Leucocytes, haemostasis, 30 compressions, and 2 breaths

Hi! Sunday evening and it's been a long week--- lots of school, with classes and labs and practical work. I guess I may have given the impression here that all I'm doing is walking around happily in the mountains and the beautiful landscapes here, but yes, my life for the moment pretty much consists of studying... in pathology we're learning the basis of cell dysfunction and apoptosis, as well as cancerogenesis. Immunology has us all completely lost in all the types of white blood cells and their development and function. In hematology we've done all about blood clotting this week-- Von Willebrand's disease, hemophilia type A and B... all fun things that have been on the menu. I guess Wednesday was the only day when I wasn't drowning in the immune system-- we had a practical of 4 hours in the hospital being taught by ambulance personnel about basic life support (BLS), doing compressions and mouth-to-mouth and whatnot, trying desperately to save the lives of our very sick dummies (all while the AED is saying things like "shock discouraged, keep doing compressions", or "please stay calm" or "step away from the patient, analysis in progress!"). We all got our certification document after though, and are now supposed to be able to take charge in any emergency situation (hmmm? only a third year here!!). But it's true- in the event that a situation does arise, who does people turn to for help? The person with the most medical experience, even if that happens to be a student... I guess the distinction line between student and "person who knows what to do" is wiped out when people panic..

I was overall quite happy for it to be the weekend, and I've managed to be a little social too, spending Friday evening with a friend also on exchange from Brussels, drinking some delicious Chocolat Viennois at a cafe at Grancy :). Saturday I did some studying, but then at night saw "Les Intouchables" with a friend from school-- one of the best movies I have seen in a while! It came out a while ago but I just haven't had the chance to go out and see it, but definitely worth a watch!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXu2MhWYUuE


I also captured two really pretty nature moments this week- poor quality because they're taken on my phone BUT I think you get the idea:

Monday evening at the Dorigny Campus with new
snow on the mountains along the lake...

Morning sky on Wednesday..

Then as promised, I have today taken another walk up into the woods to look for autumn colors... I guess I was pretty successful ;-)

 

As I predicted the forest is beautifully clad in all shades of orange, golden yellow, and still shades of green and brown.

Since I'm being academic today, here's the explanation (given as an example in one of our first biochemistry lectures this year) for why the leaves all do this very creative change every year, here labeled using fluorescent markers for ubiquitin:

It's all to do with the cell cycle and levels of ubiquitination happening at different (and random) rates! It's a great example when explaining simple cell signaling.

This week I'm going on a trip to Bath in England to visit my boyfriend, so I'm really excited about that! A little break from the studying is going to do me some good!

Bisous from Switzerland <3 Thanks for reading! 

p.s. for any piano lovers like me, I  discovered the music of Ludovico Einaudi (who wrote the theme to Intouchables)-- absolutely beautiful- just search him on spotify or listen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_mUuvgGnC4&feature=related

A beautiful Saturday: Walk from Savigny via the "Tour de Gourze"

Hi everyone! :)
It's the weekend again, and I've been in Lausanne for 5 whole weeks! School work is definitely piling up on me a little, but with good afternoon sessions in the library at the hospital I'm making some progress. We have now finished our first "module", and are moving on to hematology, immunology, and some microbiology in the weeks to come-- I think it'll be really interesting!

The weather is more and more fitting the description of autumn. We're having really changing weather-- really hard rain followed by beautiful sunny days. This weekend though, is the first I've had here where temperatures stayed below 14 degrees all day, and are supposed to drop to about 7 degrees at night. Getting chillier, and my scarves are slowly making their way out of my closet (and generally onto the floor...). I've bought a new autumn/winter coat, and my boots are being allowed out of the "winter-shoe" bag. I guess I'm prepared.

