Fun at the Argonne National Laboratory?

Greetings from Chicago (sort of)! Matt, DJ and I (Audrey) are at the Argonne National Laboratory using the synchrotron for our Cambodia sediments and the MSMA turfgrass project. If you aren't well versed in the synchrotron, you can find information here. Don't worry, we're still learning more about it ourselves (well, except for Matt). Here is an aerial view of the whole system:

*photo courtesy of the APS*

As you can see, it is quite the setup. Here are some additional pictures from our trip so far:

Work Station-yes, we use around 8 monitors

 This is actually where we put the sample in. We don't get to see this room very often and it closes with authority. The beam goes through the metal that transects the room. There are also cameras, mirrors, and other really scientific stuff that happens in here that perhaps Matt can explain more.

Here is DJ loading a sample into a magnetic tray that will move the sample around (the beam doesn't move)

Loaded sample with a camera and detector shooting on it. Just look at those coarse sediments!

This place is so big that we need tricycles to get around. Yes, I'm serious. Here we are going to get lunch at the cafe down the path.

Anyway, this is just a quick post to show you what we've been doing. Matt, Liz and I will be attending the SSSA conference from Nov. 3-7 so I think you'll get another blog post soon. 

*Audrey*

Mama Audrey and the Go Girl

Liz Gillispie reporting here for the Polizzotto lab group!

With the patriarch of our lab no longer overseeing the work here in Cambodia, Audrey has been left in control and me as her humble grad servant, I mean student. Despite multiple pieces of equipment getting broken, excessive amounts of water being poured on the floors of the RDI lab, overuse of paper towels, and catching random lab workers clipping their finger nails with our nail clipper from the surface water kit, I'd say Audrey and I have things all under control.

Since all the well sampling and surface sampling has been completed, Audrey and I set out today to collect well water and rain water samples from various homes in the village on a main street that runs parallel to the Mekong.  It was the same road where we collected much of our well samples from before.  As Audrey and I collected the water, Dina, a local Khmi RDI member, talked with someone from each site to see how they used their water, how many people used it, whether they filtered/boiled it, and if anyone ever had stomach issues.  All went smoothly and now Audrey is hard at work preparing to test each sample for fecal bacteria (I'd give the specific names but I can't spell them let alone pronounce them!).

Our lab was able to find some entertainment throughout the sampling process, however, such as watching Audrey attempt to get out of the mud, performing titrations for large gatherings of interested locals, working around the ambitious children who were bold enough to not stop touching our equipment, playing with tree leaves, and from a competition of long jump made my our driver Pon.  We were exhausted by the end of the day and found ourselves completely ready for bed by 7:30 or 8:00 each night.

As our trip comes to end, I think we can all agree that we will truly miss the closeness of the families here and their generosity of welcoming us into their homes.  There was not a day where we weren't greeted with a big smile from Da's Aunt at the local coffee shop or waved at by little children to and from RDI (Da is another Khmi member of RDI).  Audrey and I were also blessed to have the chance to eat dinner with Da's family one night, which turned out to be a huge gathering (a typical evening dinner for them apparently).  I was able to sit next to Da's grandfather, Grandpa Da, which was completely the highlight of my trip.  That man is awesome.  But I digress.  The point is, family is important all around the world and you don't have to be related to be a part of one.  So thanks to all the wonderful people that made us feel at home during our stay here at RDI!

Cambodia: Thick Thighs, Big Feet, Swollen Lips, and a (smelly) Rabbit

Hello from Cambodia, I hope all is well. Our first (almost) week is already over, so time is flying by. As soon as we landed, we found out that the old king passed away. Apparently he had been ill for some time, so this was not a huge surprise (and he was 90!). His son has been in power for a few years, so this was not the current king.

Since the king passed away, all of Cambodia went into mourning. This meant that the lab was closed on our first sampling day which put us a day behind. The past few days have been really hectic trying to catch up on lost time, but after some long days in the field and nights in the lab, we are now mostly done with all of the well sampling. Next week we will be surface water sampling and collecting water for fecal indicator bacteria.

