First full week!

I'm back!

My first week of work at the vet school went great. I was thrown right into an experiment Monday and Tuesday that went all day, both days, and felt very productive. Granted, when you're first learning the research, it's pretty much "do whatever they tell you to" until you get the swing of things, so hopefully after reading lots of journal articles and doing more work I'll soon become a pro.

What was the experiment about? Basically, while my professor and her two students were away at Tours, they finished up the feeding trial they had been doing on their pigs, had them put down (sorry piggies...), and took all the samples they needed from various organs. This past week's work involved taking fresh intestinal tissue samples - the organ of interest for the effects of deoxynivalenol - and running various enzymatic tests on them, which is quite complex, involves lots of instruments and pipetting, and being veeeeery careful to not mess anything up out of the many samples taken. One of the such enzymes was myeloperoxidase, a lysosomal enzyme that is produced by neutrophils (a type of white blood cells) and, important to our study, is a marker of inflammation. So the test involved extraction of this enzyme, etc. etc. Overall, this is just one small morsel of a huge, very thorough study on this mycotoxin. The study involves in vivo (in the live animal) testing, in vitro (in cell/tissue cultures), and ex vivo (done on live tissue, but outside of the animal - in our case, using isolated intestinal loops of a single pig to run multiple simultaneous dosage tests) studies. The cool thing about this is that in doing all these experiments is that we're able to not only study the effects of deoxynivalenol itself, but also compare the effectiveness, advantages, and disadvantages of the various experimental methods mentioned above. The nice thing about the ex vivo part, which is still pretty new, is that it has more experimental potential than in vitro but still allows the use of fewer animals!

But I could go on about that for awhile. This week is off to a great start, too - my professor is so awesome, she insisted that if I was interested, I attend a three-day pathology conference/workshop at the vet school this week - free of charge! The head visiting lecturer is a DVM/PhD from Ohio State University who is an expert in embryological/developmental pathology in mice. This may sound boring to some, but it is actually very handy to understand and has a lot of human and veterinary applicability. Also awesomely, lunch every day is a catered, three-course meal, and since the attendees are all pathologists (some English, some French), it makes for some very cool conversation. Today's lunch was an awesome salad with a goat cheese-filled pastry, pork mignon (little pork medallions) with bacon-wrapped green beans and baked mashed potato swirlies, followed by an assorted cheese plate (I skipped the Roquefort), then nougat glacé (nougat ice cream! Yum!). Needless to say, I ate super well.

I also had an awesome weekend, but I'll get to that soon. After a mostly rainy week, the weather was incredibly perfect Southern France gorgeous. It involved buying my new bike (which I then rode home in the rain), going out with some friends and said bike Saturday night, then profiting from the gorgeous weather Sunday and exploring small-town France (a favorite pastime of mine!) with a friend. I'll get to that tomorrow, but for now, here's a sample photo!

Teaser photo of the lovely hilltop village Cordes-sur-ciel!

Long weekend! (cue lots of photos)

Hi, friends! Since the last time I wrote on Friday, I've definitely seen and done a lot. France is known for having a lot of holidays, and, despite being an essentially secular country, it has maintained its tradition of maintaining religious holidays. These aren't just the big ones like Christmas and Easter. We're talking Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Thursday, Pentecost Monday (which is the one I had this past Monday), Assumption Day, and so on (I know I'm forgetting some). That is excluding the nonreligious national holidays like Labor Day and Bastille Day.

In any case, these holidays are known here as a jour férié - which basically means, no work or school! Yahoo! Truth be told, I've been eager to get started here, but the long weekend gave me ample opportunity to explore Toulouse. The weather here has been mighty capricious, alternating between "Gods be praised it's so beautiful out here!" sunshine and rain of varying lengths - as short as 5-10 minutes, to as long as the entire course of time I wanted to go grocery shopping today. I'm not sure what's going on here, but I'm definitely hoping for some consistency soon! So, umbrella at the ready, I grabbed my camera, pocket money for snacks, my handy dandy metro pass, and spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday wandering around the city! I had a wonderful new friend to show me around Saturday and whom I rejoined Monday for more wandering. It was great to have a buddy since Toulouse, like most old European cities, was not built on anything remotely resembling a grid system. For example, you can take two streets which, at face value, seem to be parallel, and they'll take you two completely different places. Taking a road which seems perpendicular to them might not bring you back to the other, either! But there you go, c'est la vie, so half with a tour guide and half with nothing but my good intentions, here is a mini-photo tour of the centre ville of Toulouse!

At the Place du Capitole, the massive pedestrian area around with the entire city is centered. This is the Saturday market.

Yeah, this is just a photo of bread. I thought they were pretty.

A place - basically, an open square where there's a break between buildings. There are many in most French cities, and they generally have green space, cafés, perhaps fountains, and so on. Lots to see.

