More from Oxford...

I really can't believe I've already been here about a month and a half. Time is going by way too quickly here. I love everything about the UK...especially the fact that everyone tells me that they love my accent!
Lab is still going amazingly well. My post-docs really are way too nice to me. On Thursday Natalia had discovered that I had coded all of her babies incorrectly, because I had been taught how to code for Nivi and no one had told me there was a difference. So I had to immediately recode about 40 babies, which I didn't really mind doing that much. It did take me about a day and a half to complete, but both of them felt so bad for me that one brought me a huge double chocolate cupcake and the other bought me some body wash and lotion. I don't think I could ever picture any of my superiors doing that for me in the States.
One thing I am learning to appreciate more is American boys. Now, I love the British accent as well as Italian, etc and I had always assumed that European boys would be very gentlemenly and proper. Not so much. The boys pretty much assume that if you talk to them, you will go home with them. They also assume that they can simply kiss you without really even knowing your name. At least boys in America tend to buy you a drink first. I know I can't really generalise as such, but I have experienced this lack of respect more here than in the States.
My coxing lessons are still going quite well. I love that I can yell at my PI and Nivi =) The only issue is that I really have to wake up quite early - around 6am to be at the river around 7am. Everyone has a cycle here, expect me, so I have to walk 45 minutes. Which brings me to another issue - cycles. They are so widespread here - everyone assumes that you have one. It's so funny to see rows and rows of cycles lined up against fences.
Another thing I find interesting here is everyone's relationship status at lab. Only two of of nine of them have a significant other who lives in the UK. One's husband lives in Montenegro and he is here now for 2.5 months and that is longest time they have spent together! One's boyfriend in in Germany, another's is in Glasgow, and one's girlfriend is in Switzerland. Even my PI's wife lives in Africa! I'm not too sure if this is because they are all from all over the world themselves and the name of Oxford pulls them in so they just continue to date long-distance, or if this is more common in grad school in general. But basically, most weekends they either travel to visit their partner or their partner comes here. This weekend, 3 of the partners traveled to Oxford, and one of the lab people went to Glasgow. They all spend a lot of quid (slang for pounds) per year traveling.
This weekend is fun for me since one of my friends from Emory is staying with me. She is on the Psych study aborad program which is in London now, so I have my first visitor this weekend and one more next weekend.
Thanks IRES!
Cheers!

so more news and observations.....

So I've been in Paris for one month now, and my project is slowly moving along. I'm supposed to give an oral presentation to my lab on my very last day at Pasteur, so I really need things to start working faster. I'm almost done cloning my constructs (have to fix a small problem with one of them), but the next stage is test their expression, which I will do next week. If that goes well, I'll have the entire last month for microscopy and I'll be taking lots of pretty pictures to study the localization and interactions of these proteins.

Regarding my lab.... they love to make of Sarkozy. All the people around me talk to each other in German though, so my French still isn't wonderful, but I can understand a lot more than I used to. I don't think I will get to know my PI by the end of this summer, because he's in Japan now. There are too many lab meetings and the senior researchers in the lab take way too much enjoyment out of tearing apart the presenter (I'm really not looking forward to mine if you couldn't tell...) The Pasteur cafeteria is actually catered each day (no wonder it's so good...especially the desserts) and apparantly, there is a restaurant above the main cafeteria that is reserved for Nobel Prize winners who come visit Pasteur.

Yesterday was La Fete de la Musique and it was AMAZING. I went to the Musee d'Orsay first, where the National Orchestra of France was performing Beethoven's 5th. Hundreds of people sat cross-legged on the ground, covering the entire bottom floor of what used to be a train station, while others lined up all the balconies of the upper floors. It was so packed you couldn't even stand up and walk around, but it was a remarkable concert. After that, we walked around the Seine and heard tons of groups outside (streets, parcs, even on bridges) ranging from Latin American music and danse to drumlines, rock bands, choirs, and tons of wonderful jazz. The festival basically lasted until midnight or so, and all the concerts were free.

A few friends and I are going to Reims (Champagne region) this weekend for wine-tasting to celebrate the fact that we're done with MCATs forever... other than that, Paris really feels like "home" now, except with TONS more to see and do. Maybe I'll come back for my post-doc....

Hey!!

