Long, Long Day

This will be a really short post because I am extremely exhausted. Our last train to Amsterdam was delayed for an hour so it ended up taking a total of about 7 and a half hours to get here! It has been a very long day but I'm glad to finally be in Amsterdam and to see that the hostel isn't nearly as shady as I thought it was going to be (so far anyway!). I'm excited about the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank House. It seems like it will be a fun city!
Today was a really interesting day though. I really enjoyed what the Chairman of the part of the medical clinics that we visited as well as what Dr. Schmitto had to say. Cardiology is one of the things that I'm really interested in. It was cool to be able to ask the Chairman (I wish I could remember his name...) a question about tissue engineering. It made me realize that I really had learned something in the class and that the mock research grant proposal that we wrote for a tissue engineered vascular graft was really something that is being used and researched, even if not at the specific clinic that we visited. I would love to learn more about the current and future research in cardiac tissue engineering since I now have a small background in this subject and I find it all fascinating. I also liked visiting the different areas of the hospital; everything was very similar to the OR that I worked in back home, which I expected it would be. The intracoronary microembolisation research/experiments that Dr. Schmitto's group is working on at the UMG was also very interesting to hear about. The medical history walk was probably the least favorite part of the day for me. I was interested in what the tour guide had to say, but I was miserable because I was absolutely freezing, so I feel like I didn't get nearly as much information out of the tour as I would have liked to. The places were still cool to see though.
A week from today I will be on my way home! Crazy! I think I will have mixed feelings about leaving...it will be nice to be home, but I have absolutely loved being here and I know that I definitely want to come back and travel around Europe more when I get the chance to again!