Oral presentation and Trevi Fountain

On Thursday, I woke up and prepared myself for my oral presentation. I went to the first session of the morning, albeit a little late (however, I did see lots of other people trickling in late, too, so I didn't feel so bad that I showed up after the 8am start time). After the session was done, there was a half hour coffee break in which I took down my poster and put my talk on the conference's computer. I also acquainted myself with the controller for advancing slides and the laser pointer. Then, I sat down to wait through seven talks in my session (the "Antivirals" session) before it was my turn. In the interim Mom, Dad and Amanda showed up and entered the session so they could watch me give my presentation. Finally, it was my turn! I was only a little nervous.

My talk went fairly well, since I made sure I was close to the microphone and spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. This had been a problem throughout the conference, since they didn't have a portable microphone that attached to people's shirts. Most people didn't get close enough to the microphone to broadcast clearly to the entire audience. So, I made sure I did that, however it made me feel really trapped in one position, since I couldn't move away from the microphone at all! I guess it went quite well, because I ended up winning a travel award (although I'm not really sure if I won it because of my oral presentation, or my poster...or just randomly).

After the conference, we headed back to the hotel and dropped off my stuff before heading out for lunch in Piazza St Maria in Trastavere. Next, the girls dropped Dad off at the botanical gardens for the afternoon and we wandered off to do some shopping near Piazza Navona and the Trevi fountain. We took some pictures of Trevi fountain, both that afternoon and the next day when Dad went with us. Here they are:
After shopping and exploring, we met up with my supervisor Lorne and Alan, a guy from the conference (also from Edmonton) and had dinner at Piazza Navona. It was a really nice dinner, with delicious wine and some yummy fettuccini alfredo:We were also entertained by this mime, who was really quite funny and came through the patio afterwards to collect some well-earned change:We headed home after dinner to meet up with Dad at the hotel for our last night in Rome.