Monday, June 20- Damn Time Zones

Today at lunch I had a wonderful time. We embarked on what I anticipated to be a legitimate conversation regarding time-zones and how I managed to call people in the US when I was in Europe (I either call in my evening during US lunch break, or weekend nights when its the middle of the afternoon, or I wake up at 3/4am to call people after their work is over depending on East or West coast). Since one of the women I work with will be going to the US in October she was wondering how she’d be able to contact her family and friends here (it would be opposite- call in morning and get people at lunch or call during lunch, get people in evenings). But then the conversation took a 180 and the heated subject of “why the hell is Poland in the Central European Time (CET) zone instead of UTC +3 which would make much more sense especially in the winter”—the argument was essentially a combination of who the hell needs the sun to rise at 5am in the winter when the sun sets at 3:30pm? People would be much happier if the sun came up at 6am and there was sun until 5pm, and maybe less people would kill themselves because of it! . .. . and on and on. As there was only one person actually from Poland eating with us today, she was being grilled and told that she could solve the entire problem. Ha, it was utterly absurd, but just the break from reality and lab life that was needed. A lot of laughter always makes the second half of any day much much better :) 

My den out in the hallway for 4am conference calls 

That evening a large amount of our lab group went out to dinner to celebrate the completion of a four month internship by two Italian interns. So naturally, we went to Jeff’s American Bar and Grill- I swear I was not involved in determining the location for our dinner! But nonetheless, it was fun to actually have an excuse to go here when I walk by it daily as I walk home from work. As the only person from the US at the table, I was bombarded with questions about how this restaurant compared to the ones in the states. Ironically, very well. The ambiance was one much like Applebee’s (or Fuddruckers) with every inch of wall covered with signs, models, and sport artifacts—> including the ceiling having a driving range and clubs hanging from it! The food too was “American sized” and the burgers that people got looked impossible to actually eat with one’s hands…. But Jeff’s is in fact only a Polish branch in various locations in the country and there is no chain in the states yet. After all, all the menus were also in Polish! 

Totally wasn't kidding about the green on the ceiling

Not my best picture, but if you've been to Applebee's, Chili's, Fuddruckers, etc. its similar

I learned an important phrase that night —> “its just a different color of the same shit.” This phrase is often used when multiple things go bad at the same time, or when someone is trying to choose the best course of action which instead turns into deciding between the less-bad option. Probably a great application for politics?? lol 

Weekend #2

Saturday I spent almost the entire day at the Poland Museum of Jewish History. The main exhibit displayed 1,000 years of history of Polish Jewry in over 40,000 sq ft of exhibition space. I was told that there was significantly more covered in the exhibition than just the period of Ghettos, the Holocaust, and post-war era, but I was still surprised at the vast range in exhibition content. I’m starting to feel that the problem with the museums in Poland are there is simply TOO much material that it’s just not possible to absorb in one visit. I was there for over four hours and I didn’t read every word of explanation on all the material shown. If you’re a history buff with an interest in Judaic studies and European Jews, then this would be a museum for you. I would also suggest purchasing the audioguides. I didn’t do this, and I was ok because almost every plaque was written in Polish, English, and Hebrew; however, almost all of the audio interactive displays contained only Polish audio. It would also be less exhausting I think if you could sometimes just listed to the history (in English) and explanation of what you’re seeing vs. having to read it all. 

Even the Jews care about their beer back in the day 

Because all Jews know knowledge will open more doors than just about anything else

A replica of a "Jewish street"

Read carefully, the irony is still sometimes too true. 

Went to the temporary exhibit and found yet ANOTHER guard "on duty"... Well, it was the day of rest (Saturday) ;) 

My personal favorite part of the temporary exhibit...

The Jewish museum is actually not too far from where my dorm is, so since by the afternoon the sun had popped out, I enjoyed a nice walk home. Along the way I saw many statues/monuments and ornate looking building, some even patrolled by guards (I think this one had some government ties). Either way, Warsaw has been a fun place to explore different routes to get around town and an opportunity to simply walk around a lot in beautiful scenery.

Outdoor Gym (actually though its not a playground, it has diagrams of what muscles you're working)

On Sunday, the other interns in Warsaw joined as we explored the Palace on the Isles and surrounding buildings in the park. Oddly enough, according to the ticket agent the student rate only applied for students of Polish universities. However, I’m still not entirely convinced this is true because another worker in the system told us that we did qualify for student tickets even though none of us attended Polish universities. In the end, we only entered the free admission areas and enjoyed walking around the park. It was a picture perfect summer day- clear blue sky, only a few clouds, tons of sun, and 75-80 degree weather. To be honest, it was almost too hot to be in the sun  comfortably. So we enjoyed an ice cream cone and then went to lunch at the same place we had dinner last weekend and got a chance to try a few new dishes. 

