Today was
the first real day of the summer school!
Naturally,
it had to start in a special way. I realized I had no idea how to use the
freaky shower-like thingie. I tried everything I could think of and then went
to C.’s room, following our typical scenario (me asking if her shower works,
her replying it doesn’t, both of us freaking out and then going to the
reception to ask for help). Fortunately it turned out that the shower works and
the issue was with our technical abilities.
In the
morning, we had a small tour around the faculty of medicine. We saw a lot of
interesting things! (Skip the following paragraph if you just ate or are kinda
sensitive). Fetuses’ skeletons, real conserved veins and arteries, brains, feet
intersections etc. Since I’m not a medicine student, it was my first time
seeing this kind of thing, which was really interesting.
Then we
introduced ourselves and our research experience and interests and tried to
make our new logins for internet work.
An
adventurous experience was the visit of the university restaurant. What we
understood clearly was how many dishes we can take for our ticket (an entrée, a
main dish and cheese OR dessert). What we didn’t understand at all was when to
get these. There were tons of counters and tables with tons of things and it
was crowded. To be systematic, I joined the first queue I found. When I was
almost at the counter, a lady said that this queue was only for the conference
participants (who, by the way, were just as lost as us and stood in all the
wrong places as well). So I joined the next one, only to be reminded later,
that it was the profs’ queue and students should join the last one. The reward
for all the peripeties was a plate with rice (with some herbs), broccoli (ew)
and some fish with a mushroom/shell sauce. I picked some salad with salami as
my entrée and a vanilla pudding with whipped egg white and caramel as my
dessert. I was surprised that he food was a lot better than in our university
restaurant. I’m not a big fan of cooked fish (I prefer raw or grilled ones),
but the sauce was great. Something our university should learn as well: jugs of
fresh water on the tables. Seriously, no one wants to drink the disgusting
wannabe tea they serve at Albertov.
In the
afternoon, we had the first lecture. It was about vaccination (and smallpox)
and it was BRILLIANT. If all of our lectures at my uni were like this, I’d
probably fail the exams on purpose to be able to go there again. Prof
Gareth Williams was not only amazingly smart, but he was a superb speaker as
well. It was perfectly clear that all 40 or so of us were excited and paid
attention the whole time. I adore lectures that aren’t a loud reading of a
textbook, but where you get to see a lot of the professor’s personality, his
views and opinions. That’s why we have live lectures after all, I can read
perfectly well myself, I don’t need any readers. At the end, we had a workshop,
divided into groups. I was in a group whose task was to persuade anxious
parents to vaccinate their child. It was quite interesting. We had a lecture
about vaccination during my virology course as well, but trying to use the
arguments IRL was really interesting. I got picked as the group representative,
which meant I was the one pretending to be a doctor. Fortunately, another member
of our group was picked to play the anxious parent and he was a really great
actor. Some other groups had to pretend to be a researcher on TV talking about
the advantages of vaccination, and some had to persuade parents of a child that
suffered from side effects of vaccination that it’s not a reason to never
vaccinate their children again. Seriously, people, don’t refuse vaccination!
Most of the stuff the anti-vaccination groups say is complete rubbish that only
works with psychological weapons that make people emotional.
Anyway, the
official beginning of the RSSA 2012 followed and the dean and the vice-president of the international relations office gave a
wonderful speech.
In the
evening, there was an amazing barbecue. Seriously, I feel sorry for the French
students who take care of us, because they’re so busy and yet they’re always
super nice! It must be really tough. The barbecue they prepared was splendid. I
was stuffed, because I wanted to taste everything. A surprising thing was when
I was talking to some people, suddenly a lady popped behind me and said “You’re
American!”. I was really taken aback, because my English is nowhere near a
native speaker and I have a horrible Slavic accent. She said she worked as
scientific article editor, which was really interesting (I always wondered how
come scientists seemed to be good writers as well, this explains it!). Also,
the vice-president made sure to talk to every one of us during the evening, that was
really nice and considerate! It was obvious that everyone really cared about us
and was happy we came, what a huge difference from how one gets often treated
at my uni.
After the
barbecue, several of us decided to go the supermarket to get some drinks and
food for the next day. On the way there, we met a guy from Casablanca/London
who asked us to join him for a drink. So we went to the bar after we were done
with the shopping (the bar was really nice!). It was me, K. and S. Me and S.
(girls) got a beer cocktail called Le Presbytere.
It was really cute! Anyway,
at first it was fun and interesting, talking to another foreigner who wasn’t
part of RSSA. But gradually, it became a lot less nice and a lot more weird.
First of all, I don’t like being hit on. Even more so if I don’t fancy the guy,
he could (almost) be my dad and switches between annoying me and the other girl.
Thank god K. would always distract him when he got too annoying. And second, I
didn’t like the way he talked about stuff. It’s really hard to explain, but
it’s a kind of “I’m a saint, I’m different” and being too open and simply
sounding really fake and emotional at the same time, just weird.
Gradually,
we left, because there really was no point in staying. We went to the tram stop
and looked at the map. There was a big red arrow pointing to where we were
supposed to be. We rejoiced, since it looked like we were really close to our
bus stop. So we walked. And walked. And there was no river (that was supposed
to be there). And we looked nothing like a bunch of young scholars - we were
kinda drunk, carrying shopping bags and speaking really funny French. Somehow
though, K.’s natural charisma persuaded a nice French guy not only to give us
directions, but also to give us a ride to a bus stop where many night buses
come. It turned out that he red arrow was wrong, we were at a completely
different tram stop and walked in the wrong direction. When we got to the bus
stop thanks to our savior, we couldn’t figure out what bus to take. Another
nice man informed us that we kinda missed the last bus and the next one was
coming in about 6 hours. And he called a taxi for us! Seriously, we were so
lucky! The taxi was kinda expensive though, because we later learnt that they
charge extra fee for taking you someplace at night. So, if you ever go to Angers, make sure not to
miss the last bus that leaves before 1 a.m. No wonder there was almost no one on the
streets at night! The city goes to sleep right after watching the bedtime
story.
Yours truly
Vita
Oh my, I would have loved to tour the faculty of medicine. Skeletons, veins, and brains! Good times!
ReplyDeleteVita, I would like to inform you that I nominated you for two awards. I hope you'll accept them, the post is on my blog. Congratulations :)
I should have taken some pictures. XD Thank you very much, I really appreciate it. But I'm afraid I won't get to it until I come back from Croatia in 3 weeks. :(
DeleteOh, the pictures would have been lovely ;)
DeleteAnd of course, I love to read your blog, so nominating you was a natural decision. Excited to see what you will write :)