Well, we’ve officially been living in Vancouver for a year now. Wow, time flies. When we first got here I thought the apartment was an aweful lot like a hotel, but now that we’ve moved in, added our own furnishings, had the counters replaced, and added some nice lighting it really feels like home. Especially right now, as I write this there’s a nice glow from our living room lamp and Lionel’s playing some violin music in the background :blush:

During our year here I think we’ve invested a lot more in our health. We’ve managed to run regularly, increasing our time spent running from 10 minutes to over an hour, and our distance from 2.5 to 8.9 km. We’ve tried to cut out cold cereals and replace them with oatmeal (although we still like them for snacks, hehe), and I probably eat 3 or 4 pieces of fruit a week. We;ve also recently added weights back into our routine fairly regurlarly. It’s a lot easier to be active here in BC when every day is nice and there really isn’t any winter, heh. We’ll see how it keeps up when autumn comes along.

Work wise, I have been in a C. elegans lab working on behaviour and amphetamines, to an electrophysiology lab working on NMDA receptors and long term potentiation, to a molecular genetics lab fworking on Alzheimer’s disease. I’ve completed all my courses needed for my PhD, including 12 credits of neuroscience and 3 credits of molecular biology. I’ve written two CIHR grant assignments and nine journal critiques, and have done two term presentations. I’ve gone to a conference in Quebec with the CIHR Institute of Aging to learn about qualitative and quantitative research and journal/grant writing techniques and I made my first research poster. I’ve been successful in seeking funding with my NSERC CGS-M extension, the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Junior Graduate Trainee Award,