Hey!! I have now been in Moscow a little over two weeks and I am loving it. The city is absolutely gorgeous. It has the perfect combination of historic and modern sites. The metro is really nicely organized and you can hop on it and get to any destination quickly. The center of the city is beautiful. The people in my lab took me downtown and showed me around. My lab has been extremely welcoming to me and have gone out of their way to show me around. Sunset here is around 10:15 pm and sunrise is at 5:15 am. Since it so light outside most of the time, people stay out later. In fact the streets are practically full at 1:00 am on weekdays. Another difference between Moscow and the states is that people walk around the streets all the time with open bottles. I was really excited to finally get hot water yesterday, I had forgotten just how much I had missed it.
Lab life is also quite different than in the states. Here I work in lab from 9am till 8 pm and sometimes later. The lab is like a family, everyone is really friendly to one another and they spend alot of time together outside of work. Also since everyone works so much in lab, there is alot of dating within the lab. Within my lab there is a husband and wife working together. Also some of the other people in my lab have significant others who work in biochemistry labs. Alot of the girls my age are married or engaged, which is shocking given the fact that in the states people tend to marry at a much later age. Its funny that in that states people tend to ask me if I have a boyfriend, while here they automatically ask if I have a husband. Last friday we had our first lab meeting. We sat around a round table where there was wine and cheese and listened to people present on the progress of their work. It sure beats the donuts and coffee that I usually had in lab meetings in the states. The other lab workers address the PI by her first name and the lab environment is pretty casual.
The dorm where I live houses a lot of internation students, so I have been fortunate in meeting other american students. I hang out with them after work and on weekends. I am lucky in the respect that socially I have two outlets- lab and then the americans. I should mention that in my lab everyone talks to me in russian and presentations are delivered in russian. While everyone speaks english, they chose to speak in russian. This of course has been a little bit of a challenge for me. You can imagine how happy I am to be able to speak english with the americans. I am happy to report that my russian skills are definitely improving.
Overall I am really enjoying this experience and am starting to adjust to life here. One thing that I am not used to is that everyone is always in a hurry and rushing to get places. I have even had a few instances where an old grandmother will practically push me out of the way because apparently I am not moving fast enough. i ahve to run now, but will be sure to write soon.

10 things to know about France

1. Stuff is expensive.
The US dollar isn't doing so hot. I mentally multiply all prices in euros by 1.35 (by 2 in England) to get the dollar equivalent. Everything here (even wine!) is more expensive than in the US, save chocolate and specialty cheese.

2. People kiss a lot
You kiss everybody. On my first day at work, I broke my all-time kissing record in a single day. Ok, so it's only cheek kissing, and you do it twice, one on each cheek so the other doesn't get jealous. In Switzerland they do it three times so it sucks for the other cheek.

3. Smoking is still cool
A lot more people (scientific: higher proportion of people) smoke here than in the US. People don't look down on you and tell you it's bad for your health. There's actually a GIANT label that says "SMOKING KILLS YOU" instead of the discreet label on American packs. It just proves that smokers know the risks and do it anyways.

4. Lunch break is ridiculously long
The primary investigators at my lab usually have lunch by themselves, but the rest of us (4-5) go to the cafeteria together. It's only 2.75 euros. There is never any alcohol and the food is always better than the DUC at Emory (although it's also sponsored by Sodexho, hilarious). After lunch, we ALWAYS have coffee and everybody meets up to chat in the lobby.

5. Everyone is addicted to coffee
They got me hooked too. There's a coffee machine that dispenses 20 different varieties for 40 cents. Tastes better than Starbucks and is 5 times cheaper.

6. FOOTBALL (SOCCER)
There's always a bunch of people playing outside. The good players are amazing to watch and hard to catch up to. However, they're usually small and quick and I can usually get away with using my awkward made-for-rowing body to knock them around. When a big game is on TV, EVERYBODY watches, usually at bars and restaurants.

7. Kebabs are the French version of cheeseburgers
Döner kebab shops are more popular here than Waffle House in the American South. A kebab is basically a sandwich using meat carved from a giant block of meat rotating on an oven. Lettuce and tomatoes are standard, just like a cheeseburger, except that kebabs are much tastier and less bad for your body.

8. People love American music
It's funny how much every Western country's youth are influenced by American culture. Marilyn Manson, Maroon 5, Nelly Furtado, Justin Timberlake, and rappers I don't know are hugely popular here.

9. Foreign students are cool
Bordeaux has 60,000 students and a LOT of them are ethnically foreign. I hear from friends that racism is sometimes found in the classroom, but not rampant. France has been divided on the issue of immigration for a long time.

10. France is 10 times better when you're paid to be there
I would like to thank again the Emory IRES program and all who made it possible. The first month has been productive and fun.

My 15 minutes of Fame....

I have been here for over one month now and each day I am falling more in love with the UK. Work is still going well and I've pretty much settled into a routine now. The post docs don't really have to tell me how to do anything, unless they are explaining a new concept. One thing I like is that I don't really have set times of when to come and when to leave. I am expected to work roughly 9-5, but I wouldn't have to be in that early, unless I had a baby to run. But like I mentioned previously, everyone works so much here. I do usually work 9-7, but what is very nice is that the lab often goes out to dinner/a pub together directly from work. My typical work day consists of running x number of babies (usually between 3-6), coding for where the baby's eyes are looking, a 45min- 1 hr lunch with lab people, and various other tasks delegated to me from my two post-docs.

Yesterday was a fairly exciting day for lab (at least I thought so). Some TV people from Spain came to tape our lab. The show is on the TV channel equivilent of BBC, in Spain, and it's called TVE. They are doing a special on babies and they were given permission from our PI to tape. Natalia, one of my post-docs is from Mexico, so naturally, she was chosen to be interviewed. They did, however, also tape two of our babies being run on our study, so I got to help out with that and as a result, I will probably end up on some TV program in Spain!

