense of humor, and we get along great. It makes the day go very fast. Anyway, I've done RNA extraction before, but never with plants, so it was quite different. We were actually quite pleased with the results, so yay for a successful day!
Since it was raining so hard yesterday, I didn't get ice cream, but today was beautiful! Emporio la Rosa is on my way home from work, so I stopped in. I ended up right behind two American girls, so I tried to make friends and asked them how to order in spanish. They were very nice, they're from California and here for school, but they made no effort to make a connection with me or even ask me to sit with them. So, after that slight disappointment, cause I'd love to be able to have english speaking friends to go to clubs with, I got my two scoops of ice cream, one pistacchio and one castanas, or chestnust. DELICIOUS. Oh my goodness, all the hype about this place is true. And it wasn't ridiculously crowded. So, I walked home quite happy, and when I got home, the lights when out! Everyone came out into the hall, and I actually understood some stuff!
Anyway, then one of the ladies in the house, the one with the baby showed me how to have a hot shower. I have to actually use a lighter to light a heater, to heat the water. I'm gonna come home without a hand for sure. But, now I am warm, clean, and well fed. All in all, a pretty wonderful day. More tomorrow on interesting tidbits about Chile, like how everyone loves Seinfeld as much as I do. Chao!