Courtyard of the city's oldest hospital, the Hôtel Dieu, according to my 'tour guide' still in operation. I really ought to look up the various bizarre meanings of the word "hotel" in French.

Seven old men just sitting in a row, at another 'place' in town. The three teenagers at right are slightly out of place.

By this point, are you noticing an abundance of pinky-orange hued buildings? There are tons, and this photo (taken at the evening hour, which is probably why it looks particularly garish) shows why Toulouse is nicknamed La ville rose - the pink city!

Pont Neuf, Toulouse's most famous and oldest surviving bridge passing over the Garonne river that cuts through Toulouse. Apparently this river has a very strong current and a nasty predisposition to flooding (the last major flood before recent times went all the way up to this bridge's arches!!!) So - in the event of heavy rain, don't sit where I'm sitting.

What is left of another old bridge; apparently it didn't eat its Wheaties. So it fell down. Photo taken from Pont Neuf, with Pont St-Pierre in the background. Toulouse likes its bridges.

Back in the Place du Capitole, one of the more ingenious street hockers. Made his own chess set out of cardboard, and a girl sat down to play. They drew quite the audience, and I tried to surreptitiously snap this poor quality photo.

"Who wants to play? Give what you want!" Clever advertising.

Quick order French food that I love almost as much as life itself - the indomitable, the one and only, kebab. I also enjoyed myself some pastry, banana-chocolate crêpe, chicken and goat cheese with herbs crêpe, flan, and bought myself a box of pear caramel tea this weekend. Definitely eating well!

Picture of the mini-museum inside the Capitolium...so I'm not ending today's blog on a picture of food :)

Thanks for reading, everybody! Hope you enjoyed the photos as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Science and nature

Agility course for dogs!

Pretty cool, eh? 5-10 minutes from the vet school.

 Hi, friends! So the theme for today's blog, despite being the name of two very famous scientific journals, is science and nature.

First, science. Today and yesterday were my first days introduced to the lab environment here, and they've been great. My professor is out of town with her other two interns on an experiment, so it has been up to others to welcome me. And welcome they have - everyone here is SUPER nice, and they all seem really happy to meet the newest joinee. Additionally, everyone is quick to compliment me on my French and ask how I learned it so well, so that's a big confidence boost and a big thanks to my French teachers and friends over the years!

On Thursday I met up with some of my professor's colleagues, and after some discussion about the lab we all went together to the weekly meeting of the Toxalim team - essentially, they all work together in food toxicology and have weekly meetings/presentations and discussions from the various members - whether students or lab heads. I was introduced and welcomed, and then a  Ph.D student presented her master's research since she had only just arrived to start her doctorate. The subject involved hydrogen sulfide and was only vaguely related to toxicology. It was interesting, but I was still very jet lagged at this point (11 am local time and 4 am home time), so I kept having to struggle to stay awake...shame on me, right? I managed, however, to follow along quite well, considering the material was very dense...and in French. I do have a slight lack of more technical vocabulary, but the people here are very forgiving and insist that this will come. It's better that I have the essential speaking skills down pat, and I can pick up the lingo as I go.

So that ended at around lunch time; I was famished, and a very sweet intern from Lebanon joined me for lunch at the Resto-Universitaire. Veal for the main course, with peas and pork, potatoes, salad and dessert plus a bread to go for only 3 euros? Yes, please! Afterward I went home for a nap, and woke up to enjoy the rest of the day (which I'll recount later!)

Today I went to the pathology lab to visit with the people there! I was supposed to observe an autopsy but, alas, there were none scheduled for that day so it was straight to the lab for us. I got buddied up with a very friendly researcher who showed me what they do after the autopsy - essentially, take chunks of any organs or tissues of interest, preserve them, then make cuts to fix them in wax and eventually make slides to be stained and viewed under a microscope. It was cool to see the entire process, and the woman I was with and I had great conversation while there. We helped remediate some of my lack of French scientific vocab and her lack of English, and we laughed especially over one thing in particular - dog breeds. You know the French bulldog, right? Well in French, it's essentially pronounced the same way, except its spelling is super silly - it is a bouledogue français. Isn't that fun? For what it's worth, a Labrador is both pronounced and spelled the same.

Besides all of that, I'm very glad I know my histology! Because this lab relies on it considerably. So when I joined a very sweet French vet student/master's student at the same time (who also gave me her cell and invited me to hang out sometime! Yay friends!) to go over her slides on the ovaries of mutant mice (that lack a particular estrogen receptor) with her professor, I knew exactly what was going on and only needed to worry about the translations. They weren't super different, so I can be glad that all this science-y stuff comes from Latin! Part of her work involved counting and classifying the follicles found in each cut, so anyone reading who has taken histo with me will know that I'm glad to know what primordial, tertiary, and atretic follicles are! We also reviewed some of the mice's other organs, and they seemed pleased that I was able to tell them the different layers of the adrenal gland exclusively from memory. Yay, histo!

