The Scientist

Originally posted 5/29/07 in other blog

Alright, it has been a whole week since I posted, and it seems this blog is some sort of drug for you all.

Currently fueled by apple granola (BTW I'm in love) because there is a party that I cannot attend suffocating our kitchen, I will write instead of consuming a normal meal.

The past week was interesting, but I desperately need to learn Dutch. You would think it rude if there are three people in the room who all know English, yet two refuse to speak it to eachother, no? That has been quite a brick wall between me and getting to know people.

My research team is interesting. My favorite person is the black sheep, but she is one of the only ones to treat me like I am not a wide eyed three year old, although sometimes true. She is a Colombian named Lena, and she is helping me with culture shock a bit. She doesn't enjoy her position, and she doesn't fit in with most of the team, so she told me she likes my company when shes is staining slides and such. I observed the whole process of slide staining using Vectastain. She even let me measure various liquids into little vials. I am glad she liked me though because for all I knew I was making TNT. I also learned how to cut for slides. That is fun, but frustrating. I had seen it done when I volunteered in the hospital, but they never let me touch the machine.

Oh, I hate my microbiology professors now. Apparently I was taught a very inaccurate sloppy method of micropipetting. Quite embarassing, especially when threatening someone's life's work that is not my own.

I also toured a facility that measures energy consumption by putting you in a crazy hood that takes the oxygen out of the air. Seems like it would be fun to play with......*tries to ignore sadistic thoughts*

I got to mix buffer for a radioimmune assay that I was suppose to observe this week, but that never happened. I did see girls photograph their cells though, but since they chose to only speak Dutch to eachother, I am really not sure how.

This week I am visiting the dairy farms and hopefully will be observing an experiment where they take out rats' intestines and invert them to track the breakdown of sugars. Bit nervous about that one.

I have nothing more about work, so I will leave you with a picture of mummified pig fetuses.

1000 Miles

Originally posted on other blog 5/22/07

So, this was a fun filled weekend. It seems like we traveled a lot farther than we did, but we are back in Wageningen and hopefull will be starting more work this week. I mean, having the days to ourselves is nice, but I would like to learn something while I am here. There are so many pictures I want to post from the weekend. Saturday, we got up and went to the open market here in town, and we happened to come upon an international students celebration. It was like the international bazaar at Western, but it was out in the street. We tried so many foods, and I am still not sure of the things I ate that day. After watching some dances, which I have a picture of, we took off for Utrecht to discover what the small city had. It took a long time to get there by bus, but we saw a lot of the countryside. Every town really has its own windmill.

Utrecht was nice, and Saturdays are booming there. The open market was huge. Lots and lots of cheese and flower stands, and by the end of the day, the flowers were so cheap, you could buy 30 roses for $5. We walked around all day, in and out of shops, and then we decided to eat because absolutely all the stores closed at 5:00. So we found a nice pizza place right on the river and ate as boats passed by on the canal. We did see a coffee house (weed shop). That was interesting, but it was about the creepiest place I had seen. We decided to go on past, but it is still funny to me that they have those just on the street. Sex shops too.


Sunday we slept in and then took a bus to Apeldoorn to the monkey reserve. That place was really neat. Several of the monkey species are just allowed to roam around the park. We had to carry monkey proof bags so that they wouldn't steal our stuff. There were also lemurs and the orangutans are very very smart. One had found a rock and was chiseling her way out of her enclosure by knocking out the bolts.

The bus tickets were very confusing, and I think we paid too much, but now we know better. Many of the bus drivers didn't speak much English, so we were very confused.

Yesterday, we met with Rene and spoke with a couple other professors, and then we had the day to ourselves so we ran many errands. One of those was to find the cheap grocery store because the tiny one we knew of was super expensive. Also, we needed to find the Wageningen Student Organization so that Sam could get her internet fixed, but the maps we had listed it in the wrong location. We searched and searched for this builing and asked all around the area, but everyone was confused. Finally, we found some other students who told us the map was wrong and it was really all the way across town from where we were, and conveniently by our dorm. It still took a lot to find it, and once we did, they told us that they had nothing to do with the internet even though our booklets said they did. So, they sent us back across town and up a big hill to a computer tech place that pretty much just told Sam to email them and they would see if there was anything they could do. So, needless to say, we were tired and frustrated. However, we were welcomed by an invitation by our neighbor to eat with our corridor because he was cooking.

