Sorry!!

Sorry, we didn't posted anything for a long time and that while a lot of new and exiting things happened to us lately.

Ok where to start.......

Lets start with the most exiting part, at least for me. I'm finally working again!!! No I do not have a job jet since they don't now if they can pay me jet. I'm doing a course now of 6 months at the lab where I want to be working in the future. In this to learn some new techniques and to gather some first results. At this moment the lab has no money to pay me. They have EU money left from a postdoc that left before her contract ended, but to spend that on me, my supervisor has to convince the bosses of the eu-project that it is much better to spent that money on a PhD (me). For that it would be really nice to have some results to show. Unfortunately this money is only for 1,5 years and since a PhD is normally 4 years there will be still a gab. To fill this my supervisor and I will apply for grands. In a few weeks my supervisor will meet the big bosses and I will know if I will be payed for the next 1,5 years. So I'll keep my fingers crossed. I really would like to work in that lab if possible. I can learn really a lot from them and the project were I'm working on, that will also be my PhD project, is really interesting. In short I want visualize with 3D electron microscopy all the different stages of desmosomes in healthy skin (my own skin to be correct :) ) and also in skin of people with blistering diseases. These blistering diseases are caused by defects in genes that affect the desmosomes. Quit challenging, but interesting. Also the group is really nice. It is a very small group of extremely different people. Fore instance an alcohol loving russian, a polish jew and a swedish technician who is afraid of almost everything. Somehow all these people get along really well and make quit a funny group.

Ok what else has happened the last couple of weeks.... Ohja Juriaan and Janine came to visit us in stockholm for a weekend. . Unfortunately for them the weather on saturday was extremely bad. It was raining the whole day, constantly. So they didn't saw stockholm at it's best. Sunday the weather was much better so we spent the day having a picnic in the Haga parken. Just a nice and lazy day in the sun. Overall it was a really nice weekend. It was nice to have some good conversations with friends again. Sometimes you miss that when you're living abroad. Especially since we haven't made so much new friends yet.

Last weekend we went to the butterfly house in the Haga parken. A big greenhouse full of the most beautifully tropical butterflies. Unfortunately we forgot to bring the camera so we don't have any pictures of it. Enough reason to go there again I would say. Because it is really beautifully. Somehow the butterflies are not shy at all, so they they just keep on sucking honey out of the flowers even if you are 5 cm away from them. They had also some funny walking birds in these greenhouses who just had offspring, so there were a lot of small fluffy things running around.

Oh and I finally started rowing again :) My god what did my muscles hurt after that :S I could even get on my own socks. For Jeroen it was really funny, but I had a different opinion..... Fortunately the second time it didn't hurt that much afterwards, so I'm improving :) I want to row 2x a week, but until now I only managed once a week (there is always something else to do :S ).

I think that where more or less the highlights of the last weeks. At least for me.

I promise to post more regularly from now on!!

Greetings,

Lianne