day 3

first day at the university,

so today i met Andrea at the musuem across the street from my residence. we did the introduction thing, and headed over to alla fermata del bus (bus stop), and caught the 44 bus to the Piazza Raffaele De Ferrari. yes there is an entire square named after the car, hehe. and then i changed over my $$ to euros at the national bank.





then we took the 18 bus over to the university and stopped by the lab, where i was introduced to the equipment, and Dr. Marco Bove, my preceptor for the summer. he is a pretty cool dude, especially since he rocks docksiders and a cardigan. def has style. :)

i ate a rushed lunch after writing some e-mails, and headed over to the Ospedale (hospital) to watch some patients get injected with botulinum toxin, also known as Botox. But before you start jumping to conclusions, let me explain how it is used. in this repect the botox wasnt used to alleviate the slow death of age precenting itself as wrinkles on the forehead of some ancient mummy.

the botox here was used to help alleviate the symptoms of those suffering from muscular dystrophy. these people often have involuntary ticks, or muscle spasms, or chorea (abnormal involuntary dance-like moves). so here the toxin prevents the muscles from contracting and therefore, allows these people to live a little more normal life. interesting huh...


then i met Laura A, and Laura B, and saw the magnetic resonance laboratory, where hopefully i will be doing some experiements. a very long day indeed.




then after work i went to via XX settembre or the 20th of september, that is a street that is like the pseudo-jamaica ave of italy, except

much more upscale.

Italian word of the day that means something totally different in English:
piano = level/floor