It has been a crazy couple of weeks here in Colorado! I haven’t been missing out on too much summer because the rain and the research keep me inside most days.  Research? That’s right.  I am learning everything I can about cancer and its treatments when I am not busy infecting my bladder cancer cells with bacteria (bad news).  To my dismay, I am not good at keeping them alive and evenly seeded yet, but I will be soon.  I am really excited about my project though, which will hopefully identify a mechanism of how bladder cancer cells become resistant to docetaxel, and maybe even a way to re-sensitize them.  Woohoo!

When I am not at work, fun things have been going on.  Hiking in the rain, running in the rain, and eating the delicious Indian food that my new roommate has been making, yum! I am also going to submit my primary applications for medical school any day now….

Shiny, soggy flatirons. Weird.

In other news, sometimes people ask me why I am a vegetarian.  There are lots of answers, but every so often I learn a reason in my field of biology.  Aside from creepy parasites and MRSA that often reside in meat, this week’s reason is that I like my thyroid hormones to be at normal levels.  Check it out!

Last but not least, my garden is finally becoming everything I always hoped for, and is taking over our deck.  I planted some herbs from seeds, so that will be particularly exciting if I end up with edible basel and mint for my pasta/mojitos.  Yeah!

Well, it is official, going to camp really was “the best week of the year”!  I have been thinking a lot about how to sum up such a crazy week filled with so much fun and emotion, and fortunately 9News started doing it for me.  Check it out!

This article was made during the second week (I did the first) but it looks like these kids had as much spirit and heart as ours did.   I was a companion on the green team, which was clearly the best team (although we didn’t have as clever of cheers as the yellow team: Chinchilla-Yella!)

My camper was a sibling who had been through lots in her time.  She has a great personality though- honest, kind, and a little competitive.  Our week was filled with delights, including mini golf, a zip line, a high ropes course and a low one, mafia, signs, color wars, boat races, and a seriously tear-jerking poetry workshop.  It was a wonderful time acting like a kid again at times, but also a great learning experience in terms of how kids work and how to be persuasive with them.  Everyone at camp was having so much fun that it was nearly impossible to tell who was sick and who was well- everyone was just a caring, optimistic human that week.  I danced so vigorously that my triceps were sore after the dance party.  It was sad.  Overall though, it was a great experience, and I can’t wait for next year!

Here are a few pics that I have:

The boat race (boats made of wood, duct tape, styrofoam, milk jugs, engineered by 8-year-olds)

Me on the power pole (yeah conquering fear of heights!)

View from Camp

Companions with grills before singing some Flowrider

Some paddle boat on the lake