This is my second to last week in the lab, and I start to feel sad when I think about having to leave soon. I've really been learning a lot while I'm here. The work I've been doing in Marseille has been a great complement to my work at Emory, and my experience here is helping me to better understand the research I was doing at Emory and why I was using certain techniques there that we're not using here in Marseille. I haven't been able to establish much independence here in the lab, which is disappointing. My mentors here work much more closely with everyone (even PhD's and post-docs) than what I'm used to, and I think perhaps they are uncomfortable with the idea of leaving an undergrad on her own.

Last week, I asked a few people in the lab how to conjugate a certain verb in French. It was kind of funny. Nobody knew how except for one person, and a few minutes ago he came to my desk and gave me a very handy book with all the conjugations for French verbs. It was very nice of him and it meant a lot to me.

I need to get back to some lab work, but I'll post another update before I leave Marseille.