All week, the forecast for today though has been reaaally sunny, and so I wanted to make the most of the upcoming beautiful autumn day. My friend and her boyfriend agreed to join in on the plans, as well as a girl from my class. After some scrutiny of the internet to find a good walk to do which was not too far from Lausanne, we found this site:
http://www.randosuisse.ch/savigny----cully.html

We took the bus at 13:40 from Sallaz in Lausanne toward Savigny. From there we followed a series of small country-side roads leading toward the hill where the Tour de Gourze (the goal of our excursion) is located. We passed farms and large fields, passed through little forested areas, counted at least 5 different species of COWS, saw goats, birds, sheep- you name it. The weather was spectacular, and all the way we had great views of the mountains beyond the lake , especially in toward Montreux and Valais. We turned off the paved roads about a kilometer from the Tour, and a steep forest path led us to the top. It was good we all had good hiking boots on as it was quite slippery with all the fallen leaves! The forest was so beautiful in its newly adopted fall colors, and enormous amounts of mushrooms scattered across the forest floor. I got some great nature shots of the sun shining down between the trees. The Tour de Gourze itself did not look too impressive when we finally found it; it was very... well.. square. But, the view from the top was breathtaking, as is the view from just about anywhere in this country, and we stayed there taking a large amount of pictures and just sighing at the wonderfulness of it all :)

Walking down from the hill toward the lake were more amazing views, and the afternoon sun made sure it didn't get too cold. We met several other hikers along the way, and a moment where I missed my dad a lot when we met 5 men with model airplanes, flying them out across the fields sloping down from the Tour. We went all the way down to a little town called "Grandvaux", where we found the train-tracks of the RER (local area trains), along which was a "tourisme pedestre" path (marked paths all over showing pedestrians where it's nice to walk), next to the tracks. We followed this in the direction of Lausanne, with the intention of going to the bus-station in Lutry, but ending up following further due to the beautiful scenery and wine-ranks we were walking through. We ended up at the Goussiers station, where we exhausted got on a train with two stops back to the main station in Lausanne. As always I think pictures give a better idea than my writing of how my day has been, so here is a selection :)

 

The Tour de Gourze from the backside of the hill

Bye-bye birdies :) off to Italy for the winter...

Hope everyone will have a great weekend! Here it's all books and studying tomorrow, but with this day behind me I don't think it will be too hard to sit inside.
Bisous de la Suisse xx

Almost-fall: Early October in the Sauvabelin Woods…

Isn’t it a shame to be sitting inside studying all afternoon when the weather outside is just pleading for you to come out? Today is one of those days—the beautiful clear skies and 17 degrees have been nagging me ever since I got home from classes at lunchtime, and sat down to study my endocrinology. After a good two hours of good-girl-you’re-getting-something-done-work, my head was officially saturated with information and I decided that since I made the choice not to go to the gym tonight, I deserved at least to move around a little, and so it was within my rights to go for a walk in the Sauvabelin woods/park for a little while. It’s really just across the street from my apartment, and I felt it would do the weather justice if I went outside in it for just  a little while.
I’m officially an autumn person. I love the feeling of going out in the morning and the air has this crispiness to it that you don’t get in the summer. Even though temperatures are barely dropping below 9 degrees here yet, I can still feel it creeping on a little more every day. It’s that type of weather where you never know what to put on in the morning- because the morning is cold, but in the afternoon when classes are done you end up carrying around all the coats and scarves and sweaters you were wearing in the morning because it is bloody boiling in the sun. This was definitely the case today. People say fall is rainy and windy and just generally crappy—but I don’t mind the rainy days (as long as they’re not occupying ALL the days), it’s such a nice feeling going inside into the warmth and drying off, having some hot chocolate at night and listening to the wind whip rain across my window—no I definitely don’t mind so much. Today though, is everything but rainy, and I’ve noticed the past few days how autumn is slowly announcing itself through little hints here and there… the little brown leaf on the footpath, the yellowing patch of leaves forming in some of the trees, some bushes flaring up in reds and dark purple, and that little gust of wind telling you it’s no longer the hot summer afternoons of July and August. October has arrived in Lausanne, and since I was feeling creative I decided to try my luck at taking some “almost-fall” pictures with my little Nikon, in the hopes that my walk in the woods would give me some shots that might illustrate what I’ve just described. Here they are—me trying to capture that summer is holding on with all it’s might, but inevitably winter will once again win this fight, no matter how many beautiful colours will be displayed during this natural tug-of-war…

I think my personal favourite is the second-to-last, the chestnuts on the forest floor, just in a streak of sunlight—but I think you get the idea . I’ve officially recharged my studying-batteries after this, so I think I’ll go do some more doctor-things! I’m planning on doing another autumn-themed post in about three weeks, as then I think the colours will be spectacular! Have a good week everyone!