The Final Days

The last couple of weeks have been very eventful! Last Monday the whole lab went out to lunch for my going away party, even though I'm not leaving until the middle of this week. Since the laboratories in the institute are all mixed together, and members of my lab are split between five rooms on three floors, it's pretty rare to get everybody together at once, so it was great to have the whole group together that day for lunch. Then on Wednesday morning I gave lab seminar to my PI, the senior scientist, and all of the post-docs and graduate students. I was incredibly nervous, but luckily I got to give the seminar in English, so that helped a little bit. I gave an introduction and then showed them all of the work that I've done in the past ten weeks and the conclusions I've drawn from my results. I think the presentation went really well, and I got a lot of positive feedback. In fact, shortly after my presentation my PI actually suggested that I make a poster for the Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias (Argentina Society for Neuroscience) international conference, which will take place in Córdoba, Argentina in October. I had to run this idea by the Chilean collaborator who synthesized the compounds I've been using to make sure that he's willing to let me release the structures of the compounds, and he agreed. So in the next few weeks I will be working on an abstract and making a poster for the conference! I think my results show some really neat and important information, so I'm extremely excited to have the opportunity to share them with the scientific world. The entire lab goes to this conference in Córdoba every year, so my PI assured me that if I am not able to attend, somebody will be able to present on my behalf. However, it just so happens that the conference is scheduled to take place during the weekend of Emory's fall break, so I think the universe is giving me signs that I have to find a way to get back here and go to the conference. It looks like I can get a little more Howard Hughes money through Emory, and since living expenses here are cheaper than I had anticipated, I've saved a small portion of my summer stipend as well. So, assuming that my abstract and poster are accepted and all of the other details work themselves out, there's a good chance I'll be coming back in October!

My Emory music theory professor of the last two years studies Tango in Buenos Aires every summer, and I finally got to meet up with her on Friday night. Dr. Wendland, a few of her friends and I went to Teatro Colón to see Mozart's Don Giovanni. The theater is supposedly one of the best in the world, as well as one of the oldest in South America, and it just re-opened in May after being closed for refurbishment since 2006. The venue, atmosphere, and performance were all absolutely exquisite. My photos from the outside didn't turn out very well, so this one is taken from Google:

There are seven levels on the inside, all decorated ornately with golden ornaments and chandeliers.

Here's a picture of Dr. Wendland and me in the front lobby after the show:

I'm leaving on Wednesday evening, so I'm planning to finish up everything in the lab in the next two days. Unfortunately, my oocytes haven't been cooperating for the past four weeks, and although my results are fine as they are, I would really, really like to increase my repetitions for two of my experimental conditions. This means that I'm literally putting all of my eggs in tomorrow's basket (terrible pun intended). I got to do the operation last week (which was awesome, by the way), and we selected one of our best frogs, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping the oocytes will work. As a testament to my nerdishness, I've openly admitted that seeing as tomorrow is my birthday, the only gift I want is for my oocytes to cooperate.

I'll try to update one last time before I leave!