Helsinki City Center

Helsinki City Center Tour

Above is the a Market Square (Hakaniemi). There's a bunch of these around town with fresh produce, food, and annoying Gypsies selling you expensive souvenirs and flowers.

Tuomiokirkko, the Lutheran Cathedral. This Socialistic/Welfare State system is marvelous - everything is free to get in! Universities are all free, meals are subsidized by the government, and a surgery costs around 20 euros.

Orthodox, Russian Cathedral. They were having a wedding in there. It was pretty neat, but I couldn't find the location for the reception =(

ReindeerPan - Mix of Potatoes, Veggies, Reindeer Sausage, Reindeer Meatballs served with Lingonberry Sauce and Gravy (the same stuff you'd get with the Ikea Swedish Meatballs). Man, this stuff is GOOD. It was heavy and very gamey, but lots of flavor. Also tried their famous Salmon, Mammi (gross), Karelian Pastry (OK), Glogi (awesome drink), Viili (hard yogurt), Pulla (awesome desert), and Hesburger (Finnish version of McDonalds). Also, everything in the supermarket is organic and whole-wheat (and very pricey).

Statues and Swedish architecture everywhere in City Center. This was at around 9PM.. Haha. It doesn't really get dark.. just very dusk I'd say. Sunset around 11PM or so, sunrise around 2AM. In late June/July, there is no darkness.

Lots of people in downtown. Malls are huge and pricey. Blondes everywhere.. I feel very out of place. This is an entirely different culture. People here are very quiet, introverted, and shy... until the night =D Stories on that later, perhaps.

Parliament building. Pretty sweet - toured the building (for free of course). Also went to the rock church (underground church), Sibelius monument, Finlandia concert hall, and the Finnish National Museum. Going to Olympic Stadium, Suommenlina Fortress/Island, more churches, etc next weekend.

As for lab work, it's pretty awesome. I'm learning a new coding system (LabView) which is extremely tedious and even more difficult than MatLab (which I use at Emory). I'm working with a graduate student to design the task and hopefully get it working by June 1st. We'll be working in the "BioMag" of the hospital recording E/MEG from subjects for the entire month of June. Then I will most likely takeover the project and begin analysis of the data. Also, my PI lent me his bike! Very useful.

Welcome to Vancouver!

This is definitely one of the most beautiful cities I've visited. :) Look at the waterfront...

I arrived a couple of days ago and am really enjoying it so far. Our current neighborhood is nice and the air is very fresh because the city is so close to water. It's a little bit cold (10-15*C), but I don't mind because it's perfect for running. :)

I will start work officially on Tuesday, but plan to visit Simon Fraser University and my lab on Monday so I can get more familiar with it. Until then I plan to explore the city a little bit more.

All in all, everything is going fine. My only quip is that prices here seem to be a little on the high side, but this may be because I'm living very close to downtown right now. We'll see what happens when I move closer to the university.

I'll update next week with a post about starting work. Bye bye until then! :)

Oxford at last

Greetings from the other side of the world - my first trip to foreign soil!




Flight out of New Jersey to London - very early in the morning... Plane landed at 7:45 pm











The bus transit station connected to Heathrow Airport was actually very simple. Note to self: always buy "Open Return" tickets (just like return flights, it's much cheaper and you can come back whenever!)

The best way to get to know a new college town is to show up on Thirsty Thursday at midnight. I'll spare you pictures of typical student activity on Broad St and High St (always entertaining) and skip to the beautiful night sights :)



Oxford Town Hall (or something like that...)














Ah, there it is... I've arrived.











So I stayed my first night in the Oxford Backpackers Hostel. It was 1:30 in the morning (they technically closed two hours earlier) but good old-fashioned British hospitality won the day and I was given a room (or maybe it was just good business sense...). Either way, I was trying to not wake up the other 8 people already sleeping in Room #11, so no pictures =) Being right next door to a club, my earplugs have already come in handy! It's a fantastic place that I recommend to anyone coming through Oxfordshire... everyone has a great sense of humor (WiFi password is 'ihatepasswords').



