Usually I get into lab an hour before Momita, which gives me an hour to go on the precious beautiful Internet. I get the shakes from not having it. It is what I miss most (besides friends and family of course! :-p). Momita came into lab early yesterday giving me only 10 minutes with it. It made me very anxious all day. I brought my GRE book and vocab cards into work to do while waiting in between experiments. Everyone was FASCINATED with my vocab cards and made me read them aloud to everyone in the lab to see if they could get them right. After lunch yesterday a large group of us went around the corner for some tea. We sat underneath some propped up fabric and this man brewed some tea over a large stove in large kettle. It was so hot outside and the tea was piping and delicious. It was chai served in these little plastic cups. Really the best tea I've ever had. The men in our group leaned their heads against each other and held hands as they talked and drank chai. The experiment we did yesterday took from 9am until 8pm. Besides doing 2 enzyme assays on my own, I helped Momita, clone, amplify, and transfect a DNA from cholera onto a protent. The new apartment is very nice. Except. One of the rooms is huge an beautiful and full of light and windows. The other is the size of a closet with no windows but a door to a balcony (which is kind of cool). The doorknobs are all broken and have cut up my hands. But I have a first aid kit to treat an army, so I'm fine. There are random things left inside the apartment I can only assume the workers are going to be taken out again. A huge beautiful sitar (i think?) is in our living room all wrapped up in bubble wrap and a little prayer altar in one of the rooms. About pictures. Every frame of Kolkata could be a picture in a National Geographic magazine. The entire country is unique and devastated. Remember Slumdog Millionaire? I would not be exaggerating if I said 85% of Kolkata looks like the slums. So as far as beautiful photos, its almost too easy and overwhelming to take. And then at the same time, I don't think I'll ever have the courage to take pictures on the street because a) I would be afraid of it being stolen b) I feel it would be extremely disrespectful. So I'll have to think of some way to take some pictures. Maybe in my next taxi ride.