I have also taken up a new sport - coxing. Rowing is the biggest sport at Oxford and every boat has someone called the cox. The cox does not row, but sits at the front of the boat and yells out orders and steers the boat but holding two wires on either side of his or her body. My PI and Nivi, my other post-doc, row for our college, St. hughs, and they needed a cox. I offered to do it, even though I've practically never been in a boat! They were eager though and I have a coach to train me, so every Tues. and Thurs. I'm on the river from 7:45am-9:15am!

I have also been doing more social events. I went to a Garden Party last week and met some people and one of the Ph. D students in my lab is taking me to another Garden Party on Wednesday. Basically, it's just a lot of strawberries and cream, sun dresses, hats, and Pimms (the staple alcoholic beverage of Oxford). However, my lab is still like a family, as in we go to London together, eat dinners, and pretty much everything else. It's also nice because a lot of people from Emory are now arriving to London from the Psych Research program so I will be getting to see some of them in the upcoming couple weeks.

Pictures

Everything is my lab is going great! I love Australia and I don't know if I want to come back. Here they work to live not live to work, except in my lab. My advisor and I are the last two people in the department to leave EVERY night, but its good because I'm getting a lot done. I've run tons of EPR on samples that are actually interesting looking and the best part is I don't have to make them. Last Thursday I actually changed the cavity on the EPR machine, which is a big deal. It was cool and I knew what I was doing because I've watched so many times since I've been here. I also caught several mistakes that were being made in the lab it just goes to show that Dr. Warncke and Dr. Canfield (the post-doc who trained me at Emory) did a good job of teaching me how to take care of the equipment.

Socially things are going much better here! Yesterday was a holiday they call "The Queen's Birthday" even though it isn't actually her birthday, because of the holiday I got the day off of work. I went sailing for the first time with UQSail and it was amazing! I have a new hobby. This weekend I also got to go to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. It was wonderful and I found out that I love kangaroos. They are really cool animals.

Reporting to you from Marseille

So this is my fifth week in the lab, and I can't believe my time here is almost half done. I've been having such a great time! This week I was finally assigned to one definite project. This is really just an issue of timing. I came into the lab when there were two projects going on, both involving in situ hybridization, and my mentor here wanted to know the preliminary results of both before deciding which one I should join. So I now officially have a project. I'm studying the effects of deep brain stimulation on neuronal activity in the basal ganglia. It might sound worrisome that I'm in my fifth week in the lab and just officially starting on my project, but the in situ technique is very fast and I will be able to get a lot done within the next few weeks. I have found that, since I've been mostly following people in the lab up until this point, it has been difficult to establish some level of independence in the lab. I am thinking that this will get better now that I have my own project.

It sounds like others are really putting in the hours. Things here have been slow. We ran out of some supplies a couple weeks ago, and that really slowed things down. I had quite a bit of downtime then. I think everyone here is just expected to get their work done, but the environment is very relaxed. And the whole day revolves around lunch. An experiment will have to wait until the afternoon if it is too long and would make it so that we would eat too late.

There are a few people in my dorm that I have met and spend time with during the weekends. They are very nice. One of them is hispanic, has been here since the fall, and has learned French just by listening--no classes! Needless to say, I was very impressed.

So I really like it here. I did some travelling a couple weeks ago. Took a train to Geneva, and thought it was great. It's very small but it has everything in it, or so it seems.

A bientot,

Cosby

Greetings From Russia!

I just arrived in my lab in Moscow this past Tuesday. All I can say is that this is definitely a culture shock. Moscow State University is absolutely gorgeous. The building is huge and looks quite historic. There is one primary building and the dorms are all connected to it. The primary building has grocery stores and all kinds of different shops. It is the central hang out spot and students can always be spotted there. I am in love with the university. The weather in Moscow is also really nice. It is sunny with a light breeze. The food here is really delicious. The cafeteria is open from 8am to 8pm and you can easily eat a filling meal for four dollars. There are definitely plenty of differences. For example, there is no AC in the buildings. In my room, I leave the window open to get air in. Also until for the next 20 days, there will be no hot water in Moscow State University. Apparently, the city turns off the hot water every year for a certain period of time, so that the pipes can be fixed before winter. The lab is also not nearly as advanced. The equipment is much older and whereas, many of the tubes in the labs in Emory are considered disposable and are thrown away after one use, here these tubes are washed after every use and recycled. The people in my lab are nice and have gone out of their way to help me settle in. This weekend a few of the lab members have agreed to show me around Moscow. Additionally, i have met a few American study abroad students who I have been meeting up with. The fact that my dorm is considered an international dorm has made meeting other students all the easier. Overall, everyone has been welcoming. The lab is really extreme when it comes to working. The work day starts at 9 am and is still full at 8pm. Additionally, the concept of weekends does not seem to exist, as saturdays and sundays are considered working days. This is not what I expected, and I am slightly shocked by their extreme work ethic. I will make sure to write more about my events and tell you more about the city of Moscow after this weekend. Until next time