Look, Cathy! I've already found one of the places to visit on my list...












Right now, I'm directly next door to the famed Eagle and Child pub - where C.S. Lewis met with his contemporary philosophers and authors while reasoning through Christianity vs. Atheism.

Yes, Cathy - that's TWO in my first 12 hours here :)

I'm sending this from upstairs in the Greens Cafe. Note to Self #2: free WiFi hotspots are turned off for lunch, 12-2 pm (why, I have no idea...) but for now, it's time to grab another croissant and be on my way!

The next few days will be spent settling into the room I'm renting for the summer, getting my Academic Visitor pass at Oxford, meeting with the P.I. of the lab (Robin Dunbar) to FINALLY communicate face-to-face about my project, and visiting local workout facilities! I'm still deciding whether or not to purchase souvenirs for anyone... ;)

'Til we meet again,
Cheers!

Welcome

Terve!

Welcome to Helsinki!

For those who haven't left yet - carry with you a copy of your RETURN flight confirmation e-mail.

Got a bit lost with the buses. Wound up in

downtown and Helsinki's major train station.

Emory and Ravens: Represent. Room is a bit small, but the 4 other guys I live with are cool.

There is no air conditioning (it's 51F right now.. or around 15C). Work begins tomorrow.

A New Life in Quito

Written in the ATL airport with no free wifi:

First post—it’s always the hardest. After two weeks of spending pretty much every waking moment in the lab trying to complete my independent research project, I finally feel ready for the Ecuador trip to begin, somewhat. I’m anticipating visiting a third world country, but from many people that I’ve spoken to they say that the city is great—basically first world—but you travel an hour outside in any direction and you’ve hit the rural areas with health and wealth disparities galore. I’m excited to hit the ground running, as many of you know I would be. I should be meeting with a few of our collaborators at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) on Friday, May 20th to make sure we have enough supplies for our field study at the end of June. If not, then we’ll have to order it through Emory and make sure they get in before Marissa Grossman (my research partner!) comes down to Quito on June 2^nd. Looks like we're planning on doing 400 assays every other week for 4 weeks from the end of June through July. In the meantime we'll be helping out with the current projects so we have space when ours begins. Ahh nerves, excitement and curiosity are hitting the roof! It’ll be a pretty darn busy summer: Spanish school (5-6 hours a day of individual tutoring for 3-4 weeks), blogging, complete my research report, ORIENTATION 2011, and preparing/going into the field for the water microbiology study. The next time I post I would’ve already landed and started to adjust to the high altitudes. Fingers crossed I don’t get altitude sickness! Adiós!

From Quito, Ecuador:

For those of you who think that Quito is incredibly warm all day long you are VERY wrong. Because Quito is about 2800 meters above sea level it gets incredibly chilly at night and in the early mornings, but the afternoons are super warm or chilly (again) or raining. Definitely temperamental weather. I'm currently living with a host family that consists of a German guy dating an Ecuadorian girl who are both a year older than me and only speak Spanish. It's pretty awesome. One downfall: cold showers, I would almost argue the warm bucket baths in Africa were better. :-P

I went in to the USFQ lab earlier today to talk to our collaborators about supplies and other materials we need for the field study and eventually celebrated one of the microbio lab doctor's birthday! Everything here is so reasonably priced. Each meal is about $2-3 dollars and staying with my host family is about $10 a night. Did I mention the currency is US dollars? My Spanish needs some brushing up for sure but I can pretty much understand what everyone is saying...so far. The public transportation is also another thing to boast about. It's not perfect, but it's pretty darn good with 1 trolley bus, 1 metrobus, and 1 ecovia bus: all travel north and south on main roads--10 de agosto, América, y 6 de diciembre. The entire city is about 45 km wide so it's not too difficult to get around, but I've definitely gotten lost for a couple hours trying to feel my way through the streets.

