Restful Week? July 4-8

Welcome back to Warsaw! I got back to my dorm by 10:30pm and unfortunately decided to reorganize my life a little after being gone for nine days. Unpacking was not welcomed when every part of you just wants to collapse on your bed and sleep in “your own bed” for the first time in a long time. But, it was good to unpack as I realized the stench of the sweated through clothing…. I guess that’s the price you pay when you visit Budapest in summer where its easily 90F and sunny all day and you decide to walk around outside the whole day (definitely drank > 7L water and another 0.75L of Powerade that day). 

I’m glad I had the foresight to leave clean clothing for work Monday at the dorm and shower at the hostel. I think my coworkers appreciated me being clean after the holiday! Of course though, my first day back to work was Monday morning, July 4. Sadly in Poland the 4th of July is not a national holiday like it is in the states… :( 

This week was one for catching up with family and friends back in the states after having quite limited access to wi-fi for the last nine days. It was a wonderful treat to video chat with people from home. It’s always good to catch up with friends in different cities and especially when abroad. Immersing in the culture is great, but sometimes you need a chance to decompress, return to your comfort zone, and speak to familiar faces from home. It’s a challenge to match work schedules in the states and Poland, but we can make do! 

I also had three conference calls to the states Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings at 3/4am (Poland time). Goodness, even if its a quick 30 minutes or a long 3 hour meeting, they mess with a sleep routine enough to make you tired again the next day. All I can say was it was a blessing when I found out around midnight on Wednesday night that I wouldn’t have to come into the lab until noon Thursday! I can’t say I “caught up” on sleep as I planned to, but at least I did get some sleep that morning vs nothing at all. 

Since this was the first week after my holiday (and my supervisor's research conference), we began working on new studies this week. Now I'm learning how to use two different 3D printers we can use for printing hydrogel/polymer mixtures for our tissue scaffolds. 

The larger, more expensive, and more precise of the 3D bio-printers in the lab. It has temperature controlled chambers for the gel and a temperature controlled bottom plate so we can use temperature dependent mixtures that crosslink based on temperature alone without being exposed to UV light. 

After hours of calibration, we got our first blob (random pattern) of hydrogel/polymer scaffold that was "picture worthy" according to my supervisor. 

The smaller, yet portable Biobot 3D bio-printer. Different bells and whistles on this guy- he can't control the temp, but it does have UV lights that can be used. This allows us to use a gel that requires exposure to UV light to crosslink the scaffold. 

When you aren't achieving the required results and decide to open up Biobot to adjust it's settings--> aka when impromptu engineering gets interesting...  

For those of you who didn’t know, NATO conference took place in Warsaw this Friday/Saturday. Thus with all the diplomats from across the world, Warsaw security was crazy starting Thursday. Even when you were nowhere near the actual site of the conference (Football stadium) there were cops out patrolling the sidewalks, streets, etc. This also made some tram lines stop and busses re-routed to avoid the football stadium and the central station area because Obama was staying at the Marriott. Unfortunately I had to find my way to the central train station in order to leave for Gdansk on the 5:30 train on Friday. Thankfully my boss is very flexible and was concerned about me being able to get to the central station and let me leave the office at 3pm in order to make sure I wouldn’t have any problems. 

Hard to tell from the train window (naturally another train blocked the view moments before) but the parking lot around the stadium was packed with media, security, and heavy duty cars presumably for diplomats. 

By the time I got to Gdansk around 9 pm I was so dead from my exhausting week that participating in planned social events (going to the BBQ/party) was the last thing I was up for after checking in for the weekend. I guess you could say my tank was completely empty, so I literally knocked out on my bed (comfier than my Warsaw dorm) and slept for a solid 12 hours! It was marvelous :D