Promotion!

Four months have gone by, and I'm not sure if it feels that long, even longer, or way shorter.  For mole rat volunteers, they ask a minimum of six months, but you can stay longer. I was initially planning on six months, so that I could get some experience and take more time to figure out what I want to do with my life. However, my plans completely changed not long after arriving here.

Here's some big news. At the end of October this year, I will take over as the lab manager for the mole rat lab, and stay as manager for a year. So that means, I'll be here 19 months in total. NINETEEN MONTHS. AH.

I feel like I'm not fully comprehending what that length of time, but at this rate I imagine it will probably go by pretty quick. I'm excited for taking on this new role and make some serious improvements to the lab, and learning more SQL and Pendragon software to advance our data collection. The main reason I agreed to this position was for this oppurunity to learn incredibly useful skills in a real world environment, without having to pay for like I would if I took classes at University.

Also, I get paid (not much), but I also have almost zero living expenses, so I'll be saving money and learning, booyah!

Anyway, recently things have been busy as usual, with the added bonus of new equipment and construction in preparation of tissue collection in the next few months. A new, fancy BioSafety cabinet arrived yesterday and it's sitting and ready to go. In order to get it in the lab, though, two doors had to be removed, so for the next day or two we just don't have an outside door or an office door...which is fine. But, it has been getting below freezing the past couple nights. For those of you that think it's not that cold, keep in mind we don't have heating here. You just layer up best you can. Well, I'm sort of lying. There is heating in the lab for the mole rat colony rooms, but not the main lab room or anything. Or for our bedrooms, or the farmhouse.

But, even with negative temperatures during the night, it still gets up to the 80's/90's (Mid 20's in Celsius). So that means at lunch I go back to my room to exchange thermals and multiple layers for shorts and a t-shirt, and then a few hours later I go back into long clothes and thermals.


Lastly, I'm going on vacation back home to the U.S. for three weeks. I'll be back from September 27th to October 15th. It's three weeks total, minus a few days of traveling. I'm flying back the direct route from Johannesburg to Atlanta, and I have a 26hr layover in Atlanta, so maybe I'll get to see some of my Georgia family :)

Picture Update: I can't currently add pictures (not easily) on my computer. I can with another computer but I haven't made time for it yet, but I will add pictures eventually!