Last two weeks!

So as it turns out I did not totally finish my abstract and poster that same week but I did get a lot done. It is really nice because my grad student let me work on my abstract and poster a lot in lab instead of running a bunch of other experiments. Now that we are in the final stretch and we are finally getting close to going home I am starting to realize how much I am going to miss it here in China. I am soo excited to go home but here it feels like I have made a whole new family with my lab and the other students in the program. For the last two and a half months we have spent so much time with each other and have gotten to know each other so well it is going to be sad when we all have to leave. As sad as it is I can still say this has been one of the best experiences of my life!

Besides counting down the days until I go home this past week has been great. This weekend we all pretty much spent working on our abstracts and posters and buying gifts to take back home. We spent so long in China that we all did not even think about buying gifts to take back home because we thought it was going to be so long before we finally went back home, now we are all scrambling around trying to buy gifts in these last two weekends we have in China. The weekend was still really fun, we did almost all of our shopping at the Pearl Market which is jam-packed all the time with foreigners. We were all so tired and hungry by the end of the day because we spent so much time at the Pearl Market. It is not like regular shopping at all. You can spend 15 minutes trying to buy something; bargaining is great. I remember when we first came to the Pearl Market during the first week we were here, we all were totally imitated trying to bargain and buy things. Now we have been here for so long that we were totally fine bargaining and arguing with them. It does, however, ware you out and all you want to do is pull your hair out of your head by the end of the day. We spent both Saturday and Sunday at the Pearl Market so we were pretty much worn out in the evenings. It was still a great weekend, I am happy I am finally done shopping for people in my family and I finally have all my gifts done and bought. These next two weeks are going to go by really fast, now I have to take in every aspect of China I can because pretty soon I will be back in the states!