So that's science, now nature! I heard through the grapevine that there is a gorgeous hiking/jogging trail that runs along the river called Le Touch (pronounced "toosh"), and after some hunting and more asking, I found it! It is less than a five minute walk out my door, past the rugby/soccer field and equestrian center (lots and lots of horses!), and it literally goes for miles and miles of beautiful, wooded path that runs right alongside this lovely river - ensuring it's impossible to get lost. I walked for about an hour yesterday and jogged today, feeling very happy and serene. I've got a ways to go to get back in tip top shape, but with such beautiful scenery it seems like a certainty that I will! I'll upload more photos, later, but here is a pic of the beginning of the trail:

Trail marker. Not sure what the head band is doing there!

Not on the trail, but a pretty little windmill on the way to the dog park...that doesn't work!

Made it!

Hi, friends! I arrived in France without incident yesterday, although very tired. My first flight to Amsterdam was about 7 hours 45 minutes and, thanks to crying babies in various places on the plane (I’m all in favor of sedation) and uncomfortable chairs, sleep didn’t come. On the second flight from Amsterdam to Toulouse, I was juuuust about to get to sleep when the elderly gentleman next to me surmised I spoke French (not sure how, since the Dutch flight attendant was speaking to me in English), and he proceeded to start a conversation. I didn’t really mind too much, even though I was exhausted, because I try to profit from every opportunity I get to speak French – and this was a nice brush-up before even arriving. He was quite nice, and talked about how he was returning from visiting his son in Shanghai. He was very proud of him; the son apparently speaks five (FIVE?) languages, including Chinese, obviously, and works there in some sort of international commerce job. He showed me all 300+ photos he took while there, including the super fancy building where his son works, and the super fancy restaurant/bar frequented by high-class visitors with their Ferraris and Rolls Royce’s, where he DJ’s by night. Seriously, this dude is living the good life. The conclusions I drew were: I’m gonna be super jet-lagged (was correct on this one), learn Chinese one day, and that Shanghai has a LOT of people. LOTS.

Anyway, when I arrived in Toulouse around 11 am the weather was absolutely gorgeous, like Alabama but slightly milder. A veterinary student who went to the U.S. with Merial last year was there to pick me up. He was chill and spoke VERY fast, but I managed to keep up for the most part until we got to the vet school and found my room. It’s your basic dorm, without a kitchen or a fridge, but it does have a nice floor-to-ceiling window, and the kitchen across the way (in another building) is already equipped and opens only to Erasmus/foreign students, so I’m always guaranteed someone to talk to!

Speaking of talking, my French is totally going to get work here! There is so far only one other person here whom I can speak to in English; with everyone else it’s all French, all the time! My roommate is a Romanian Erasmus student here on a clinical internship, and she’s been very welcoming and has introduced me to the other Erasmus students. She also showed me the Restaurant-Universitaire nearby where I can go for lunch, where we ate with some friends who enjoyed learning what on earth it is I’m doing here. I already have an invite to a barbecue this weekend, mostly just for fun but also to say goodbye to some of the departing students – including my roomie. So come Sunday, I’ll have the room all to myself! :D

Not too much else going on here, besides various administrative things. Today and tomorrow are going to be rainy off and on, not as nice as when I arrived (bummer). I’m proving that I’m still functional in French despite the jet lag making me want to nap at random times, and I’ve bought a phone, opened a bank account, gotten my student card, and fed myself successfully. Speaking of feeding myself, my heart practically sang when I went back to the grocery store/supermarket for the first time. Anyone who’s spoken to me about France knows that the food here gives me immense happiness, so my little heart sang at all the wonderful options. Since I can only bring what I can carry, and the various grocery stores (plus an AWESOME “hyper-marché” – like a French Wal-Mart) are all a 10-15 minute walk away until I acquire a bicycle, I don’t think I’ll be gaining much weight. Few people here have vehicles, and unless you’re one of those few, you walk, bike, and take public transport everywhere. So here’s to hoping that, along with exercise, I’ll come back in tip-top shape! I’ve already scouted out some nifty jogging spots nearby.

Ah, and because food makes us all happy, here’s what I had for dinner my first night (note: I did buy real food, but sometimes you just need a baguette and cheese…because it makes you feel good inside)!

Baguette and Brie, cheap, fattening...and oh so good.

