Hi! So I am now in downtown Chicago staying with my cousin, Luke, after flying in late on Thursday. Its pretty hot compared to San Francisco and it feels very summery and chilled here! On friday, I spent the day finding out what Luke does in the lab (he is a PhD student at Northwestern Uni) and he put together an experiment which involved disecting a live mouse's brain and hooking it up to a microscope with a laser. I have decided not to go into the details... but it was very impressive technology and I was able to learn a lot about Parkinson's disease and the brain.

In the evening, we drove to a cupcake cafe called Molly's cupcakes!!! and had Pad Thai and peanut butter nutella cupcakes :) I strongly recommend this to anyone. Then today (Saturday), after a leisurly start, I was taken to some of the city sights around downtown chicago including the bean(pictured above), gardens and some fun water features. The rest of the week should involve some relaxing on a beach, going to a highly recommended show (apparently like the blue man group) and some more visits to Luke's work.

Last week in San Francisco was a fantastic experience and I managed to do all the things I had listed in my last blog as well as watching toy story 3 at the IMAX, shopping in Union Square, finding old photos of the family and visiting different biotech labs in and around Berkeley and Oakland. I was treated to lots of delicious food, including the last evening when we went to a restarant named Heaven's Dog and then went to see a contemporary dance show performed in the Mint! It was a fantastic show which involved being taken into different rooms and the dances from each room connected to other rooms!! It was very clever.

Thats all for now... Hope you are all enjoying the hot weather back in the UK!

molly x