Week 6: ¡Lo Hice!
I usually start my blog with what I did during the week at work, but this cannot wait — I did it. I went to my first salsa class in Texcoco. After weeks of saying I was going to do it, I finally bit the bullet. I was really scared and I was hoping that Joy would convince me to go to Zumba class with her instead, but no such luck. The class was actually a mix of Salsa and Cumbia and we spent the first few minutes warming up with the basic steps before we paired up to learn a short routine. I think people were a little shocked to see me there, and the owner even tried to tell me that Zumba was upstairs, but overall they were really helpful and patient with me, even when I kept messing up las vueltas (the turns). When the class finished I was invited back this Friday, which I am very excited for. I can’t believe all the excuses I made to not go before.
Okay, back to our regularly scheduled work week. On Monday I worked with Berta and my dried maheu sample to determine tocochromanol retention in the drink. Tocochromanols are like provitamin A carotenoids, except they are used in the body to create vitamin E. The human body cannot produce viatamin E by itself, but it is still an essential nutrient in our diet, so that’s why we are interested in finding the concentration of tocochromanols in the maheu. The nice part is that the process is nearly identical to carotenoid analysis, save a few steps. With Berta’s help I prepared the samples for Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography (UPLC), a very precise method of detecting different particles in a sample.
Due to my time crunch there was no slowing down this week, so on Tuesday I began to analyze total sugar content of my samples and many others as well. Since it takes so long to prepare the samples, we were just only able to start weighing all of the samples at 3:00 pm. Miguel told me that whoever finished weighing their rack of samples last would have to buy the winner ice cream. That bet was rigged from the beginning and now I owe Miguel (and somehow consequently Irving?) ice cream. There was no way I could have won against Miguel as it took me almost 2 hours to weigh 20 mg of flour into about 50 test tubes, while he had finished two racks and already moved on. I like to pretend that I’m providing quality work over quantity.
I was also able to view the results from the UPLC. It was interesting to see the different concentrations in the three different samples we tested. We used the proVA maize grain, liquid (diluted) maheu, and dried maheu. I didn’t understand how there could be a greater percentage of tocochromanols in the dried maheu than in the grain, shouldn’t it be nearly the same? As my mentor explained it to me, part of the additional tocochromanols was due to the finger millet that we added to the flour to create the drink and the rest had been released during the cooking process when the molecules were exposed to heat. I also struggled with why we needed to use both the fresh sample of maheu and the dried. Luisa again explained to me that in our fresh sample we used about 1.5L of water, but someone else might use 5L and we wouldn’t be able to compare the tocochromanol concentration between the two because it’s not quite the same. This way, using the dried samples it didn’t matter how much water I added compared to someone else, because all the water had been removed anyways and voilà, our data is comparable.
Wednesday followed with more carotenoid analysis using my fresh maheu sample and the dried maheu as well. Seeing as it’s the third time that I have done this type of analysis with Berta, we sort of have a little routine down and work well together. It takes about two hours to prepare the samples. After all of our hard work carefully creating a solution, the test tubes are placed in an evaporator where they’re exposed to nitrogen gas until all of the liquid has evaporated.
The end of my work week consisted of gathering all of my results and trying my best to do the calculations on my own before I check with one of my supervisors. Math and I have never really gotten along, so sometimes I have to stop and work on something else when my frustration gets the better of me.
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This week was pretty stressful with everything I needed to get done and all the new tasks I was faced with, so it was nice to be able to spend time with my friends relaxing and doing things I really enjoy. Thursday night we ate out (shocker) to celebrate my friend Destiny’s last night in Texcoco. I had some really good tacos and café de olla, traditional Mexican coffee that I really like because it is not as bitter as café americano.
On Friday I almost considered not going to my dance class because my taxi never showed up and I would have to wait for the bus if I wanted to get to Texcoco. Even though I was 20 minutes late, I’m really glad that I went because it’s like pressing the restart button after a bad day. I felt like I was able to learn the routine a little easier than when I went on Monday. Both my teacher and I were really excited when I did the entire routine without messing up. I hope to go to one more class before I have to leave Texcoco! What a terrible sentence.
I was able to relax this weekend as well, a nice change from my past really busy weekend adventures. On Saturday I was planning on going to another salsa class (because I’m addicted), but on my way into Texcoco, my mentor Aldo asked me if I wanted to visit the house of our coworkers, Irving and Aide. They were celebrating completeing el techo (the roof) on their renovation project and it’s customary to invite your family and friends over for food. I had to go because I wanted to meet their two daughters, which I have heard so much about from Aldo. We all watched Toy Story 3 together, but I think Irving liked it more than his daughters.
Later this weekend Aldo and I went to get breakfast and I had three big pancakes! Everyone calls me a baby because I have such a big sweet tooth, but I have missed eating my sweet food in the mornings. Afterwards we decided to join a tour bus and were pretty lucky because we had the bus all to ourselves. The bus took us back to Molino de Flores, where we met a profesor who gave us a very detailed history of the site. Unfortunately I started to feel a little queasy and it took too much energy to stand and try and translate Spanish at the same time, so the second half of the tour was lost on me.
Next week is my last week and guess what…I don’t want to leave. I have two more work days in the lab and the other two days Joy and I are joining a small group of students from the University of Wisconsin before I leave very early Friday morning. When I post my next blog post I’ll be back in the US. Yikes.