Daniel is Italian, and made the best lasagna I have ever eaten. American lasagna will never be the same. I also had the first good wine I had ever had in my life. It was Spanish. I thought I didn't like wine, but as it turns out, I had just never had a good wine. It is great if you find a good one. We all sat around watching Troy (a terrible movie) and chatting. We have people from all over in our corridor: Ecuador, Poland, Italy, France, Brazil, and the Netherlands. It is really fun.

Today, Sam had the day off, but I started shadowing in a histology lab. The grad student I worked with was staining cells using antibody recognition. It was pretty cool, but I still don't understand it completely, and I am still not sure why they are researching this particular cell because it does not seem that applicable. I am going in early again tomorrow, but Sam isn't even meeting her professor until the afternoon. I am glad to be learning something applicable to my course back home though.

We also go to tour their livestock labs. They treat their animals so much better than we do. Everything is clean, the chickens get free range pens, and the cows have big fields to roam. It was funny because the man showing us around was trying to invent stressors to get his chickens to exhibit stress behaviors, but they are too happy. Ours exhibit those behaviors all the time. To tour the facilities though we had to shower and where special white clothes. They even had special underwear for us. When we came out, we had to shower again. Sam has some good pictures, and I am hoping she will let me steal some.

Anyway, we are finally cooking real food for ourselves, which tasted so good after a week of sandwiches. We are doing well, and I think we are both having a good time.

Lemon Tree

Originally posted in other blog 5/19/07

Alright, I know I just posted a few hours ago, and it is 3:00 a.m. here, but I had to post about this. So, we got invited out with our Italian neighbor to an international club just by our corridor. We were dying to make some friends, so we thought, "why not." However, this turned out to be a reason for many lessons learned tonight.

Lesson 1: The U.S. needs to teach their kids how to acctually dance. We were so envious because everyone here knows how to salsa. We each were pulled out to the dancefloor once, and it was disasterous on both accounts. Then they started playing American hip hop, but none of the Europeans knew how to move to that.

Lesson 2: Never tell any man where you are planning on visiting. Sam made the mistake of telling a couple men that we were going into Utrecht tomorrow, and it just so happened that they both worked there, and I think one was ready to pick her up at the train station.

Lesson 3: Avoid creepy guys from Senegal. We met one who just clinged to girls, and just when we thought we had gotten rid of him, we were about to leave and he popped up again, so when he asked us to dance, we told him we were leaving and he decided to try to follow us out. We ducked into the bathroom, and were saved by drunk French friends of our neighbor.

However, Lesson 4: Beware of drunk French men. Although those guys saved us from the creep, we found out that they lived in our building. So, we were trying to get away from them without having them try to follow us up to our floor, and as soon as we turned a corner, we ran up the stairs and thought we were safe, but just a couple minutes later someone was outside our hall door ringing the bells (mine particularly) over and over trying to get in. We aren't certain it was one of them, but it freaked us out and Sam joined me in my room until she thought it was safe to walk down the hall again.

Tonight was crazy. We are safe, but now we know what the night life is like here, and we aren't to sure we want to frequent that club. I am going to bed now because we are getting up to start our exploring of the area towns.

Welcome to the Jungle

Originally posted in other blog 5/18/07

So, we have been great explorers for the past couple days, taking it easy and trying not to get lost. Yesterday, we went into town and walked the center streets, but unfortunately everything was closed for the holiday. The town is pretty, like something out of a storybook, or Harry Potter as Sam keeps saying. We lived off bread and nutella for a couple days until we could shop again because when we shopped the first day, we weren't sure what we would have to cook with. We now have a full kitchen to use that we share with our corridor. We are making an effort to meet more people on our floor by keeping our doors open and trying to hang out in the common room when people are in there. The people we have met seem nice, but there is one guy that walks around in his boxers all the time singing to himself.....somewhat uncomfortable when he stops in to chat.

