4th of July Lives on in Madagascar

Well, maybe they don't celebrate the 4th of July here, but we certainly do!  Our team went to Fianarantsoa (often just called Fi-Uh-Nar) because we had the day off.  Toget there, we took an hour and a half Taxi-Brousse ride, which is basically a 22 person van that in the states would hold 14 people.  Since I'm definitely in the top 10% of tall people in this country, my knees were not too happy by then end of the ride.  On top of that, a woman asked me to put her bag in between my legs because she had a baby on her lap, whose head ended up on my lap also. Once in Fianar, we went to the best pizza place in town, and also one of the more expensive restaurants there, and ended up spending about $10 USD per person (most meals here cost about 2-5 USD for a mozzarella/tomato appetizer, drinks, and an amazing oven-cooked pizza per person.  After that, we visited an ice-cream parlor (I haven't had ice-cream in over 5 weeeks!) and I got coconut and banana and Madagascar Vanilla and it was amazing.  After ice-cream we continued our wandering until we happened upon the photography studio of Pierrot Men, Madagascar's most famous photographer.  After wandering into the gallery and buying some of the postcards and photographs, he walks in and has a 20 minute conversation with us, which was pretty cool.  After making it back to the Centre, we told the kitchen staff here that it was someone's birthday, so they made us a cake, which was really a great way to end the 4th of July.

The inauguration of the new building, which I promised to write about last week was a blast!  People came from everywhere to come to the inauguration. A few people include: the president of Stony Brook, the president of University of Pennsylvania, California, Miss Madagascar, the president of Air Madagascar, The American Embassy of Madagascar, plus tons of local people from around here and also people from the capital.  The party was huge (there must have been about 500 people) and it was really great.  It started off at 6:00am with the slaughter of two Zebus (cows), which was a pretty amazing cultural experience.  Pat Wright got a 21 gun salute by the military, which I think is a pretty big honor.  A world famous musician came and played, her name is TarikaBe and she apparently has won a grammy, and is on some famous top 10 current musician's list.  I talked to her for a while at the party and she's really out-there but in a good kind of way.  She had this really cool necklace on and I was talking to her about it and I asked her where she got it and she was like "o, I made it!"  She's done a lot of tours in the US also, apparently. During her concert and then after, there was tons of dancing (I danced with miss Madagascar kind of, which was pretty cool).  The party went on until about 5am, but I went to bed at around 2am.  I got to sleep in the new building last night, which was enjoyable, especially because it was pouring yesterday and our tents are at the top of a long path on a slippery hill.

Hope everyone else is having such a great time!  I'll attach some photo's for the next post.  I am, however, going to be going on a 10 day expedition, so it's going to be a little while before I have internet again.  I'll tell you all about it when I return

Ian

HAPPY 4th OF JULY!!

Im so sad to be missing the best holiday of the year, but things in Milan have been great!  Last weekend, I met Kristen in Venice and spent two days exploring the islands and canals of the city with her.  Venice was beautiful and the culture is totally different from that of any other city Ive visited here even though it is only 4 hours from Milan.  Although I did not take a gondola ride, Kristen and I still had the chance to take a water taxi around the island and got some great views of the city from the Grand Canal.  The Palace and St. Marks Square were awesome as well.

It is so bizarre hat I only have a month left in Europe.  Ive had the opportunity to visit 7 cities in Italy so now I am excited to venture out and see some other countries--Switzerland, Romania, Portugal, and Spain are all coming up soon so I will keep you posted about that!

In Lab, I am starting to do RT-PCR to look for myelin proteins and am still doing western blotting for presynaptic proteins involved in vesicle release.  Before coming to Milan, I would not have focused on nerve signaling or pain so this summer has helped me understand neuropathy from a new perspective.

--Megan

Hello everyone! Time for an update.  As promised, here are some pictures from the Tiwanaku solstice celebration. The Aymaras celebrate the solstice as the mark of the new harvest season, and the tradition is to wake up early (or party all night) in order to "receive" the sun as it comes up by raising your hands in the air. Our bus picked us up at 4 AM from La Paz, so we got there just in time for the sunrise! 

Standing in front of the Aymara flag

Tiwanaku ruins

Unfortunately, our project has been delayed and we are waiting on IRB approval to complete focus group discussions in the clinics. However, my team member and I have been keeping busy working on the other aims for the project (food frequency, data entry, etc). In the meantime while we clear things up for our aim, we have been piloting our focus group discussion guide with NGOs and with women recruited from churches. Our first pilot focus group was carried out with an NGO called Caia which works with women and adolescents around La Paz on a wide range of issues including health and financial empowerment for women.  The discussion went extremely well and our guide seemed to work great, so we have transcribed the discussion and made a few revisions. 

