Birthdays and Shri Swami Narayanan Temple - May 19th

                  Today was Ushma's 26th birthday so we got to celebrate with cake. The entire morning was spent completing the rest of the steps for the beta thalassemia samples. Some of the buffers can be prepared in advance but one has to be prepared fresh the day of. The entire procedure is tedious and very time consuming because you have to immerse solutions in water baths for x number of minutes during which you really can't do anything significant. 

Ushma on Tanvi's lap

                   Everyone worked on the procedure until 3 which when we ate our lunch. The girls have been ordering lunch for me from different places everyday so that I can experience all the different types of food. It's been a lot of fun eating lunch with the girls because they all share their food and it's basically one huge picnic every day. I've gotten the chance to try a lot of different types of food that is unique to Gujarat. There was a lot of extra food today so by the end of lunch everyone was stuffed and we still had the birthday cake Ushma's husband had brought her in the morning.
               After lunch it was finally time to finish with the beta thalassemia samples.

 

The ten membranes on the left and analyzing the variants on the left

The rest of the afternoon was spent setting up yet another procedure (this one testing Sickle Cell samples) that will be completed and analyzed tomorrow. Everything was finished up around 5:15 so we decided to celebrate and have Ushma cut her birthday cake. 

 

Ushma's birthday cake

              After work Riddhima took me to the Shri Swami Narayanan temple which was along Tithal beach where we went on Sunday. It was gorgeous outside and there were a ton of people at the beach again. The architecture of the temple is gorgeous and it was a really nice place to visit. 

 

The temple was so pretty

The view of the beach from the temple

I'm easily amused

After visiting the temple we went back to the first part of the beach to people watch and enjoy the weather. Got to see the camels again and I couldn't resist taking pictures especially since the sun was beginning to set and the backdrop was gorgeous. 

 

 So pretty. I want to go on another camel ride lol