The 'wet' season is not so wet this year and river and wetland water levels are much lower than last year.  Luckily the government has declared that the wet season will extend until December this year.  Thanks.

A few other things happened while away:

-Liz and Audrey's room was a nesting ground for a large spider and cockroach. Matt had to keep coming in to shoo them away, but they kept coming back. In the end, Audrey's dirty socks got placed in some of the holes in the ceiling to capture these creatures, but unfortunately they got out. Audrey's socks are still in the ceiling holes.
-Liz got a high five from a kid after Audrey got groped by one.
-Audrey accidentally ordered Milo (iced chocolate milk) instead of coffee one morning...an international incident almost occurred as Matt suffered through caffeine withdrawal
-There's not much space in the van due to all the thick thighs, big feet, swollen lips, and a (smelly) rabbit

(you know Audrey had to post her favorite animals of Cambodia. Shown here is a little dog named Pupsy)

Last Work Day

Can you believe tomorrow's the final work day? We have a few other things to do on Tuesday, but we fly out on Wednesday night. We are definitely not looking forward to the long flights back!

Sarah and I have had a little time off on Saturday and Sunday to sightsee a bit. Some friends of ours opened a restaurant in December and we had dinner there last night (boy was it a feast!).

Random pictures ahead....

 Monks walking at the National Museum in Phnom Penh

 Fish Amok, the national dish, from FCC

 One of the many rain barrels we collected water from for water testing

 Most of these water sources tested positive for fecal contamination (as seen from the yellow color)

 Sarah and Dina are sampling from the wetlands

 Our mobile lab (a.k.a Pon's van) testing in a rice field....don't try this at home

 A Buddist temple located in the Buddist Meditation Center

 Sarah with the Cambodian flag. Isn't it beautiful?

We went and got our nails and toes done at the local beauty salon. It was only $2!

One Week to Go

Hi everyone, I hope all is well in your neck of the woods. I'm just giving a little report about how things are going so far. I can't believe we only have 1 week to go! Since it is near the end of the dry season, we experienced a few shallow wells that were dry. These wells were ones that are for science only, not for drinking, so this did not have any effect on the Cambodian people. It has been surprisingly wet here so far, but we did have 2 days that have been completely dry.

Tomorrow we will start sampling surface waters which will take a couple days and take us from the Bassac to the great Mekong River.

That's about it here in Cambodia. I hope to have a post up soon about our half day off in Phnom Penh on Sunday.

The (Mis)Adventures in Cambodia

Hi everyone! Sorry for the lack of posts, but we've been busy here in Cambodia. Things got off to a rocky start when the airline lost one of our coolers, but fortunately it arrived yesterday. Oh, I should mention that Sarah Seehaver from the Grossman lab is helping me here in Cambodia. She has a ton of field work under her belt, so we thought she would make a great addition to the trip (and boy has she!).

We expected it to be toward the end of the dry season here, but it seems that the wet season has started early. It's rained every day except for one, but luckily we got to the field early that day so we got a lot done. Last night it poured heavily most of the evening, but it is mostly dry now because of the hot weather. We also went to a very nice restaurant called Laprevu which had a great atmosphere and even a pool! We met a friend from RDI at the restaurant, and he beat us home on a bike while we took a tuk-tuk ride. How pathetic when a bike can beat a moto.

Yesterday was also spent starting nutrient bioassays looking at potential eutrophication of surface waters from increasing concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus. Let's just say it took much longer than anticipated, and it was a pretty stressful day. Here are a few random pictures I have to show you guys:

 Even Cambodia has Red Bull

 Dina is working hard well sampling

 Well sampling

 Using the Hanna to test rice paddy water

 Yup, they still plow with cow

 My favorite Cambodian dog had puppies again!