This week we are setting up more pilot focus group discussions and also starting to develop our educational materials. To do this, we are collecting information on all the different micronutrients that mothers and children under 2 receive at clinics in El Alto. From this information we will develop a descriptive document containing all the compositions for each supplement and compare these to the guidelines published by the Bolivian Ministry of Health. We will also construct a model to be used at each clinic to help explain micronutrient supplementation to the mothers, ensuring that they understand which vitamin to take when. 

This past weekend we took a short trip to Copacabana (on the shore of Lake Titicaca). I didn't realize how much I missed water! From there we did a day trek on Isla del Sol ("Sun Island"), an island with a gorgeous landscape and many Inca ruins. Pictures will probably do it more justice: 

View of Lake Titicaca from our hostel

Squintin' in the sun

Kids playing in the streets of Copacabana

Isla del Sol!

You win some, you lose some and when you lose some the whole country is depressed...

    Despite losing the EM, life in Deutschland is still fantastic. We have some students visting from Côte d'Ivoire this week and they are going through some basic training to learn lab skills. They are setting up a lab back in their country, so they will be able to analyze pathogen prevalence in the field instead of having to deal with the hassle of having to convince the German government that it is safe to ship poo contaminated (potentially) with anthrax into the country. They are really interesting to talk to and now I am learning a bit of French, in addition to my daily German lessons. 
     There are also 3 new Ph.D students in the lab, from different parts of Germany. They are all in their mid-twenties and are just as eager to explore Berlin as I am. We have spent many an evening just walking around the city marveling at the variety of colors one can dye their hair... 
    A friend of mine from the US visited Berlin last week through her study abroad program and we were able to meet up a couple of times and I showed her all my favorite hang outs. It was so wonderful to see her and share stories of our travels. We went to a free opera showing at Brandenburger Tor (Don Giovanni) and then stumbled across a street festival on the way home. We perused the stalls, beers in hand, and chatted with the local merchants and musicians. All in all, a very successful weekend.
     In the lab, I am learning so many new techniques. I thought I was well-prepared when I came here, but there is so much that I have still to learn! Everyone is so helpful and they really are brilliant scientists. They keep me on my toes and I love bouncing my questions and ideas off of them. Even though we are a huge group (about 22, last time we counted), it really is a community mind-set and everyone takes care of each other. We all learn from each other's mistakes and all of the projects are so intertwined (I would go into more detail, but I'll wait for their papers to be published first...). Such fascinating work going on. Everyone makes fun of me for being the baby of the lab (the next youngest person is 26) and it makes me realize what a unique and awesome opportunity this is. So just a quick shout-out to Leah and Cathy for making this happen. You guys are awesome :)          Unfortunately, my beloved steed (bicycle) is kaputt so I have had to take the train instead, but I am going to this awesome shop tomorrow where they teach you how to repair it yourself for just a 1 euro donation. It is located at the technical university in Berlin, so it will be really cool to meet some of the students and learn a new trade.
 I haven't been travelling so much on the weekends just because there are always cool things to do and see in Berlin. This place has really become my home and the people here are wunderbar. I had to say goodbye to one of them Friday and it was honestly heartbreaking. I have never had to say goodbye to someone in such a final way. She is going to Africa for a year and then back to her home in Belgium and I will probably never see her again, as we lead such different lives on different continents. I know we will stay in touch and I am so glad I got to spend the last months with her, but it really was such a new a surreal feeling. 
I guess that is all part of this travelling and discovering business. I'll leave you guys with some pictures from my excursions around the city. 


viele Grüße,
Kristen

Lab Picnic :)

Pipetting like a pro

I was told that this was Germany's attempt to one-up our White House. Did they succeed? I'll leave that up to you.

Game, Set, Match

Hello,

It was a pretty quiet past week in the lab. Most of the lab members were away on holiday or at a conference, but I continued work on some cloning. This week was also the first week of the tennis championships at Wimbledon, so I spent most of my time outside of the lab watching the matches. Early in the week I discovered that a select few tickets are sold online the day before and I was able to snag Centre Court tickets on Friday morning for Saturday's play. I took the train really early on Saturday morning to get to Wimbledon (southwest London). The grounds opened at 10:30 and I was able to roam around, watch some players practice on the practice courts, get some autographs near the competitor's entrance, and eat some famous "strawberries and cream" before the first match on Centre Court began at 1:00 pm. My seats weren't great or anything, but for 76 pounds, approximately $120, I saw 3 really good matches. Play on Saturday went until 11 pm, the latest that they allow play to continue, and so it was a good 10 hours of tennis. Luckily there was no rain on Saturday and it was a beautiful day for tennis. I saw some famous players play like Serena Williams, Andy Roddick, and Andy Murray. All in all, it was an amazing day and I am really glad I had the opportunity to go.

My favorite sporting event!

The grounds (Centre Court in the far back)

Outside Centre Court

The draw

Strawberries and cream (mmm, delicious)

Henman Hill (or Murry Mount)

Centre Court!