I am trying to figure out how to post pictures on here, but for right now I just have links to click on.

Here are a couple pictures of my room. http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb122/Allieolie639/DSC03578.jpg http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb122/Allieolie639/DSC03577.jpg

These are just snapshots of the town and the last is a fancy administration building with I.D. entry and glass elevators. The church is in the center of town and apparently holds services for three denominations.

http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb122/Allieolie639/DSC03602.jpg http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb122/Allieolie639/DSC03603.jpg http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb122/Allieolie639/DSC03610.jpg

Today we went back to the stores and got some pasta and more deli meat so that we won't starve this weekend. I am excited though because if we stay in town tomorrow, there is a big open air market by the church.

We also went with Rene (our contact) to rent bikes today. These bikes are huge and sit very upright. I am working on it, but riding across town was an adventure. I am still no good at it, but I hope I will be good enough by the end to buy a bike at home to use at school next year. What a dream.

We were invited back to Rene's home to meet his family and eat a lovely dinner of quiche, greek salad, and a spicy tomato soup, but he wanted us to first try this carnival food called oliebol. It was a large piece of fried dough with raisins. It was very good, but his wife was a little upset with him for taking us there. There is a carnival right now in town for no particular reason except that the company just hops from town to town.

It was nice to have a homecooked meal because we haven't been eating the best, but we are working on figuring out things to cook. I am not sure what we are doing with our weekend yet, but it seems like our plans to go into Amsterdam have been foiled by high hostel prices on short notice. We may just go into Utrecht tomorrow or bike to neighboring towns to visit the zoo and the monkey reserve.

Miss you all.

P.S. I think I figured out how to add pictures in the blog, so here is a silly picture of me in a giant pot.

Still Standing

This post was originally posted in my other blog 5/17/2007

After a long two days, I finally have a chance to write. I just arrived in Holland and man, was it a trip. I would have posted sooner, but my computer was displaying everything in Dutch, so I couldn't even read how to fix the problem. Yeah, we were told we wouldn't really have a problem with a language barrier, but no, everything is in Dutch, and people just assume we speak Dutch. We just nod and smile.

Sam is a good partner to have, although she is just as lost as I am.

We figured out all the flights, that was fine. Trying to haul all our luggage around was hard though. I am pretty sure I could fit in my suitcase.

The trouble really started though when we were in Amsterdam and had to find our way to Wageningen. All we knew was to take a train and then a bus, so we went to the ticket office and bought train tickets. She told us that the train we needed left in less than 10 minutes and that we needed to transfer in Utrecht, so we dashed to the station and as the conductor of the train on our platform if it would get us to Wageningen. He seemed annoyed and told us to get on the next train, so that's what we did. Turns out though, that wasn't the train we wanted either, but by the time we found out, the train was pulling away. Luckily for us, the locals are very nice and helpful. I am pretty sure our whole car knew we were lost and were all trying to help. When we reached a stop that we could transfer, two businessmen walked us to the correct platform so that we wouldn't screw up again.

We got off at our stop but still had to take a bus to the town. The bus driver just yelled at us to get out when it was our stop, and then we were stuck on a street corner. We must have looked completely lost because two people came up to us to help and one happened to be our neighbor. He got us to our rooms, but was very confused when we said we needed keys still. Then he was worried because everything closes here very early and the next day was a holiday, so we rushed over to the administration building, who then sent us to some other place, where we then found out our contact had already picked up our keys and we were supposed to have been meeting him in his office the whole time.

So, we finally met Rene, and he took us to a pub and then a market so we could get food for the next few days because nothing is open over holidays. Then we were on our own again, and by the time we found somewhere to eat and had unpacked, it was bedtime. I slept for a long time, but we got to meet some of our neighbors and looked around the town a bit more today.

Sorry my first post is so long, but this has been quite the adventure.