This crab was trying to pinch us while well sampling

Fanciful Flying

Though neither of us slept well, waking up at 3:00 am for a 6:00 am flight out of RDU posed little challenge for Matt or I as both of us were pumped to get underway. After several months of work, we felt we had a trip with strong goals and a solid plan to address these goals. When the taxi arrived we loaded 200+ pounds of equipment along with 60+ pounds of personal gear into the SUV,  allowing only a small crevice for me to slither into. Our plans called for us to fly a regional American Airlines carrier called American Eagle to JFK before switching to Emirates Airlines for a leg to Dubai and then on to Dhaka, Bangladesh. 

Arriving at the terminal, I filched one of the huge aluminum alloy baggage carts from a snoozing airline employee, and proceeded to wheel our gear into the line for baggage check. Despite entering the terminal 15 min before baggage check opened, at 4:00 am, a lengthy line was already forming. Other international travelers also had carts piled high with baggage, but due to the diligence and competence of the American Airlines representative, we were quickly through and on to security. After a cursory glance at my passport by a half-asleep security guard and a trip through the x-ray body scan, we were headed toward our gate. At 5:30 we were loaded aboard the regional jump jet; this was a very small plane with two rows of seats on one side of the isle and one row on the other side. The only positive attribute of the plane was the young, cute, and inexperienced flight stewardess. I suspect she had already been awake for a considerable period of time, as she frequently confused Raleigh with Chicago during the flight. The flight departed on time and everything was hunky dory for ~1 hour, when the first signs of trouble surfaced. 

I was happily napping when awakened by an announcement from this stewardess that we were no longer headed toward JFK and were instead headed to Boston. After some initial confusion we learned that fog was preventing us from heading to JFK and we were being diverted to Boston because, I suspect, our flight was a low priority, with plans to refuel and wait out the fog, then return to JFK. We were informed that a travel agent would come aboard in Boston to provide updates to everyone on the status of connecting flights. Later we would come to question the motives behind such cheery pronouncements of customer service and good will. 

Coming in to Boston, our pilot took us on a long, low, sweeping path which gave us a great view of the harbor, the town, and the light houses on small rocky islands out in the harbor. Therefore it came as a shock when, upon landing in Boston, we learned that American Eagle no longer ran services in Boston and, as such, we did not have a travel agent looking after us or even a terminal to dock in. After a while they decided to take us to an old terminal section no longer in use only to discover that the loading ramp no longer worked. After ~45 minutes of repair work, they managed to connect the ramp and the jet only to announce that we were to stay on the plane for another 45 min while they waited on the fog status from JFK. Finally after ~1hr and 50 minutes on the tarmac in Boston, someone decided to act and transfer us to a larger, higher priority plane heading to JFK.  At this point, fast action could get us to JFK in time for our 10:40 departure to Dubai.

           

We exited our plane and had to wait for carry-ons side checked into the regional plane resulting in the loss of valuable pole position on the way to just the two travel agents trying to deal with the Crisis.  After a time American Airlines realized that two travel agents cannot deal with connections for 75 people so they doubled the number of people they had dealing with the situation. Finally we got to an agent to try to help us, after only a few minutes of trying to solve our difficult situation, his boss comes up and in a haughty accent exclaims “PRESHAH!, PRESHAH!, PRESHAH!, HARRRY, HARRRY!, HARRRY!!!!”. She then proceeded to totally shut down the agent trying to help us and railroaded us onto the flight to JFK. Despite throwing down on the throttle, we landed in JFK as the flight we were supposed to be on took off. 

             

I can't help but believe that if the agent had finished dealing with us, we would have been on a flight to London and the Dubai, only losing a few hours instead of ~ 1 day. In addition, if American Airlines had four flight agents helping people and moved faster to get us off that plane and into the larger one, we would have made it to JFK on time for our Emirates flight. So now we wait, either to board a flight for Dubai tonight at 11 if we are lucky, or if we are not lucky to board a flight tomorrow morning.