David Ferrer vs. Andy Murray on Centre Court

On Sunday, I attended a lab party. We share lab space and equipment with another group in Biochemistry, and the professor of that group hosted a party at his home in a town called Shepreth, about 7 miles from Cambridge. I cycled there with my professor and his family, which took about an hour, but it was good exercise. When we arrived, I was really surprised. The home was huge and lakeside (I found out later that they owned the lake). The whole property was gorgeous and it felt very old-English, Jane-Austen like. I took a trip around the lake, enjoyed some good food, got to know a lot of people in my lab better, and then cycled back in the evening. It was a great weekend.

This week, the PhD student I was working with has come back from her holiday and conference and I will start working with her again. We have a new summer student in our lab from Wisconsin and we all went out to the pub yesterday after work to welcome her. Talking to her has made me realize that I have been here for a month already. I can't believe it. Time really does fly.

Nisha

Gold Coast

Hey all!

Once again, I am having a fantastic time down under. Things in my lab have really gotten busy, as the woman in charge of my primary project just returned from a conference in the US. I've now been trained and am busily coding Still Face Procedure videos, which are really cool to watch. It's awesome seeing that all the infants really do act as expected when their mothers' faces go blank (first they make some happy noises and cute faces, like come on mom we're still playing, then they get a confused look on their face trying to figure out what is going on, and before long they get very fussy trying to get their mother's attention). They all have variations on this, of course, but I love watching how common this pattern is. It's so cool when things go exactly as textbooks say they will! I've also been working on some data entry and editing some SPSS files for the same study. I've developed a hypothesis using the PICU data and have been running some data analyses. We will work on that project this week so that I should have a poster and/or brief report by the time I'm back in the states!

On an unrelated note, I spent this weekend on the Gold Coast, which is about 2 hours south of Brisbane (if you take the bus/train/bus route that I did). I woke up far too early Saturday morning and caught another bus to the Gold Coast Marathon race precinct. I had to be at the race and ready by 5:30am! But that did allow me to watch a gorgeous sunrise as I warmed up and prepped for the run. An hour or so later, I'd completed my first 10K race! All my runs in the mornings before work really paid off, as the race was almost entirely enjoyable. Also, they had one of the Australian Olympians running the race with us - I think he finished in 29 minutes, which is positively insane but really cool! After taking the bus back to my hotel, I rewarded myself with some coffee and then by spending the day on the beach reading a great book. It was wonderful getting some sand between my toes and some sunscreen on my skin!

The start of the race

I finished!!!

Loved my day on the beach

I see why it's called the Gold Coast

On Sunday I woke up not quite as early and headed to Main Beach to go whale watching! It was just about the greatest activity I've ever done. We spent 3 1/2 hours cruising the South Pacific looking for whales. At the start they were somewhat shy, but after a while they really started showing off for our boat! They were breaching left and right and some even swam right next to the boat. One actually stuck its huge head out of the water for a bit, but I was so amazed that I missed getting it on camera! I did get some pretty great pictures though, and, most importantly, I had a wonderful time.

This whale swam next to us for a while

I loved seeing all the tail fins!!

Enjoying the sun and sea

When I got back home yesterday I was exhausted! I think that's a sign that I had an incredible weekend. I would go back to the Gold Coast every weekend if possible - it's such a fun and sunny place! But after a long and restful night's sleep, I'm back to work and ready to get rolling on all my projects for the week.

Cheers!

Zazakely (children of Madagascar)

The national beer of Madagascar, THB (Three Horses Beer), It only comes in a 65cl (about 25oz) size and only in brown glass bottles

Hey Everyone,

Still having a great time here!  I've been doing a lot of work recently with rodents recently. We've been trapping them in and around the first village.  We're primarily collected feces from rats (Rattus rattus) and mice (Mus musculis) here, but occasionally trap some endemic rodents, which we immediately release where we found them.  We finished our work in Village 1 yesterday, only 2 more to go.  Also, a post doc who will be starting work at Emory next semester in the ENVS department arrived earlier this week and will be working with us until we leave.  Her name is Sarah Zohdy and she's really awesome.  She's been very helpful with all of our work and also has been working well with all of us here.  I've also started spending a little bit of my free time in the village that we work in.  The children there are really amazing.  When you walk around, it is very common to see a 5 or 6 year old carrying their younger sibling on their back.  Young children frequently take on household chores such as sweeping or husking rice.  I attached a lot of photos of children above.  

We have Recently been visiting a larger town, Ranomafana, which is about 7km away and took part in a soccer competition.  We made it all the way to the semifinals and then lost to a really good team.

The inauguration of the new building here will be taking place tomorrow and it sounds like it's going to be a huge party.  Miss Madagascar will be coming, the president of Air Madagascar will be coming, the president of Stony Brook university will be coming, among other important people.  Miss Madagascar is very good-looking and also really funny, we met her yesterday.  Tomorrow morning they will be slaughtering 2 Zebu (view picture above) for the party, and it is often customary for the person being honored to eat the hump!  Tomorrow should be a great day, I'll be sure to update you guys shortly after the event.