The past week has been yet again filled with busy working days, a packed social schedule and not enough sleep..this seems now to be the way of life here and I couldn't be having a better time. I have been continuining my work at Genzyme, helping the environmental monitoring staff through a busy spell by preparing the RODAC plates for use, ensuring that stock is sufficient for the upcoming weeks and that the paperwork is organized in a manner that makes most sense. I also gave myself a little side project last week to work on a backlog of filing and reviewing, as well as reorganizing an entire filing cabinet so that it is easier for the full time team to access the information should they need to next time! Everyone was really thankful, so my mum's constant pestering for me to be organized back home has clearly rubbed off! I continued to observe the LAL bench and managed to see gel clot, chrome and turbidimetric techniques! This really helped me to understand how to construct a standard curve, how the results are interpreted and what the significance of these results are for the sample in question. LAL tests are extremely important within the company as they test for the presence of endotoxins, and if these are found in the final product they can make the patient sick.

Christine and I were lucky enough to arrange a meeting this week with Mark Bamforth, the Senior Vice President for Corporate Operations and Pharmaceuticals at Genzyme Corporation across USA, Europe and Australia. He has worked at Genzyme for the past 22 years and is also on the Board of Trustees of the Saltire Foundation. It was great to meet with him and he was so interested in hearing all about what our roles within Genzyme were, our thoughts on The Saltire Foundation Scheme and how our stay in Boston had been so far! We spoke over coffee for over an hour as he told us about his career pathway and exactly what led him to work for Genzyme, and be so successful as he did so. It was really inspiring to hear that somebody from Scotland has gone on to make such a global impact, yet remain so down to Earth and easy to talk to. He is now starting a new project outwith Genzyme however he gave us his contact details and encouraged us to stay in touch with him throughout our career, so it turned into a great networking event as well! The fact that when he began work he was in the oil and whisky industry, but then moved over to the pharmaceutical industry makes me realise that with enough drive and ambition your career can go off in any direction and right now myself and all the other Saltire interns have been given such an exciting opportunity to kick start our career, but nobody knows where they might end up one day! it was a real priveledge to meet him and we both came away feeling very positive and excited for the future. I will upload a picture in my next blog....

Outside work has been hectic as usual and I think I am now used to living with only an average of  6 hours sleep a night, which is the only way that we can work and see everything that we want to! The Genzyme, Liberty Mutual and Veolia interns took a trip to 'The Blue Man Group' which is definitely a must see if you ever get the opportunity! I was very sceptical about the idea of paying to see 3 blue men 'mime and play instruments that aren't actually instruments'..but since everyone was going I thought I may as well. And I am so glad that I did! There is really not any way to describe it, for example my favourite part was when we were rolling large amounts of toilet roll onto the audience below us whilst very loud music was playing to very bright strobe lights. So yes, difficult to describe. We also met the following evening for dinner in Boston after some of the other interns went up the prudential tower. Over the weekend we took a trip to New York and Christine and I were lucky enough to get a lift down to Manhattan from her manager here at Genzyme. We took a 3 hour drive to the outskirts of New York City and then a commuter rail right into Grand Central Station. It was amazing, mostly because we were pretending to be Serena from Gossip Girl (reference for the girls) but the photos really don't do the beauty of the building justice! We then went to St Patrick's Cathedral and The Palace Hotel before walking down 5th Avenue and onto Times Square. Here I bought a top from American Eagle Outfitters as it meant you could get your picture up on a billboard of Times Square for a grand total of 15 seconds... hence we have now had our 15 seconds of fame! It was exciting nonetheless. After a quick stop for some late night shopping, we took the subway out to the Upper East Side to meet the New York Saltire interns: Chris, Graeme, Claire and Matt at their appartment. I promised Claire a shout out for giving me a place to sleep all weekend - THANKS CLAIRE.

On Saturday we literally saw the whole of New York. I am more writing this so that I can remember where we went but we saw:

The Met

The Guggenheim

Central Park

Took a Downtown Bus Tour - hopped on and off around New York

Empire State Building

Carrie's Appartment Steps

Magnolia Bakery

Friends Appartment

Lunch in ChinaTown

Ground Zero

New York University/Washington Square Park

Wall Street

Statue of Liberty

Flat Iron Building

Chrysler Building

So it was a very busy Saturday! We then went up to the top of the Rockefeller centre and saw New York's Skyline which was unbelievable and I was surprised to see just how much water there is around New York, it seemed so surreal to see the Empire State building and then sailing boats just a little further away! New York seemed so peaceful up there, which is a far cry from when you're on the streets trying to get through the crowd. Unfortunately our time up top was cut short as we were off to see Chicago on Broadway! Naturally as it's one of my favourite musicals this was very exciting, and myself, Claire and Camilla danced our way throughout the show whilst laughing at the unamused faces of the boys watching the show! By the time it finished it was late and so we went back to the appartment (in a yellow 'cab') and chatted until we were all falling asleep talking. On Sunday myself and Christine took off early morning again to go and see Hotel Empire (Chuck's hotel in Gossip Girl..another reference for the girls) and The Met Opera/Ballet/Theatre before hitting the shops (Forever 21, American Eagle) in Times Square. After a quick lunch at possibly the most expensive TGI Fridays in the world we were off back to China Town to get the very well priced $15 Fung Wah bus back to Boston! Another accomplishment that should definitely be noted is the fact that we (somewhat) successfully managed to navigate our way around the subway system, which proved difficult as we had no clue which way east, west, uptown or downtown was.

Anyway, my fingers are tired of typing and I doubt anyone is still reading, so it is probably time to wrap this up. Cirque du soleil and the aquarium this week...

Hope everyone is having fun!

Steph x