We have been on two field trips with SDM.
On October 15th Albert invited us to go to visit the Alcon factory to see how big industry works. We got to see all of the equipment used to bottle label and mix different types of eye drops. There was one machine that had an arm that moved incredibly fast. It picked up tubes and placed them on a belt to be packaged. It was incredibly accurate at finding the tubes on the conveyor belt. I asked how it worked and I was told that invisible light was being shown from below the conveyor belt and the arm dectected where the light was being blocked and picked up the tube. At the end of the tour (which was entirely in spanish) we got to see the pharmacy museum at Alcon. In one room there were pharmacy books from all over the world. Some were very old. In another room they had an antique pharmacy. There were many drawers that contained different herbs that were used. They had old jars and morters and pestles. One of the most interesting things about the antique pharmacy was the paintings that were on all of the cabnets. Each painting contained a depiction of what was contained within the cabinet. Most of the paintings had animals which represented some sort of ailment or body part. For example, an elephant in the picture meant that the herbs in the cabinet could be used for memory. Neither Renée nor I had been in an industrial factory so the experience was great! We learned a lot about how the factory worked and how many people it takes to run one. We did not bring our camaras to Alcon because we were not sure if we would be able to use them.
The other field trip Renée and I took was to expoquimia on October 24th.
It is a conference where companies bring their equipment and industries come to look and possibly buy new equipment. There were many different machines and products as well as companies there. There was equipment used for granulation, distillation, mixing, drying, coating, assembly, grinding, etc. There were eight areas total and the conference ran for four days.
This picture is of myself (Teegan), Elisabet, Albert, Natalia and Renée at the entrance to the Expoquimia.
There was a lot of equipment that I had never seen before such as this mixing machine:
We also saw a lot of equpiment that we used in SDM.
This is a sieve or Tamiz. We use sieves to preform particle size evaluations for SeDeMs. This one is a lot bigger than the ones we use in the lab.
A lot of the equpiment at the conference was for big industry, like this granulation machine.
We saw a lot of equipment that we would never have been exposed to if we had not gone to the expoquimia. We had a lot of fun watching all of the equiment in motion.
We went out to eat with one of the people from the lab and his friends. It was quite funny because it was an impromptu ´´bring your foreign exchange student night.´´ His friends brought two guys from Italy, one girl was from France, and another girl from Mexico. We ate inside a theater building and the atmosphere was great! However, the waiter forgot about us and our food did not come until 12am! 
But the wait was worth it because it was our first authentic meal in Barcelona because we had mostly been to tourist reastaurants prior to this. His friends were very friendly and we went to a bar afterward for a drink. The language barrier can be tough because they speak so fast and even if we somewhat understand the conversation, it is that much harder to understand jokes in a different language! I can barely understand jokes in English! So everyone was nice enough to translate the jokes for us so that we could join in on the laughter. Teegan and I had a great time with them and we hope to go to a concert with them later in the month. The place is called Razzmatazz and it is a concert venue that everyone raves about.
The walk down the Sagrada Familia was tight (literally). The narrow spiral staircase weaving in and out was very unique. I would highly recommend going up into the church and also sit in the park across the street to admire the building´s beauty.
