Week 3 in Brazil (Jonathon's Update)

Week 3 in Brazil:

This week was the first week of a two-week intensive RNA-seq course I am teaching. In addition to the Fulbright, the course is funded by the Society for Developmental Biology. They paid for some of my Portuguese-speaking students to translate all of my class materials, including slides, assignments, and an entire interactive R coding tutorial, last semester. They also paid for my Brazilian graduate student Jouber Calixto to fly down for a few weeks to help, and I am so glad they did. We have about 30 students, almost twice the size of my regular class, and I am teaching it in Portuguese. Jouber has been a great help explaining how to express certain ideas, working with students, and correcting translations. I could not have done it without him. 

I have been very impressed with how the students are doing. Despite my somewhat limited Portuguese, they are grasping the key ideas and working hard to master the material. This week, we focused on designing RNA-seq experiments, how to choose which technology to use, and how to prepare your samples. We also spent time learning how to program in R. At the end of the week, we did a review where students were given a biological question and worked in groups to plan an RNA-seq experiment to answer the question. We also had them read the first RNA-seq publication. When they came to class, we divided them into groups and had each group present a data figure. Reading a scientific paper is hard, and that is without accounting for the language barrier that all of these students have to deal with. I was very impressed by their work and ability to understand the data. 

Friday night, Jouber and I celebrated by going to get pasteis and sugar cane juice, which surprisingly does not taste just like sugar. We also went to a soccer game on Saturday. Bahia was playing Goias. It was great to see the stadium and all of the rabid fans. I also loved how their chants are songs, and they have drums going the whole time. It was a fun time, even if the game ended in a 1-1 tie.