Literally have ~20 pics from this general area and I have my eyes closed in all :( 

That afternoon, we went on the Orange Umbrella Free Walking Tour of Communism. Unfortunately, I think the amazing walking tours of Prague spoiled this one for me and I wasn’t as impressed by this tour. I felt we didn’t see that much of the city but instead stopped every five minutes for a 20 minute history lecture… There were a few funny stories though that went a little something like this: During the time of extreme poverty and rations, they simply weren’t enough for all. So people would line up bright and early ~4-6am to get in line in the hopes that today there would be meat and bread in the store. The cues were terribly long, and one day a man fed up with the cue left saying this was insane and he was off to murder the leader or Poland (sorry name sounded like Camuka, but not sure how to spell or if I totally have the name wrong here). So the man comes back hours later and everyone ask, so did you kill him!? He relies, “no, the cue to kill Camuka was longer than the cue here!” lol lots of distrust and annoyance with the government of the poor country under the communist regime.  

Feeling bad for Hello Kitty 

Following the walking tour, we stopped at the main central mall to cool off from the tour and then went across the street to the Palace of Science and Culture, for a small price, you can get a ticket up to the 30th floor of the Palace (which is the tallest building in Warsaw and the tallest originally communist building in Europe) for a view of the city. The panoramic views were really pretty cool here. We went up around 7:30 since it closes at 8, and got to see the beginning of the sun setting sky from the tower. If you want to see a view of the city, I’d recommend it, but know there is wire all around the observation deck so pictures are hard unless you put your camera through it. Also, there is a ton of rooms and exhibits inside the palace apparently, so we could have done more there too. 

Too tall to fit everything

Case for further exploration

One of the pano views

Friday- So are Humans 20% Translucent?

So today in lab we brought the samples that were prepared earlier that week over to the main faculty building to use the micro- CT. Essentially it operates extremely similarly to a traditional CT machine that a human can be imaged in; however, instead of the emitter rotating around the x-rayed object, the object rotates around the emitter. For some science behind what our aims were with a CT machine, we were wondering if different sizes of gold nanoparticles changed the imageability of the scaffolds that were made, and more importantly that there was a difference in the visibility between the control (no gold) and our samples with gold nanoparticles. Indeed we were able to confirm the original hypothesis and move forward with further tests. In the calibration process of using the micro-CT I learned something quite peculiar - in order to operate the CT and get good images, the sample has to be at least 20% translucent. In a bizarre turn of events, the opening up the micro-CT to run our sample we removed none other than a mounted piece of chocolate. So apparently this block of chocolate is also 20% translucent—aka chocolate MUST be HEALTHY! And no, I did not care to learn if CTed chocolate tastes the same as chocolate before being CTed. lol However, this did make me wonder if the same parameters required to operate our micro-CT (20% translucent samples) applies in a full CT for human use. In other words, are humans also 20% translucent?? 

CTed Chocolate

And an IPA next to the lab monitor. Clearly the last operator was having some fun. 

Today was also a day that was victim of a sudden, violent storm. For a while there were menacing clouds and then suddenly the rain started to drip and within two minutes there was a torrential downpour accompanied by vicious winds! Luckily this only lasted in intervals for about two hours, so we could transfer buildings and continue with our experiments. The walk between buildings is about twenty minutes or so through a park that was scattered with broken branches and bending trees from the recent storm. Apparently the storm was severe enough to even interrupt the service of some of the tram lines, or this is what I’m assuming after a half hour of no trams coming through the station in either direction. Luckily there was a bus stop across the street that took me close enough to my dorm that all was fine. 

Tonight I planned what things I wanted to do over the weekend and continued to look into the various things I want to do in Berlin and Budapest. :) 

June 15/16- How about a Holiday?

It took until the middle of the second week, but I’m finally actively in the lab :D Today I started by learning more about the specific to the research project I am working on and the hypothesis my supervisor is studying. After that we walked through how the bone tissue scaffolds are made with the method she is employing in the study. From there, I was able to start taking more responsibility and doing the preparation myself. Lesson one- when there isn’t AC or fans in the lab and its hotter inside than out, don’t expect it to be comfortable in a lab coat and gloves; take breaks and drink water to get through it. Lesson two- I am glove challenged. I am not sure if there is a trick doctors/surgeons/scientists know that I don’t, or maybe its because my hands were already sweaty from the heat, but I’m pretty sure its impossible to efficiently put on gloves when your hands are sweaty. I spent about 5 minutes putting on gloves… not my brightest moment of the week… 

Currently I am working on preparing samples with PBS as our solvent and adding GelMa and gold nanoparticles of various diameters to our solutions. At this point the solution is in the liquid form and can be chemically cross-linked by exposing the liquid to UV light which turns the liquid into a gel or jell-o like consistency. This gel is now a cross-linked tissue scaffold composed of all natural polymers in order to increase the similarities to natural body environment and reduce the chance that it would be rejected by real tissue. Check out some of my pictures below of sample preparations.

On Wednesday I also learned that the majority of people in my lab will be in various countries off at research symposiums during the week of the 27th of June presenting their research and the remaining people that aren’t going to conferences are most likely going to be taking holiday since most everyone will be gone. I can’t be the only one in the lab for safely reasons. All together this means that after asking the main professor, I am apparently getting a holiday that week! I wish I knew a little sooner because I wouldn’t be so rushed trying to decide, plan, and book where I want to visit during this time. Ultimately, I decided after going to Wroclaw, Poland from Friday-Sunday the 24-26 for an IAESTE planned weekend, I would head to Berlin by train and see the city for three and a half-ish days. After seeing Berlin, I will fly to Budapest and spend Thursday evening through Sunday evening in Budapest before going back to Warsaw and getting ready to go back to work. I owe a HUGE thanks here to my brother Ben and friend Anna for helping me decide what cities and countries to visit, where to stay (hostel) or at least what to look for in a hostel, and provide plenty of suggestions of things to do. Hopefully I will have enough time to at least hit the highlights that were mentioned and get to enjoy the time off and amazing opportunity to travel a bit around Europe :D 

Tuesday- June 14- I have a supervisor!

So for those of you that didn’t know, I was a little bit of an “orphan” at work last week. I was well taken care of, but my immediate supervisor (the PhD student I’m working with) was actually on a long ago planned holiday. Which meant my entire last week was about getting to know the other people in my lab, learning everything I needed about safety procedures, learning how to operate the machines I would be utilizing, and finally spending ALL remaining time reading various research articles related to the field of study that my research would be about. As you can imagine, it was not the most riveting work week of my life ;) However, I did get to explore various things in town and have a relatively easy first week as I got adjusted to living in Warsaw. But, as of today, I have a supervisor and am actually doing things in the lab! So excited by this :D 

The student I am working with is actually from Turkey, and is very sweet. I’m excited to get to learn from her because I can already tell she is very smart and knows a lot about biomedical engineering of biomaterials. Here is to an exciting internship!  

Monday, June 13 - Polish Wise Words

Well today I realized, I may move half-way across the world, but I am still a college student. After all, if you took inventory of what I currently have to eat in my dorm is - 1 yogurt, half a zucchini, 2 apples, half a loaf of bread, 1 instant cup of noodles, lots of granola bars, and a liter of water. Yum, 4-course meals here y'all! At least I have most of my food groups covered :) Don't worry parents, I do eat, I'm just currently trying to still figure out how to cook at my place when I have fridge space smaller than my hand (and this is not an over-exaggeration either)! #SixWomenOneFridge

I also want to share some of my personal favorite things I have learned from my time in Warsaw. I'll start with a brief language lesson that I was given within my first week. A friend texted me "Nie ma za co" which means "you're welcome," so a useful phase if you actually help someone. Honestly, "thank you" or "hi" would probably have been a more useful first lesson, but it is the age of the internet and I do know how to use google translate...

To contrast, "Kurwa" was the word the interns learned together as our first vocab lesson during our first night out. Unsurprisingly, this means F***, [insert any profane word] it is basically interchangeable. The advise- if you hear someone saying this repeatedly at you or on the phone, or in general, stand clear, and agree with them, UNLESS you are a woman. Why? Because Kurwa also means whore, and well, enough said. Oh and why it's not surprising that this was included in our first language lesson is because Poles swear A LOT. Plus many of them like to swear in English (even when the rest of the sentence was in Polish sometimes). So many people I've met, even those that are still working on being more fluent in English, still enjoy swearing in English --perhaps if a fad. ;)

My favorite sign thus far has been "Come hungry, leave drunk" on the front door of a bar/restaurant. Thank you Polish people for being completely honest and telling the TRUTH!

My favorite thing I've seen in the store thus far has to be this:

Must be a really bad drink ;) 

Sunday, June 12 --Warsaw Uprising Museum

Hi All,

Today was another really nice day out, but myself and one of the other interns decided to use part of the day to explore the Warsaw Uprising Museum (because free admission on Sundays- duh). Anyways, Poland like much of Europe was, at one point, in the process of being conquered and subsequently ruled, by Germany and the Soviet Union. So the Uprising Museum is ultimately filled with tons and tons of history dating back to September of 1939, the beginning of the Germany invasion of Warsaw. This museum is 3 floors and packed with history. We spent a solid 2 hours, maybe closer to 2.5 hours and barely made it through floor 1 and glimpses of floor 2. I hope to make it back another day, because even though History was never my favorite subject (surprise, I'm in Engineering) this museum made the history extremely interesting and riveting. While some was hard to see (the conditions of the Jewish Ghettos, not even concentration camps), the stories of the courage and strength of the Warsaw community, the young men AND WOMEN that stood up for their city and country and fought for their rights and way of life to persist as they tried to overpower the Germans was really inspiring to see, hear, and read about.

The stories of various people important to the uprising

Complete with period-relevant phones

Motorbike with sidecar, anyone?

Beautifully orchestrated layout of history in the museum

One area devoted to discussion of Jewish Ghettos and Nazi infiltration 

"A special badge, the 'Warsaw Shield' is introduced in 1944 for German soldiers fighting to suppress the Rising."

Interns climbing through the model (sewer) tunnels . . . #OnceAKid #AlwaysAKid 

After the museum we went to a local chain of restaurants that serves traditional Polish cuisine-- Zapiecek. The waitresses even wore traditional Polish dresses here (tbh I'm not sure how I feel about this but I won't go on a feminist rant), but this restaurant was recommended by IAESTE committee students and various people at work say its one of their favorite places to have traditional Polish food. After all, it was quite good. Their menu definitely had a lot of options that sounded wonderful and if I go back, I will definitely be able to find something else to try as well. Perks- they also have a English edition of the menu and tons of pictures! I'm a sucker for pretty pictures of food on menus, what can I say, they help me decide when I have never had most of the traditional cuisine before.

Traditional Polish Dumplings

Enjoying the evening on the patio :) #umichenginabroad 

Saturday, June 11- Interns Conquer Old Town

Aw, the weekend! I’m so glad I chose this weekend as an opportunity to just catch up on sleep. Being able to see in to around 11 was just so wonderful! I generally am not able to go to bed really “early” so sleeping in is my way of catching up on some shut-eye. :) 

Today I went out with the other interns I met with IAESTE to explore Old Town. Our first stop was getting some lunch at an Italian place (you have no idea how much flack we got from the Poles that evening for stopping here since it was the first place we ran into…). If you were wondering what a good way to walk a lot was, here is my advice -->  either have no idea know where you are going and get lost so you end up walking in circles, or just have no agenda and walk aimlessly and chose walking over public transit. Luckily we were in the later group and were simply enjoying the nice weather to walk around outside. So we walked a lot around Old Town and saw the Royal Castle, explore a nice university building displaying Muzeum Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, and then walked to beautiful church across the Vistula River, the National Stadium of Warsaw for UEFA and more! We tried to get into the stadium but for some reason we could only walk in the track through the gates, but outside the stadium. Tons of people were biking, rollerblading, skateboarding, etc. in this paved walk way and it was a nice walk. Apparently the main reception is usually open to tourists and anyone who wants to go inside and see the locker room, some famous seats, and other things that are inside, so maybe we will go back another day. On our way back to our dorm before going to IAESTE's birthday party, we tried to find this donut shop that we were told a few days ago was AMAZING! Problem was, none of us knew the name or the street it was on, we only knew we walked by it once. Ha luckily my spidy sense got us there ;) 

Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel and Florian the Martyr - Minor Basilica 

Museum building

Royal Palace

Old Town Road

Interns find the donut shop

Chocolate donut beats all! 

Today was also IAESTE's birthday party—> IAESTE Poland turned 57 today and this also means that the IAESTE Warsaw committee also turned 57 today (Warsaw is the oldest committee in Poland). So this birthday, along with the fact that interns have just arrived, and the Politechnika Warszawska students have exams that start on Monday, means tonight was one to remember (or for some people, maybe not remember) as we celebrated all of the above! A few things I learned from this experience include—Poles know how to drink their vodka; seriously though, they drink that stuff like water, I don’t even understand. Beyond that, I was smart enough to make sure to have dinner first and unlike one of the interns I did NOT make the fatal mistake of mixing vodka with beer in the same night. I also found it funny because one of the Warsaw committee girls was trying to convince me that by the end of the summer they would make sure I could 1- drink like a Pole (aka drink lots of Vodka); and 2- outdrink many of my male counterparts in the US. Somehow I’m skeptical, but apparently I didn’t do the RIGHT type of research on Poland before coming to realize that an internship in Poland + living with college students = learning how to drink like a Pole. lol 

Surviving Dorm Life -June 10

So living a few days in the dorm, I have learned a thing or two. One--> sharing 1 bathroom and 1 shower with 6 women, is super fun. It’s especially fun when you don’t know everyone yet and don’t know if people take morning or night showers…It has become a “oh the shower is open, run for it” felling when deciding when I should take a shower. Plus the semester is still in session for my roommates, and I do not know their schedules for class and exams start next week. Lastly, there is no dorm-wide wifi. There are cords you can use to connect or the room has to get a router. Luckily my roommates have a router! Unfortunately this means I have been making my 3-4 am video calls to US in the hallway so I don't wake up my roommates since noise doesn't travel as well through the hallway door than it travels through our kitchen/living area. 

To my understanding, education in Poland is free. So public education k-12 AND University studies can be free (as long as you don’t fail your classes too many times). Which does sounds like pretty good motivation not to fail your classes if you ask me! Interestingly, its a 2-5 strike limit for the number of times you can fail most classes before you have to pay a fee, so many people take 5-6 years to earn a bachelors if they need to re-take failed classes. While a free education system sounds wonderful, coming from the US where our tuition can be outrageous even at public universities, it does have a downside. For instance, [because education is free] “Poland is producing a lot of people with useless majors like Aerospace Engineering, and Psychology.” Ha, I’m not 100% sure why these two were lumped together besides a bias opinion on not having a good faculty for aerospace engineering here, but it still makes me laugh. On a more serious note, one reason I disagree with making tuition free in the US is because I think it will devalue degrees, oversaturate the market, and encourage everyone to get a degree even for something useless / something that doesn’t really require a degree just because it is free to them to get it. And this is exactly what is happening in many places in Europe and even in Columbia; there are too many people with comparable degrees and in order to even be considered for a job now you have to have a Masters or higher because almost everyone has a bachelors. While having more knowledge may be helpful, it sounds like it is quickly becoming the need for a piece of paper, vs. actually requiring a higher degree to do the job well; which is something I don’t agree with. Now that being said, making higher education affordable is something I am 100% in favor of because the trend of US university prices has become insane over the last few decades. 

After dark, I chose to have a quiet night and simply finish all the editing and uploading of the best of my India pictures. So after many hours from the airport and tonight, I was finally able to complete my upload and finish my India album. So if you’d like to see more of my India photos than the ones I shared on this blog, check out my Facebook. 

A sign in my lab- a good reminder for people in STEM fields

Thursday, June 9 -The Drug Smuggler, Drunk, and McDonalds Addict

Work has continued as normal, but today was the first group meeting that I’ve been around for and it was kind of fun to be a part of. The structure of meetings goes like this—someone in the research group presents about some of their research (usually in preparation to defending a thesis, finishing an internship, or because they just finished analyzing an interesting thing that could help others in the group); then someone else will present on a recent research publication they found that could be interesting to others in the biogroup. Following the presentations, the Professor opened conversation for other things that people thought should be discussed at this meeting or a future meeting to make them more helpful to those in the room. The result of this was that the people that suggested what else to talk about in the meeting were voluntold by the professor to give a presentation on that subject during the next meeting… a young person in the lab was also voluntold for updating the group website and increasing the social media (basically Facebook) reach and their page. haha, I’m glad I don’t know Polish so I wasn’t chosen as the youngest to update any social media! Thankfully though the professor of my lab is a big supporter of holding the weekly meetings in English because our group is multinational and we have people from other countries in Europe in addition to myself and we aren’t fluent in Polish, but most people have a very good understanding of English. 

Tonight was also the first time our local Warsaw student AESTE committee organized a meeting. This was a pretty fun time. I met up early with two representatives from the committee and we went to dinner before meeting up with the entire group. We had dinner at “the best Chinese place”… not that I’m a Chinese food expert or anything, but unless I ordered the wrong dish, I really hope this isn’t the best Chinese food in Warsaw! Oy vey, not that it was really bad or anything, it was edible, but definitely not where I’d be going on Christmas for Chinese and a movie ;) 

Apparently we started our night out by going to the cheapest bar in town where a ton of student go for decent drinks at a great price. College translation from a student of the university here in Warsaw “This is where the parties all start. Its a really great place to start if you just really want to have a great time and of course, get drunk.” After all, the bar is open 24/7 and the do have meals, including breakfast that can be ordered. One of the guys in our group ordered a traditional Polish dish that included raw meat that you mix with onion, peppers, and raw egg yoke and eat it on bread… So not only does this dish sound highly likely to make someone ill, I’m agreeing with the other people at the table and saying the dish sounds even sketchier getting it from a bar/dinner vs a nicer restaurant. After we left the bar, we stopped by a convenience shop and people picked up beers before heading to the Vistula River. Apparently it is illegal to drink in public spaces in Warsaw, with the ONE exception of this sandy beach along the river. So on our walk over there we got to enjoy this beautiful view of the sunsetting over the river and bridge. Hopefully we will have another night to enjoy the same and next time we will “do it right and bring a fire and cook some meat” (apparently the Polish REALLY love their meat)! When I asked if they had S’mores they looked at me with blank expressions and after I explained it, I was still greeted with confusion. Hopefully they will come to the US one day and realize how much they are missing out on, because for now they sadly are unaware. 

The view from crossing the river

Like any night out with new friends, what’s a night without introductions and most importantly, mildly offensive stereotypes! ;) To explain, tonight was the first night that the IAESTE Student Committee officially brought together the interns in Warsaw to meet. (FYI IAESTE is the international program that connects students seeking internships abroad with opportunities to do so. To my understanding, each country has their own IAESTE group and then the cities that host interns often have their own student group for organizing accommodations, logistics during the internships, and are their as friends, mentors, and a support system to help us navigate Warsaw). Anyways, currently there are only three interns in Warsaw- myself, a guy from Ireland, and a guy from Columbia. So between all of us, we are a quite representative group—> we have the Pols that may or may not steal everything around, we have the Columbian drug smuggler, we have a drunk Irishman (no joke, he was gonna work in an Irish pub this summer in Paris..), and then we have the American that eats McDonalds for every meal! So here’s to a fun summer with this slightly crazy, but wonderfully fun bunch of people :) 

Group Selfie with interns and Warsaw IAESTE Committee Representatives

The Iconic Clock Tower that was gifted by Soviet Union with original name: "Joseph Stalin Palace of Culture and Science"

Work, work, work, work, work, work June 7/8

Tuesday and Wednesday were traditional days at the office. Like I may have mentioned, this week is going to be just general training, safety training, getting settled in the lab, learning new machines, and then reading scientific articles related to the subject my internship is on. So there really isn’t much to report on the work front yet. I have been going out to lunch a couple days with some of my co-workers. Thankfully they know Polish and English and were able to help me understand some of the menu enough to order something. The place we go is a few minutes walk away from our lab, and the restaurant has a new menu each day. I was surprised at how inexpensive the lunches translate in USD to ~ $3-4 but it is a full plate of very good food! The meal is so large that even when I was very hungry for lunch it just isn’t possible for me to completely finish my plate! But these lunches have been a really fun time to get to know some of the other women I work with outside of the lab. On the second day we had lunch together, we mostly talked about Minnesota :D Ha, I told them I was from MN the day before and their response was, “wow, its cold there, isn’t it?” ha that’s MN for you, we are known even abroad as being cold! My coworkers seemed to have gone home and researched about MN and were eager to discuss the things that they found! The fun facts that they found out were that MN is ranked one of the healthiest states in the US; MN is actually pretty cold, colder than it gets in Poland; MN has a lot of nature with a lot of lakes and parks. It was really interesting to hear the facts that they found interesting about MN and learn more about Poland and my coworkers. 

Poland has very good public transit; however, if you take the transit during “rush hour” you will have a Bursley Baits experience! So, because the weather has been absolutely beautiful, I decided to explore the route to walk home. The first time I did the walk it took me about 40-45 minutes, but even by the second time, I could walk in 30-35 minutes. To me, this is a perfect way to end my day or even begin my day (I walked to work Friday morning since it was scheduled to rain from 10-4pm). My walk back is essentially straight through two large park areas. One is directly across the street from my dorm, so I am looking forward to being able to chill in this park after work this summer. 

There is nothing like enjoying an extremely bizarre sleep schedule because of video calling the US at 3 or 4am Warsaw time in order to get everyone from the East to West Coasts on the call after work! Thankfully I was able to go to bed extra early before the calls; wake up for the call; and then go back to bed shortly after the calls for a little bit before work. I’m also lucky that my lab most people don’t arrive until 9:30 or later, so I just have to leave my place by 9am and I should be able to get to work by ~9:30-40am. 

Incase you didn’t know, bringing an eye mask is an absolute must if you visit Warsaw in the summer. Right now, the sunrise is ~4am and sunset is after 9pm. Which means I can get plenty of sunshine during my day (which I love), but I also get plenty of sunshine in my night, so … it’s nearly impossible to sleep through the night for me because the room gets so bright by 4am. This also means I have beautiful views of the sunrise by the time I get off my video calls which makes being up in the middle of the “night” slightly less bad. 

On Tuesday evening, I even went to a restaurant by myself for the first time and actually was able to get a meal when everything was in Polish (the cashier may have spoken English though). Still I had a nice dinner and found a place near my dorm that has good food at an inexpensive price, even for Polish standards (only 12.6PLN)! I’m excited to continue to explore around Poland and Europe because even places with inexpensive food can be very good meals :) 

The Internship Begins! - June 6

Today is the day I've been anticipating for over a year; my first day of my internship abroad. Like every time we move, one of the most challenging tasks, in my opinion, is finding your way in a new city. This is especially true when you're in a new city that you don't know the local language. Again, I am glad the first day I had the help of an IAESTE representative to walk me to the office in one piece :)

While public transportation (busses, trams and metro-subway) is extremely efficient and helpful, everything is in Polish (with the exception with the metro stops an announcement speaks in Polish and repeats in English). We took the tram to work, so I quietly accepted not understanding any of the signs and announcements, hoping nothing important was there...

