Day 21 & 22

Yesterday was all studying - no fun, I finished the chapter and thereby the unit Ecology - yay! Two more units to go and I'll know everything there is to know about biology *cough*.

Today, not too early morning at 8.00. Woke up at 7.45, could take it easy and was at school at 9.30. Just in time for the morning coffee with bread in the physics department. I had planned a meeting with one of the physics teachers at 10.00 for an interview for the research project. When it was over, I went upstairs to find the one chemistry teacher I wanted to talk to and she directly had time for an interview. This research is going smoothly, I have now spoken to all policy makers in school and all science teachers involved in extra-curricular activities for their courses (contests mainly), 11 interviews in total. As I have a couple of days left I am thinking about extending it to the non-science subjects (languages / economy), I've got a couple of e-mail adresses, let's see if that'll work out (if not, no big deal, as I've probably got enough data so far).
Time for a quick lunch at 11.30 as my lesson started at 11.55. Two practical lessons in a row. What they do here, is cut a class in half and then have the practical lesson first with the one half, then with the other. In this way, the lessons are more personal and safer (there are no assistents).
This lesson was with Cecilia's class, which I'd taught about DNA on Friday. Today, we extracted DNA from a banana (yes.). First I got them to read the instructions, tried to make sure all steps were clear and all terminology was understood, then they got to team up in pairs and start doing the experiments. Of course, the first lesson was kind of trial-and-error, I had never done banana-DNA-extraction myself (or anything-DNA-extraction in this way actually), I had read the instructions of course, and it's not exactly brain surgery, but letting others put written instructions into practice is not something I do every day. Banana, as it turns out, does not exactly flow though a coffee filter when mashed up (yeah, I know right, _who_ would've thought!). And once again, I learned that _every_ step should be clearly stated in advance, reading instructions once does not stick in brains of any age.
By the way, you can easily extract DNA from anything at home: pick something you want to extract DNA from, mash it up - add a pinch of salt - mash it up more, add a soap solution - keep it cold whilst running it through a filter, then add ethanol carefully and lo and behold, flakes of 'DNA' (or simply watch this video, it's slightly different but probably works just as well - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew9-YGrgpWo).
Whilst waiting for the banana solution to drip through the coffee filter, I set up a microscope showing a slide with dividing plant cells (mitosis). Something like in the picture on the side here. You can see plant cells (so orderly and squared), inside them are rounds (nuclei) those nuclei contain the DNA, you can see one dot, two dots, or strings being pulled apart - different stages in cell division.
In the end, I think all students were able to see some clouds in their beakers, they cleaned up, the hour was over, time for the other half of class. Needless to say, this lesson went much more smoothly. I told them to add water to their smashed up banana before putting it through the filter, but still, it was hard to run it through. Again, they got to look at the microscope, and again in the end they ended up with some clouds in their beakers. Wednesday, we will continue talking about DNA/cell division/inheritance.
After class, I went back up to the teacher's room. Lena had returned from Dubai and asked me if all was allright concerning my internship (enough data for my research / enough lessons observed / taught) and it is! Apparently I mentioned one day that Martin and I enjoy cooking together from time to time, because she had remembered this and brought me spices from Dubai! Red chili pepper and a Biryani spice mix - how extremely toughtful and awesome :D.
Later in the afternoon, I joined a bio teachers meeting, they discussed some practicalities in Swedish (some of it kindly translated to English, enough to get the bigger picture) and there were cupcakes. I don't believe it's legal to have get togethers in Sweden without some form of cake.
Tomorrow Lena's class will be dissecting sheep's organs, nice practice to join in :-).