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....