Last weekend our group combined two occasions to have a gathering outdoors – Yara‘s farewell and and Swedish Midsommar!
Yara was the first Postdoc in Marta´s group at Umeå University, starting about 3 years ago. During her time here, she has established single-particle tracking microscopy protocols and automated scripts to track viruses as they land on living cells. Many in the group rely on those today for their work. Furthermore, Yara has been very busy and engaged with many collaborations within and outside our institute. She will surely be missed as active part of the group and as a great colleague.
To send her off like she deserves, we had a traditional midsommar party at Marta and Hudson´s place. We ate the traditional food (potatoes, herring, schnapps), sang and drank (although we missed proper guidance from a native Swede), danced around our homemade may pole (pretending to be little jumping frogs without ears nor tails), played garden games and most importantly prepared the traditional flower crown. Luckily, we had very nice weather and we just escaped a passing storm.
Overall, the afternoon and evening were very entertaining, the time flew by with plenty of good food and games. We hope Yara enjoyed this last taste of Swedish traditions before she takes off for her new endeavours back in France, for which we wish her the best of luck.