I'm working with the Biogroup, a Materials Science and Engineering division of Politechnika Warszawska, at their IPPT PAN lab/office. During my internship I will be working with a Ph.D student who is working with hydrogels and polymers for bone tissue scaffolding applications. My first week will largely be continuing to read up on processes and doing safety training with the lab and the specific equipment I will be operating during my internship. The lab has a mixture of people from Poland, other European countries, and a few exceptions (like myself). You can tell when someone is a foreigner (not from Poland) because that is when you hear English! English has quickly become the language of business which extends to academic research. According to a friend in Poland, over recent years, it [learning English well] has become a necessity if you want a decent job, especially as an engineer.

On the afternoon of my first day, I had my first meeting with the Professor in charge of the lab. Unfortunately his office is in the Faculty building which is about a 20-30 minute walk form the IPPT lab. Luckily a graduate student in my lab was willing to walk me over there so I won't get lost. The one problem with meeting the Professor was having to navigate home from a different place than I was shown that morning! Thankfully my trip really wasn't that bad, I just had to use the tram and metro from this point.

That evening, I again met with IAESTE so we could get me city card set up so I could have full access to transit without having to purchase a ticket every time I boarded. Many people that work in administrative offices (for my dorm and transit office) don't appear to speak much English, so I am very thankful to have people that are here to help me navigate. One of my roommates was even nice enough to go on a trip to the store to get a bath towel and other things I didn't want to bring with me. I didn't realize how difficult it would be to find a bath/swim towel in the stores around our dorm! We literally went to four stores in search of a towel with no avail. Luckily my roommate wasn't annoyed and she thought of one last place--> a small mall near us that may have a towel in their larger supermarket vs. having to go to the city center. She was right! I'm so thankful to have people around me that have been so willing to help me get settled and navigate my way in Warsaw <3

Your Flight has been Canceled... June 5

Hello,

A word to the wise- you may not get notified when your flight is canceled when flying within Europe. After all, as I arrived in the Prague airport about an hour and 45 minutes prior to "departure", I was greeted by the billboard listing all flights departing in the next few hours and saw the word "CANCELED" in bold following my flight number. Oh I bet you can imagine the emotions that settled as I read the last word, knowing my internship began the following morning! Luckily, as I went to the ticket counter and was directed to the customer service area I was able to be rescheduled a later flight that evening. Unfortunately for me, this meant that I spent the next ~7 hrs in the airport instead of exploring Prague or getting settled in Warsaw. :(

Photo following our last breakfast together with my wonderful exploring buddy 

Even though my day took a wrong turn, I was still able to be productive. Because of the delay, I was able to go through all my Prague pictures, edit them, and upload some of the better ones to Facebook. I almost finished doing the same for my India photos as well (I have one more day--Taj where I got a little photo happy so it may take a bit still). Thankfully with the flight delay, I was given a food voucher so I didn't have to worry about the fact I left the lunch I packed in Anna's backpack and gave her all my left over koruna before leaving.

Lunch and Dinner rations 

Boarding our tiny plane

"Flat" landing wheels... reassuring (or should it have been?)

The tiny plane :)

Since sleep is generally overrated when traveling with limited time, I was thankful for the 1.5 hr nap on my flight which helped me make it to Warsaw with some energy left. As I got to the Warsaw airport, I was welcomed by IAESTE (the placement company that matched me and found accommodations during my internship). They helped me navigate the public transportation to check-into my dorm; exchange money; get some groceries and settle in knowing I'd meet someone else in the morning to help me get to my first day of work.

Right now, I'm extremely impressed by the dorm I'm in. I'm comparing it to Bursely, so maybe that isn't extremely high comparison standards, but the dorm is very nice. I'd describe my place as suite style living. There are two dorms with three beds that are connected through a middle area with a fridge/freezer, little kitchen, cupbords, table, and bathroom area with a shower, toilet, and four different sink areas. Each of the rooms have SOO much room for the beds, closets, storage shelves and three full desks and chairs. Politechnika Warszawska (Warsaw University of Technology) is still in their regular semester, so I have two roommates (one from southern Poland and one from Russia). I believe most students have about one more week of classes and then the last two weeks of June are final exams. Students then have July and August for vacation; there is a re-take period of a week or two to re-do any class that were failed in the beginning of September and then again a week or two of vacation before term begins in October. Back to the Bursley comparison, my dorm in Warsaw is also right across the street from the metro stop, within about 2-3 blocks from a tram stop and bus stop, and I have free access to a gym next door! 

