Agricultural celebrations

Mom took Tesla to the Agricultural celebrations at the botanical garden and took several photos.

Praha

We spent a day in Prague today. 3 hours in a train, 5 hours of walking and 2 hours in a sushi bar. What a great day :) Tesla saw many places of the Old Town and bought a few souvenirs.

 

At one of many churches.. I don't remember which one this is, sorry :(

At a store with Czech glass

 Town hall on the Old Town Square

 With famous Prague Astronomical Clock (or as we call it 'orloj'). I think this is the most amazing building (machine) in Prague.

 On the Old Town Square.

With Charles Bridge in the background.

 We had a rest here...
... with this view:

 With my gorgeous friend :)

 St. Vitus Cathedral

 Another sculptures by David Černý (the author of Entropa)- Tower Babies with barcodes.

Last few weeks

Biology in Jizerské mountains

Lectures and practical classes Tesla attended:
Protozoa
Protein structures
Botanical trip
Evolution of vertebrates
Rh factor
From information to protein
Why antibiotics aren't perspective
Endocrine disruptor
Biological rhythms
Mollusca
Mycorrhiza
Cell biology
The dilemma of a yeast
Genetic engineering
Water, heat, photosynthesis
Geology
Autopsy of a crayfish
Mushrooms in human history
New Zealand
Sierra  Leone 

We also worked on a microbiological project with other three people and our consultant. You can see some photos where Tesla leads the project and makes the poster. It was about yeast domestication (fluffy/smooth yeasts) and about social behavior of bacteria. Therefore we spent a lot of time in lab, mostly at night. However I don't have many photos from there because I was usually pretty busy, our lab was tiny and there were always many people. Anyway, noticed the photo where Tesla is with many Petri dishes? Some of them are Ricki's family! It's because we worked mainly with E.coli and four strains of Bacillus. And yeasts, of course (Saccharomyces cerevisiae to be specific).
But it wasn't only science. We did many other things, trips, sang many beautiful songs, met many amazing people and saw many funny situations. Played many games. For example Tesla tried a classical game of this course, called 'Labyrint'. It means running all night outside in a forest with a hand-written map and a head flashlight and trying to find tiny papers with unanswerable questions. Every answer leads you to another paper usually far away and if it's not correct it might make your way much much longer. The game usually ends at 7 AM. Two hours later begins another lecture.
We didn't manage labyrint this year, but it was fun. It's beautiful when you are tired, exhausted and wet in the middle of the night, somewhere in the mountains and nature, and you can see stars upon your head and hear every little animal around you.
Every year there's a topic for non-scientific program. This year it was a period in Czech history called First republic. That's the reason why some people in the photos might be a little strange dressed or why there's such an old microscope (but it's beautiful, isn't it??).
Oh, and there was a test last day so we could have tried how much we remembered from all those lectures. We were nervous because the part about molecular biology was pretty hard and we had also some problems with identification of different grass species (to be honest: all grasses look EXACTLY the same, I really don't get botanists). So you can imagine how surprised we were when we were sitting in the common room, listening to the results.. and we were 5th! It was a shock and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have made it without Tesla :) We got a year subscription of one Czech scientific magazine, and a T-shirt from Charles university. Wheee!
 Now for the photos. Some of them were taken by my friends (usually the good ones :D).
And by the way, everyone loved Tesla. People kept saying she's cute all the time. And when I was somewhere without her they always asked me 'why Tesla isn't here'.







The photos in the video are low-quality. So if you want here are all the photos in their original size and with some description: http://drosera.rajce.idnes.cz/Arach2011

Forest creatures in Vaňov

Tesla with the guardian of Elbe.

Family hug :)

With Rumcajs the bandit (he's an old fairytale character, a good bandit who helps everybody :) But this one is quite pale...)

And his wife and son, Manka and Cipísek

Tesla had a break on a very special stone/chair- it's said that Jára Cimrman used to sit here and watch trees every time he visited Ústí region. He probably sat there really many times as you can see his bottom shape in the stone.

"Behind you there's a stone where Jára Cimrman used to sit during his wandering in Ústí region."

See her?

And finally one group photo with me, Tesla and a lion :)

After this trip we had a dinner in a nearby fish restaurant with view of the river and me and Tesla shared a salad with shrimps on wine. It was delicious but unfortunately no photos :/