Chemistry

Note 1: When I was going home with a taxi, I saw a stoplight with the red and green lit up at the same time.
Note 2: The other day I was with the Morochos, and we were driving around Pasaje. When we were crusing, I did see a stoplight with all three - red, yellow, and green - lights lit. My stoplight bingo is now complete!

One day back in Santa María, it was time for chemistry class. We were supposed to bring petri dishes, goggles, and aprons for a lab, but none of the exchange students brought them because 1)we didn't really understand that we were supposed to bring them and 2)we didn't have these things on hand: neither in our houses nor in the class. We all headed up to the lab, and I was thinking that the teacher would make us wait outside because we didn't have the safety equipment. He let us come in and stuck us in groups. We were mixing a dry chemical with water and mixing it - I really have no idea what it was testing.

I then watched as the chaos began. There were kids pouring the chemical on the balance, spilling on the table and floor, without any gloves - I don't think it was dangerous at all, though. To get distilled water from the beaker, you were supposed to stick in the pipette, tilt the beaker, and try to get the most water you could. I looked over once and saw a student having trouble with this, so he finally just sucked on the end of the pipette to get more water! With his mouth! I was thinking that my high school science teachers would have had a heart attack if they would have seen this. But wait, it gets better. They had to heat up the water and get it to boil. To do this, they had little jars with fuel inside and with a rope sticking out the top. They lit these and had this crazy open flame. They had wooden clothespins to hold the test tubes over the flame. One girl just held it with her FINGERS and was swirling it in the fire - not even looking the whole time!

The teacher found an extra petri dish, so he gave it to Lara, an exchange student from Germany, and me to use - without any aprons or goggles. There was no real measurment for the amount of water. We just mixed it up, showed him our solution, and he just told us that we needed more water. Students were even sniffing the solution (not wafting). This whole experience was quite funny and amusing. I was laughing the whole way through this "experiment."