Prague Castle District - June 4

Hi All,

Today was a day for the Royals ;) Anna and I spent basically the entire day at up in the Prague Castle District area of town. We started our morning off with breakfast at a cafe down the street from the meeting place for the Royal Walk Castle Tour, enjoying the sunshine. That is, we were enjoying the sunshine until Anna got shit on by a pigeon! haha so she had a little bit of a rough morning. Thankfully we had both finished eating by this point and Anna had some really good coffee at the cafe. 

Our castle tour was 11-2pm and then we stayed up there for about another hour or so enjoying the beautiful views from one of the highest points that overlooks the town before heading to Lesser town for the rest of the day. Fun fact, while its called Prague Castle, its really a district comprising of over 70,000 m2 of land and royal buildings. Our journey to the castle started with a short tram ride up to one of the highest places and then we essentially went downhill (geographically of course) from there the rest of the tour. So a few phrases from our guide that made me chuckle as we traveled, "Gotta use the Zebra" (the crosswalk) and "Don't get killed, we have a zero death policy. Bad for Trip Advisor if someone gets killed!" lol the truth of this last statement just makes it more funny in my opinion. 

A few notes from our castle tour and guide that I'll pass on to any future Prague travelers. The Strahov Monastery has a lot of interesting history and is worth learning about by doing a tour with a guide that shows you around the entire castle district, but you have to usually pay separately to enter and its not cheap, plus you can barely go in. It was described as basically you pay to stand at the entrance and look in. Better option is to google for images of the beauty, plus half the books aren’t in view of the area because they are in the treasury and you can’t get near the books as a visitor. We didn’t purchase any extra tickets to view anything additional while on the castle but we were still able to see a great deal from the exterior and St. Vitus Cathedral we were able to walk into part of without purchasing a ticket. Surprisingly, this cathedral took over 600 years from start to finish, contains the 4th largest bell in Europe (in the bell tower), and is one of the largest examples of gothic style churches and the one of the largest Catholic Cathedral ever. One of the main architects took a lot of his inspiration from Norte Dame and contains the classic gargoyles as water spouts on the pillars. Also, according to our guide the food is mostly overpriced and the restaurants aren’t very good. For this reason, Anna and I simply went into Lesser town at the base of the castle district and eat down there. 

Stairs down to town

A view of the streets of Lesser Town

Some fun stories from the tour include:

Matters Gate which depicts an inscription that can be translated to “Matthias, King of Bohemia, [years], asshole.” For this king was not known to be the best to his people. He commissioned Spanish workers to create this gate and refused to give extra money or time beyond the initial quote. Therefore, the workers got their little bit of revenge by spelling the Spanish “ano” (meaning ass) not “año” (year in Spanish), nor Czech “anno” meaning year. The workers were able to claim the second ’n’ just didn’t fit when later asked why they misspelled the word, but it sounds like it was probably purposeful since there was a reason for it to be. 

Funny examples of how relaxed “security” is around Czech monuments and President. The funny story is about a political activist that decided to protest President Zeman by replacing the President Flag in the courtyard of Prague Castle with a giant pair of red boxers that flapped away up there for hours. It took around 5 hours before someone from security felt like taking them down! If this doesn’t show how relaxed the government guards are, then let me share the fact that the President works daily in a building that tourists are allowed to walk completely around (and maybe even go in, didn’t check it out), without going through ANY security! If you want to see something even more shocking, google “Czech President Klaus shot” (it was plastic bullets, but still surprising that not only was no action by the “bodyguards” but no punishment or fine was imposed after this demonstration. A little about politics and why many of the people of Czech don’t like Zeman may be because there is such things as the “Zeman flu” that workers now use as a reason to call in “sick” to work when they are so drunk that by the next morning they may be more drunk than hangover since you’re staggering around still the next morning. This term came about following Zeman’s inauguration when he was drunk (papers called it the “flu” the next morning); its on youtube though, so feel free to make your own judgement. 

The Prague Castle District also holds the world’s 2nd largest toy museum, which holds the largest collection of barbies apparently. In order to “Celebrate Youth” the artist in charge of decorating the area added a statue of a young naked man. From the states where this does not exist, I find the irony of the statue standing literally outside of the toy museum entertaining. (viewer discretion advised—> the communist regime deemed the statue too vulgar) 

As Anna and I wondered around for a dinner destination we were once again gifted with some wonderful views of Charles bridge and got up close and personal with swans that were being fed along the river. This was probably my favorite part of a statue on the Charles bridge because the shining part of the statue (part passers by like the most) is the dog.