Work really started picking up last week and this week! Our supervisor wants us to do some extra experiments with the titanium samples we work with - he wants us to grow cells on them, and analyze the cell adhesion after 24 hours, and also take scanning-electron-microscopy pics of the samples at a bunch of different time points. The problem is: neither Judith, my Ph.D. student advisor nor I know how to do cell culture! And the woman showing us how to do everything is going on vacation indefinitely starting this weekend!! So it's been busy...



I went to Berlin last weekend, and it was a blast! I met up with a friend from high school who just so happens to be in Germany for a few weeks this summer, and we stayed (for free!) with a girl who got the same scholarship as I did from the American Chemical Society for these internships in Germany. So here are some pics from Berlin:


The Reichstag building: housed the first parliament of the German empire from 1894 to 1933 when it was destroyed in a fire. Remained in ruins until after the reunification of Germany in 1990, reconstruction was complete in 1999, and it has housed the current German parliament ever since. We stood in line for probably an hour to get up into the glass dome - it was worth it! The view was great, a panorama of Berlin, and we had brochures that pointed out some important buildings throughout the city, as seen from the dome.

Here are some pictures I've been meaning to put up:

This week was a little more interesting for me at work. Up until now, I've pretty much been reading papers that people had written previously on the project, mostly about the theory/concepts we deal with in the project, and I've also been doing a lot of observing the Ph.D. student I'm working under, watching her do prep work and also doing experiments. This week, I got to do some experiments on my own, with Judith's supervision. Wednesday, one of the women who works at the Max Bergmann Zentrum had a BBQ. Most of the people I know from the lab went to that, it was fun! Everyone seems really cool, very relaxed, even at work.

The weather was nice today, so Judith and her boyfriend took me to Swiss Saxonia. And I forgot my camera!! I can't believe I did that. It's sooo beautiful, I wish I had pictures. We took about a 3o-minute train ride east out of Dresden, toward the Czech Republic, then crossed the Elbe river on a ferry to get to the base of the hills.



I found this picture on google.(http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00039/saxon-switzerland_39283t.jpg)
The whole area is very wooded, and once you get higher up, there are these sandstone peaks. We hiked up the normal dirt trails in the forest, but when we got to the rocks they had metal ladders and supports for us to climb up. I'm pretty sure this isn't the exact peak we were on, but we were on something similar. The view was amazing!

I've been living in Dresden, Germany for a little over two weeks now, for an internship at the Technsiche Universitaet Dresden. I'm working under a Ph.D. student, Judith Reichert, on a project that deals with titanium-based implants. The goal of the project is to modify the surfaces of these implants, attaching antibiotics and growth factors, so that the implants have a better success rate in patients with compromised immune systems, like smokers or diabetics, for instance. It's really interesting to me, and I feel so lucky that I get to work on something cool like this...in Germany...the whole summer! As an undergrad, I don't really have a say in what kind of experiments I get to do, but it's been great so far, even just learning about the project and getting used to the environment of a German research lab.

I live in Altstadt, a section of the city that has a lot of the really old buildings with a lot of history. My building is really modern-looking, though, and HUGE (I'm on the 13th floor out of 17). I have my own room that's basically the size of a dorm, and then I share a tiny kitchen and tiny bathroom with another dorm room. I'm supposed to have a roommate, but no one has shown up yet.

My advisor is letting me use her old bike for the summer, so I can bike anywhere I need to go on a regular basis. Once I decide to go a little further out and see other parts of Dresden, I'll have to use the tram or something, but they have a great public transportation system, so I'm not worried. I've been hearing lots of good things about Saxon Switzerland, an area of Saxony, the German state that Dresden is in. I'm hoping to check that out soon; it's a little way from Dresden, and I guess it's the most mountainous region of Saxony, so it should be good for a hike.

That's it for now! It's a beautiful evening, and I'm going for a run!