Engaged!

Friday August 17th, the day after I flew home from Toronto, was a wonderful day.  I woke up early next to my sweetie, in our giant comfortable bed with the sun shining in the window and the birds singing outside.  We got up, went and got some coffee and headed to the store to buy something for breakfast.  We got back to our beautiful little apartment and cooked up a feast of pancakes, hash-browns, and sausages.  Afterwards we went out to sit on our porch, the sun was still rising and casting its glow on the yard,  the air was fresh, and I was home.  I was so incredibly happy, I told Joel that this was the perfect day.  Joel went inside to grab a drink and when he came back out we talked of our time away from each other and he talked of the time he spent reflecting on his life while in Utah.  His voice was soft and low and he was saying such sweet things about me and our relationship, about how I make him a better man and that he likes who he is when he is with me and that he doesn't ever want to lose that.  I was getting a bit teary eyed listening to him and then he said slowly and sweetly "So, I asked your father if..." and at the same time he began to reach into his pocket, and then he started to get down on one knee as he continued to speak, and then it was all over for me.  Joel opened the little black box and inside was the most perfect ring, at that point I was already crying and I may have cut off his proposal a bit with my enthusiastic yes.  I was so happy, gosh I'm still so happy.  Joel said he had his doubts about whether I would say yes, but there was no doubt for me there was not even a moment of hesitation. 

We have been together for five years and we've lived together nearly that long.  Over the summer we both had the same thought of how the titles of "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" are not substantial enough to describe our relationship.  Fiance sounds much better don't you think?

That's my ring!  I have a diamond (my very first diamond actually) and it's gorgeous and yes I'm going to brag about it.  How could I not marry a guy who shops all over, eventually driving two and a half hours to a pawn shop to hunt down this perfect ring.  And it is perfect, except it needs to be resized, but I'm not ready to hand it over for that yet.

XoXo

Jessa

4 Days!

I took a walk through campus today.  Tomorrow I'm heading to Niagara Falls.  4 days until I'm HOME!

Xoxo
Jessa

I'm done, I'm done!

I finished my Medical Biophysics Summer Student Program.  Let's do a little recap and info session on this program:

The University of Toronto's Department of Medical Biophysics (MBP) has been running a summer student  program since the 1960's.  Every summer they select 50 undergrad students for this program.  There are many labs throughout Toronto that are part of the MBP department and one lab will look through the applicants and select one student to work in their lab.  The lab that Chris and I ended working in is that of Dr. Medin.  Dr. Medin graduated from the University Chris and I go to, UW Parkside.  Due to this connection Dr. Medin wanted to open up the MBP summer program to Parkside students.  Dr. Medin and one of my Parkside professors set up an initial application to select two Parkside students who would be allowed to apply to the MBP program.  Chris and I were selected and we both then applied to the MBP program.  After waiting for a while and not being selected by any other lab Dr. Medin said he would take us in.

Me and Mathilde at work

Dr. Medin's lab has several projects: some people are working on developing a prostate cancer vaccine, some are working on Fabry's disease, and some are working on Farber's disease.  Chris and I were assigned to work with a PhD student, Shaalee, who is working on Farber's disease.  I have done lots of different experiments, I've cultured cells, I was trained to use a laser scanning confocal microscope, I've done PCRs, Western blots, protein assays, mouse dissections, isolated primary cells, molecular subcloning, I even made viruses that will be used for gene therapy!

So, to sum it all up, I completed my 13 weeks of work, I did a presentation of the work I had done during our weekly lab meeting, Chris and I did a presentation of a journal article for our weekly lab meeting, and then lastly I made and presented a poster along with 30 other MBP summer students.  I was even selected as a finalist, which meant I was in the top five!

Me and my PI, Dr. Medin

So, now I'm done!  I have some free time and then on Thursday I will be home! :)