Easter/Girls time!

Finally, Easter Holiday! Today I've been cleaning, washing and mopping my room/the house to get everything tidy for when my friends arrive tomorrow! I can't wait! :D Their flight will land at 8 o'clock in the morning on Stansted airport, so we've planned to meet up at Victoria station to do some serious shopping in London, before heading back to Oxford. Needles to say, my room mate left me a complete mess, so hence the day off to clean up. To make matters worse, we have a serious ant problem, and he left an empty can of Red Bull energy drink on the kitchen counter, which was crawling with ants. Yuck! He is such a lazy idiot. Anyway, after doing some grocery shopping in the city center I had a stroll over the Gloucester Green Antiques and Craft Market (held every Thursday from 9 to 5! Check out all Oxford markets here), and bought two sweet little prints from Essex (setting the painting counter to 6) and a lovely amber pendent. A good start of Easter, I'd say!

Hope you're having a lovely Easter Holiday!

Sick

Yes, not homesick this time, but just sick. Although both involve a running nose... So the stress and tiredness have finally caught up with me and I'm sick. Exactly like it did the last time with my previous internship, only this time it is midway in the internship, and not at the end. On the bright side, I took Thursday and Friday off, so I've had like a four day weekend. On the down side, Wednesday I sneezed so hard I dropped the eppendorf tube and spilled the (precious) DNA I had been working on for 8 hours on my pants. Shit.
Oh, and another thing to show how fucked up I am from this internship: I posted a Mothers day card to arrive on April the 11th in Holland. Mothers day in Holland is on May the 11th. My mum loved it though, and we had a good laugh about it.

Only 11 more weeks to go!

Comrade in battle

Hi there! Another update from a miserable Dutch girl stuck in Oxford. And don't let the exclamation mark fool you, it's still shit out here. But, I was right about the quiet (English) girl: she's awesome and we've become very close friends. As it turns out, I'm not the only one who doesn't feel at home in the lab, she just knows how to hide it very well. Which is probably why she lasted until know. But life in the lab has become a little more bearable now that we can share our angers and frustrations. To be honest I don't think I'd be able to survive without her, and she's said as much about me. Right now I'm beginning to feel a little guilty about leaving in June, because it means I will leave here alone in the talons of the other girls... 

With love, Willemijn

p.s. Another PhD comic to describe the insane long working hours and the lack of windows in our lab (seriously, from 08:00 to 22:00?!)

Homesick+

As you know, a few days ago my parents came over to visit. I was going to  write a post about it as soon as they left on Monday, but I was so down and upset I couldn't put myself to it. I loved having them around for these few days, and even though we didn't actually do that much, I fully soaked in every second. They dropped off a lot of stuff, like food (pancakes, chocolate and chocolate sprinkles), utilities (shampoo) and entertainment (DVD of The Great Gatsby and a Dutch magazine called Libelle. We went to the Ashmolean museum, did some shopping (they got me a Harris Tweed bag to cheer me up a bit), went to several tea shops for scones and tea, and visited a small town called Witney in Oxfordshire. It was so nice to be able to talk to them, and tell them how much I miss them, and I could tell they were having a hard time as well. But the pain of homesickness has been worse than ever before after they left. Monday was excruciating, all I wanted to do was lay in bed and cry. The rest of the week hasn't been any better, and to top things off (almost) all my western blots have failed, so I have to start over again. Not a great week for science. Oh, and I was stupid enough to forget to book the irradiation machine, so when I went down there someone was using it, meaning I had to throw away a 3-day experiment. Shit. Shit, I want to go home.

A little piece of home

Just a short post today, to tell you that my parents are coming to the UK today. I'm so excited! Luckily, my supervisor was kind enough to let me have today and Monday off (because, quote, "I don't want them to think I'm keeping you imprisoned"), so I've got a long weekend to reconnect with the home front! They just got off the Eurotunnel train right now, so in a few more hours they will be in Oxford. I'm counting the hours!

Dead or a alive?

Well, my bank account is definitely more dead than alive... The last couple of weeks have been hard, very hard, and the only way I know how to cope with that is by shopping. So I've been visiting charity shops and eBay quite a lot lately. My finds include two prints of Glastonbury and Wells, a small framed water color of some harbor, a cut glass vase, a wool coat (of course there had to be a coat) and a silver anchor necklace (and maybe some other stuff as well, which I'm not mentioning because if I list it all it will seem even more terrible than it already is). Which seems like a lot, but if you consider it the price for my sanity, and it keeps me away from other more mind numbing substances, I would say its not too bad. And I keep using the excuse that I'm supporting charity. Thank god my parents are coming over the 21st of March, because I really need some family time. When the work pressure is this high, you need some nice and kind people around to keep you from freaking out. Since the other Dutch girl left, I have become a little closer with another, more quiet girl at the lab, who turns out to be really nice. I'm getting the feeling that she too finds it hard to fit in and connect to the other people, with their know-it-all attitudes. She is way more down to earth and not afraid to admit she makes mistakes, which I can really relate to (since I make a lot of mistakes too, but face it, everyone does!). So maybe I found a good friend in her, and these last 3 months and 2 weeks won't be as dreadful as I though they would be. 

All hell breaking loose

Well, the title pretty much sums it up. All hell has broken loose at my lab. The Dutch girl resigned her job on Thursday, and came in on Friday to make a planning for her last month at the lab. However, the conversation with my supervisor went so bad, so horribly bad, that she walked out, asked me to finish her western blot and went home. And when I called her this morning, she was on the bus to Heathrow to take a plane back to the Netherlands. She was just so tired of being talked down upon, controlled and manipulated, that she took a plane home. So there you have it, cancer research in Oxford, very professional.

But I won't totally ruin you weekend with drama, because life also has its good moments. For one, there is loving family. Take my mum, who went to the Hema (store in the Netherlands) to buy me a leather jacket, after I send her an email saying "Mum! Run to the store! They have a cheap leather jacket!". And the darling bought it for me, even though I already have a bunch. Just to cheer me up, the sweetheart.
And than there is this lovely photo, I took when I went out for dinner with my Dutch friend the night she resigned:

Yep, that is my room mates car, and yes, that is the wheelie bin on the roof. Priceless.

Hope you have a nice, and drama-free weekend!