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 :)