I think I'll spend the weekend running in la parque carolina, which is right next to my host family house and check out la Mariscal that's known to be a 'hoppin' nightlife place. Bring on the salsa! It's a little bizarre, but I almost feel like I could live here for a very long time before wanting to go anywhere else. Let's see how the research experience turns out and we'll go from there. Chao!

Preparing for winter!

After having just finished up my junior year at Emory, I'm preparing to go to the other side of the world and research in New Zealand for the summer! As an anthropology major, I have spent my last two summers excavating in Jordan, but now I will try my hand at studying in a lab abroad.

My research at Emory is with Dr. George Armelagos where I make thin sections out of ancient Sudanese Nubian bones to look for evidence of tetracycline labeling. These ribs are about 1500 years old and are extremely well preserved. Next year I will be writing an honors thesis on my work with these human remains and continue to examine the evidence left by this antibiotic and its possible origins of ingestion by the population.

This summer, I will be working on a project that is a bit different than my research in Atlanta - I'm going to be looking for evidence of erosive arthopathies, which includes diseases such as gout, in human remains from Polynesia. Rather than cutting up bones with a band-saw and creating thin sections to look at under a microscope, I'll be studying the gross anatomy of these bones to look for pitting and lesions caused by specific diseases. My mentor for this summer will be Dr. Hallie Buckley of the University of Otago in Dunedin. She, like Dr. Armelagos, is also a paleopathologist.

In the mean time, I'm here in Chicago, resting up from the school year and preparing for my adventure down under! I just purchased a pair of hiking boots suited for winter weather, as my other pair are meant for the desert and won't keep my feet very warm. Even though I will be working in a lab most of the time, I am going to definitely do some hiking over there and spend as much time as I can outside in that beautiful country! The only thing I'm sad about is that I will be missing summer, as I'm used to working outside all summer as either an archaeologist or a lifeguard, which is what I've done for the last 7 years, so this will be a definite change! To cope with that though, I have some warmer hiking clothing so I can ignore the fact that it's cold and spend time outside, so it should be just fine! :)

I have a week left before my departure and almost everything is taken care of, except for my laundry! I will have to get to that next ...

The beginning of my Ecuadorian Adventures

With the end of finals just around the corner, the summer is looking mighty fine. My Ecuadorian adventures will begin on May 18th, 2011 and go up until August 14th, 2011 where I will come straight back to ATL in preparation for Orientation 2011! No doubt, it's going to be a fun-filled summer with much more of a 'roughin it out' type lifestyle for a good 12 weeks.

First, I'll be traveling to Quito, Ecuador where 2-3 things will happen:

1) Moderately serious to serious note--I'll be taking about 3 weeks of intensive Spanish schooling and staying with a host family. Let's keep our fingers crossed that I come back with a bit more fluency under my belt.

2) Less of a serious note--After taking Spanish classes in the morning, I'm hoping to take some salsa classes in the afternoon for $5 per hour! I doubt this would make me a pro, but it sure sounds like a heck of a lotta fun!

3) Seriously--I will also be going into the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador laboratory to make sure that we are fully prepared before heading into our 4-week field sampling (in Northern coastal Ecuador) with 2-weeks in between to process the samples in the Quito lab.

A significant portion of my research will involve collecting water and soil samples to test for antibiotic resistance to Escherichia coli (E. coli), which is a common indicator used to detect fecal contamination (i.e. poop in the environment). The research project I will be participating in is called EcoDess where environmental health researchers from the US and Ecuador are interested in the intersection between diarrheal disease and environmental change. Fortunately for me, this type of research is EXACTLY where my passion lies: poop and water. Who would've thought anyone could be attracted to that combination? ;-) Trust me, there’s a ton of us.

I'm sure I'll squeeze in some time for traveling around the country/countries (keep up with the blog and you'll hear all about it!), but until then get ready Ecuador because we're gonna fall in love with each other by the end of this trip.