And for dessert, one of my all-time favorites, pain au chocolat...essentially a chocolate croissant! :D

And finally, because everyone always thinks this is weird, milk here comes in a box, that you don't refrigerate until you open. May wonders never cease! (If that scares you, bottles are available)

 So that's all for now! Tomorrow I meet up with a professor (not mine - she's out of town until Friday) who will show me the lab and give me all the introductions. I'll let you all know how things go! Until next time, thanks for reading :)

I'm back!

Hi, everyone! Thanks to good fortune and better timing, the old blog is back - and I'm returning to France!

For those of you just tuning in for the first time, "It Happened in Montpellier" was my old blog/personal diary thing to record my thoughts and memories while I spent my junior year studying abroad in the awesome Mediterranean town of Montpellier, France. I did so mostly for personal reasons - out of a desire to get out and see the world, improve my French, and live someplace new for awhile. While at the time I didn't see it giving me any leg up for future grad/vet school applications, the intangible benefits were astronomical. I went from shaky and poor in my language skills to being able to converse fluidly and confidently in French, saw and did so many amazing things, made wonderful friends and essentially had the time of my life. Since I've been back I've always wanted to return, but since starting vet school I didn't really imagine it to be a possibility. So, I pushed it aside.

That is, I pushed it aside until fate smiled upon me and led me to the reason for re-starting this blog! See, every summer, all 28 vet schools across the United States, plus the Canadian schools and some in the Caribbean, sponsor a certain number of first- and second-year veterinary students to take part in the Merial Veterinary Summer Scholars Program. Merial is an American-based, multinational animal health/research/drug company that co-sponsors veterinary students (that means we get paid! yippee!) to spend their summer working in a professor's research lab, eventually presenting that research at the Merial-NIH (National Institutes of Health) symposium in August. In their words:

"The mission of the Merial Veterinary Scholars Program is to expose veterinary students in their first or second year of veterinary school to biomedical research and career opportunities in research."

 So, essentially, encouraging students who want to delve into the world of veterinary research for the summer, with the hope that this exposure will help them keep veterinary research in their minds as a possible career path - and it is one that is quite in demand right now!

 It was my goal from the start to try to participate in this program at Auburn during the summer, since I have a bit of research background and also a strong interest in public health and infectious diseases. In any case, competition was super steep and there wasn't room for me at the program in Auburn. But, wise and encouraging friends reminded me to not despair, and keep trying for other things!

 And now we arrive at why this all relates to France. For the past two years, Merial has been sending a couple of European veterinary students to American vet schools to participate in this summer program. This year, however, is their "pilot program," as the first time they are doing the opposite - sending American veterinary students to Europe! The two participating countries are the Netherlands and France, with three students to be sent to each, with the same goal - working with a professor at one of these schools, performing a research project in their lab.

 So, given that things in Auburn didn't work out, why not apply to the one in France, right? The worst they could do was say no, I could always go work at home, yaddah yah... However, I did happen to have one ace in the hole, that the France leg of the program asked its applicants to have a sufficient level of French for the needs of daily life (there is no language requirement to apply for the Netherlands). In general, the French aren't quite as proficient at English as the Germans or the Dutch, so to live anywhere that isn't Paris you really ought to have at least some of the language to survive.

 But I digress. Long story short, I sent in my application and, not too long after, I was notified that I'd been accepted!! For a fun bit of trivia, France actually is home to the world's very first veterinary school, established in 1761 in Lyon. As of today, there are three other vet schools in the country - in Paris, Nantes, and Toulouse. It was my job, after being accepted, to contact the professor at the school I was interested in to discuss the possibility of working in their lab. We were given a list of potential projects, and I tried to find the best of both worlds - a city I'd want to spend my summer in, plus a research project I'd like to do. My first choice of city was Toulouse, a medium-sized city in southwest France. I love love love the ambiance and everything else about southern France, and decided that this was the place for me to spend my summer.

The project I will be working on, which I'll discuss a bit more in a post to come (as this one seems to be getting quite long), involves a mycotoxin (fungal toxin) called deoxynivalenol. It is a food contaminant that is found in cereal grains and, while it won't kill you unless you get an especially high dose, it is toxic to both humans and animals (its common name? vomitoxin). In people it causes symptoms like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, headache, and so on. More relevant to my study, in animals it causes significantly reduced food intake and, as a result, these animals don't thrive and don't gain weight. This equates to lost money for the farmer/producer who feeds his animals grains infected with this toxin. Pigs are of particular interest, since their diet is largely grain.

This is the reader's digest version of the story, and I'll likely go into more detail on this topic, but based on my discussions with the professor, I'll be participating in the facet of research trying to characterize how deoxynivalenol produces its toxic effects in an animal model.

Okay, for any friends/family brave enough to read this novel above, thank you! I'm happy you're interested enough to follow what I'll be up to this summer. Don't be a stranger now. Hit me up anytime to say hello, and I promise lots of fun posts involving my second go at life in France :)

Until next time!