A nice sunny day

It was a nice sunny day. A great opportunity to take a pic of the hospital centre. Really nice, eh?

A walk in the park

Deva took me to the central park after a stressful day at work. She said that she had wanted to feed the birds. They recognized her right away and flocked to her full loaf of bread.

It was just like the Hitchcock movie. They were all around us! The more aggressive ones would hover in the air a few inches from our face and catch huge chunks of bread in mid-air!

And yet, the whole experience was so peaceful. There's something really nice about going to the park to feed the birds.

Happy Birthday Jorn!

It was Jorn's birthday. My floormates helped me throw a surprise party for him! He didn't have a clue because it was actually the day after his real birthday. Hahahaha! We managed to get him out of the house for 5 minutes, and we all rushed into the common room to decorate and put out cake in record time!

We printed him this beauuuuutiful T-shirt. He really is the #1 student housing manager, so he deserves every letter on that shirt. You can tell from the ecsatic look on his face that he really did like it. We're proud of you, Jorn!

Warning: Gory stuff!

So I went to visit the animal house for the first time! And, yes, they wear clogs in the surgery room! Can you see mine? So darn fashionable!

And so the bloody gore began.... In the first pic, Marijke is taking a blood sample from Mr. Rat for my experiments! In the next, we are taking out the pancreas after it is "blown up" with fluid. In the test tube is the pancreas after it is taken out. It is ready for islet isolation, meaning they will separate the insulin secreting cells from the rest of the junk. And the islet cells will be transplanted into a diabetic rat to save its life. So, remember, we do this to save diabetics like me.

My first Indonesian dinner

Deva actually lives in my building all the way on the tenth floor. So on this Sunday she came down and we cooked Indonesian dinner together! Well, actually, she cooked the chicken and I just cut some fresh veggies as a side dish. It was soooo tasty! Can you smell the good food?

Another day at work

I snapped some more photos of the people I work with. From left to right are Deva (Indonesian exchange student - you'll see lots more of here in my blog!), Hank (the FACS man), and Swanine (who sadly is not working with us anymore).

That day I also made my very first attempts at making microcapsules using the air-driven droplet generator! They looked like shit but I'm very proud of them nevertheless.

My new co-workers

I decided to snap a few photos of some of the people I work with at Medical Biology Dept in the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG). They probably hate me for putting up these pictures on the net but I wanted you to see who I work with for the summer. Paul (the boss) especially hates this photo because him and Shanti had just returned from the US where they attended a diabetes conference and they are both jet-lagged.







From left to right is Maaike (fellow Ph.D. student), Jochum (not sure what he does), Paul (the big boss), Shanti (Ph.D. student), and Bart (Technician and Ph.D. student)

International Night!

Every Monday is International Night at Sally O'Briens. Of course, I had to go check it out to see what international people do in Groningen to party.

With me are floormates Vanitha (from India), Jorn (my Dutch student housing manager), and Wicax. Wicax has a beer cup on his head because Jorn told him a story about it being a Dutch tradition. I still don't know if that's true.

It's as cold as Canada!

Here is a view of Kornoeljestraat, my new home, from the outside. There are 300-some kids living here, and about 50 are international. Winter here is just about as cold as in Canada. Only here, we ride our bikes in the snow. Crazy Dutch.

Exploring with Wicax

The first one to get excited by a new girl on the floor was Wicax (pronounced Wee-jak), one of the many Indonesians I'm living with (Our floor is nicknamed the Indonesian Embassy). So we went off on our bikes a little bit away to see the "Containers", some shacks that they try to pass as student housing where he used to live. It was right by the crematorium!

And we saw friggin' ponies there! No one knows where they came from but here is the proof. Unfortunately, one of them died a few weeks later. I don't know what happened to the other one. It is probably very lonely.

Settling in as a Groninger

I moved into my room in kornoeljestraat on the first of the month. The first thing I did was rearrange the furniture, of course! It's looking really bare because my luggage was still lost in Amsterdam somewhere.

While still in stinky clothes that I've been wearing for two days, I went to a Ph.D. "promotion" at the infamous Academy building with my new co-workers. It was all in Dutch, of course. But they put a nice mural on the background so you can look at it and dream a bit while listening to this ultra-formal public defense. Later that night I went to the promotion party, my first social event in Holland. The poor girl had to pay for an open bar for everyone who showed up. Apparently it costs thousands of Euros (like a wedding!) and students have to save up for years for this promotion party.

The next order of business, of course, was to get my own new (well, used) shiny bike! Made in Holland! It is very handsome, don't you think? All the bells and whistles for the low, low price of 75 Euros. On the way to the bike shop, I actually rode on the back of Bart's bike, on the rack thingy. It was so scary yet so European! I felt like a little kid again! However, I had to grow up and learn to use this beauty, which actually is more difficult to get used to than you may think. The best part was riding back from the promotion party in the dark after a few beers. The strangest yet most exhilarating feeling ever.