Week 5 in Ghent: Learning!

Hi there! This week was a typical school week so instead of going through what I did every day, I will tell you the top 10 things I learned this week!

1. Pillsbury must put some magical chemicals in their croissant dough in Canada, and such a chemical must be banned here because the dough is much harder to separate here... My croissants were mangled and I feel as though I've personally disgraced the Pillsbury Dough Boy himself.

2. On the note of food differences, milkshakes here kind of suck... They are very liquidy, almost the consistency of water:( The ice cream itself was super good, but when blended with WAY too much milk, it definitely brought the experience down.

3. I really like genetics, especially when it involves simple math to calculate recombination rates, gene linkage maps, etc.

4. My statistics professors at Dalhousie lied to me saying that it is an industrial standard for everyone to know how to use the software R and RStudio. Here I am ONE of FOUR students in my class of FIVE HUNDRED that knows how to use R. We had a 4.5-hour long practical lab talking about how to type in R. It was very slow so I will not be having a very high attendance rate in that class. It was painful.

4. a) I also learned that there's a very pretty cafe very close to the statistics lab... A great place to go when skipping the statistics lab!

5. Speaking of class hours, this week I did some math and figured out that in my last 3 semesters at Dal, I was doing 12 course hours/week. Here I am doing 8 hours/day. I call that growth.

6. In my many hours of class time this week, I've learned:

1. How to use bacteriophages to treat bacterial infections in fish

2. How to do bacteriophage plaque assays

3. Macrophages are really cool cells in the immune systems of fish

4. How to wean fish off of live feed

5. The order go enzymes that develop in the digestive system of fish larvae

6. And maybe coolest of all: carp don't have stomachs and use a very long intestine instead to digest food!

7. Pizza Roma in Ghent has "The very best, the most tasty, 100% fresh" pizza in Gent! It was actually really good, especially during a virtual pizza party with James :)

7.a) Virtual escape rooms are also very fun during a virtual pizza party with James :)

7.b) Pizza Roma also randomly gives you free garlic bread!!

8. I really like running along the canal, however, my knees do not like running on concrete... the bit of dirt/grass on the side is much better!

9. The Sunday flower market is still amazing!

10. Gent University has a super cool museum and botanical garden! And it's free for students!