In the beginning.....

Spain! wohoo!! Me gusta Espana!!! The first Spanish sentence I learnt.. apart from ''me casa es su casa'' which is one of the random Spanish sentences everyone knows. (I assume) So after a few days of cross country road trips to collect my passport,(Thank you Avik and Tao. You guys are more than amazing and I am more than grateful to have you as friends) I finally made it to Barcelona (pit stop in Amsterdam) Reasons for peanut butter title... keep reading

I arrived and went straight to the lab.. no time wasting.. I want to get as much out of this experience as I can :) The people n the lab are great! They were all so excited to meet me and they are all practising their english.. which they think is pretty cool. Most are phD students and a few post doc students. Very advanced stuff. They are working on transporters in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers and Parkinsons. Mind blowing stuff!!! On Friday I got to watch one of the post doc's working on breast cancer cells...... the biology nerd in me is screaming AAAWWEESOME!!!!! Day three and already I have learnt so much. Of course coffee was a must because I could hardly stay awake :) I know I'm not meant to be drinking coffee.. but in the interests of making a good impression and not falling asleep midway through an experiment.. it had to be done.

I have devised ways of overcoming the language barrier. Finding new ways of communication can be hard but it can be done. Pointing and babel fish have become the most useful resources. This made me think though... language isn't such a big deal. Communication is not solely in language....(though it is a big part of it) the barrier can be overcome although it gets rather tiring! Consequently as soon as I leave the lab I don't talk much. lol.. this may be a blessing in disguise :) In the past three days.. my standard of English has also declined. I say this because in order to communicate in English (when it is absolutely necessary) I condense sentences.. and am forced to think of the simplest word structures possible. My flatmates speak English too. All except one.. who is trying really hard.. and we're working on it.

So the title of this blog refers to peanut butter and youre probably wondering.. how that ties in with this blog. If you weren't wondering.. start wondering :) Ok so the strangest thing... a very enlightening fact actually is that peanut butter is one of the hardest things to find in Spain. YEP peanut butter!! I spent ten minutes looking for peanut butter in a supermarket and could not find it. I searched all the aisles... including the juice aisles and the detergent aisles just to make sure I wasnt missing some cultural anomaly. I asked my flatmate if she knew where I could find it. PROBLEM: she had no idea what I was talking about! Another ten minutes later after trying to describe this wondrous thing called peanut butter, we had gone from ''Is it toast?'' to her showing me condensed milk! So I gave up.. and decided maybe life without peanut butter wouldnt be so bad.. after all, I am in Spain there are tonnes more ''butters'' to be tried. Culture 101: the spanish don't use peanut butter in any of their dishes and so its not a necessity. People go to the united kingdom apparently and bring the peanut butter back with them! lol! And on my first day.. that blew me away! Here I was thinking I'm in Spain.... duh they'll have peanut butter :) Oops!

So that got me thinking..... Differences in societies and cultures can be in things as simple as peanut butter! What else is below the surface?? What other cultural differences go unnoticed? Aaaa!!! I love this sort of thing! Learning!! Can't wait to see what's next! Bring it on.

For all the football (soccer) fans out there: Camp Nou is about 500m from the lab! :) Yes it was the first site i visited. I have seen a few more.. (pictures to come soon) and managed to get lost!! yaayyy!! (which was one of my missions)

So more to come.. Hope you'll keep reading.. .. and check regularly. I like to write..., when im not lazy, though I often go on tangents and waffle a lot. You have been warned.