As I boarded my flight, it finally hit me that I would be in the Czech Republic for the entire summer! I was going to be working in a new lab studying a new organism while living in a new country for nearly three months, and I had not even traveled outside of the United States aside from Rocky Point. Once I stepped off the plane, I immediately started worrying about not knowing the language. So...on the two-hour drive from the Prague airport to Ceske Budejovice, I looked up words and phrases I saw on shop windows in my Czech phrasebooks
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The ride from the airport ended at a hostel affiliated with the Institute of Parasitology, Czech Academy of the Sciences, which is the university where my lab was located. I definitely appreciated living on campus for the summer! I stayed in a quiet hostel in a single room, which had shared kitchen and laundry facilities. Here I met a few other interesting people who came from the United States, Russia, and France to do research in various labs in this institute.

Jan from our lab, showed Amy and I where the grocery store, ATM, pharmacy, etc. were located. Everything in Ceské Budejovice was in walking distance from the university! Everything seemed like an adventure, from going to the grocery store and trying to decipher the Czech food labels, to spending my first weekend with no electricity in the room! I had heard that I shouldn't use American hair dryers in the European electricity outlets, but decided to try it anyway. The instructions for using the phone and dialing maintenance were written in Czech, so I had to wait until Monday to get help from someone in the lab. Luckily Amy's room was only about 3 meters away from mine, so I kept my perishable food items in her mini fridge. Amy and I decided to go out in the downtown part of the city the first night. We hopped on the night bus not knowing where it would take us and ended up at a really fun discotecca! However, neither of us wore a watch, and we ended up staying out until the sun came up the next morning on accident!

The lab in which I worked studies the hard-shelled tick Ixodes ricinus. In the Czech Republic, Lyme disease is a big problem, and these ticks transmit the bacterium that causes this disease. The first day of work our faculty mentor, Dr. Libor Grubhoffer, took Amy and I to get an immunization for this since we had to go out into the forest to collect ticks from the wild sometimes! Needless to say, working with these organisms can be very dangerous. My project involved determining the role of serine proteases in ticks. Their role in feeding and/or digestion has not been greatly studied, and they could potentially serve as pesticide targets for vector control.

Along with getting a lot of great science finished over the summer, we were able to get out and experience Czech culture as well! We went to dinner and a popular karaoke bar a few times with various people from the lab. Libor took Amy and I out for lunch and sight seeing in a town known for Trebon. Trebon is a "carp town" and several the restaurants are known for their excellent fresh carp dishes.

I learned a lot about how research is done in other countries, about Czech culture, and about myself, as well! Overall, my summer, which consisted of a combined research and cultural experience, was absolutely amazing and irreplaceable.

Michelle Brandon, BRAVO! student with Dr. Libor Grubhoffer's Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Vector and Pathogens, Institute of Parasitology, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic and UBRPer in Dr. Roger Miesfeld's lab, Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics